Meet a Sandboxer: Steve Daniels
July 5th, 2011 by Wladimir Nikoluk
Meet Sandboxer Steve Daniels! Founder of A Better World by Design and Analogue Digital, Steve is a 22-year-old entrepreneur, designer, and engineer on a mission to liberate the potential of makers in resource-constrained areas around the world. He is researching mobile technology for underserved communities at IBM and strives to make Watson, the celebrity supercomputer, more human-friendly. Find Steve on Facebook and Twitter.
1.Tell us the story of your latest project / occupation.
My latest project is called Makeshift, a quarterly magazine focused on grassroots creativity and invention around the world. I’m gathering my network of researchers in this space—I have contributors in over 20 countries—to figure out what people are making at the bottom of the pyramid and what implications this has for development, business and creativity itself.
One of the pivotal moments that led to Makeshift occurred when I was in Kenya, set to deliver farming tools I had designed to an NGO. When I walked through an industrial slum called Gikomba I was blown away by the drive and ingenuity of the local makers and realized I had a lot more to learn about the local manufacturing economy before I could design for it. This led to my book Making Do: Innovation in Kenya’s Informal Economy, which I’ve put online for free.
2. What are you doing and how did you get there?
I never really had a plan. Each opportunity tends to lead into the next. For example, I started A Better World by Design as a way to learn more about social innovation and connect with my idols. This led to a trip to Kenya, where I stumbled upon an interesting research topic, which led to Making Do, Makeshift, and my job at IBM researching technologies for emerging markets, which led to my current position as the designer for the IBM Watson team. It’s like an opportunity tree where projects serendipitously branch off from each other and each continues to be an important learning experience to support the next. I’ll keep doing this until my tree is overgrown and I need to clip off some branches.
3. Tell us about the biggest successes and failures in your life. What worked, what didn’t, and what did you learn?
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that grassroots change is much easier than institutional change and it’s easier to make something new than change something that already exists.
At A Better World by Design, we were able to create a student-driven movement from the ground up at Brown University and RISD that immediately captivated the student body, faculty, and professionals. Pretty soon we grew to 1,000 attendees each year, among them both schools’ presidents and the mayor of Providence. We’ve funded projects and bred interdisciplinary faculty collaborations. But we’ve still been unsuccessful in getting real top-down support or meaningful curricular shifts at such traditional institutions.
The same has been true at IBM, a business-to-business company of over 400,000, where I’ve been championing the use of our technologies to innovate in emerging markets like Africa. Plenty of people get it and want to make it happen, but institutions are hard to change. The lesson is that institutions, as stodgy and monolithic as they may seem, are made up of real people, and you need to seek out the people who want to help you. If you keep hacking at it, change will follow.
4. What do you want to achieve in
b) the next year: Expand distribution and content of Makeshift particularly in emerging markets, get our Watson for healthcare application out into hospitals where we can test it with doctors in real cases, and launch a new project we’re calling Makerspaces, which are hacker spaces for fabricators in emerging markets.
c) the next 10 years: Create the equivalent of microfinance for grassroots inventors. I don’t know what that is yet.
5. What was your most inspring moment during the last two weeks?
I’d love to say something like I saw a small child liven the spirits of a homeless man, but really IBM gave me an iPad, which is like an amusement park for a user experience designer.
6. How could other Sandboxers and the outside world support you and why would that be exciting for them.
I want to see this idea of liberating the potential of makers grow into a full-fledged global movement. There’s a term for grassroots making in most cultures: in the US it’s “DIY,” in India it’s “jugaad,” and in East Africa it’s “jua kali”. I hope Sandboxers can help me unify these disconnected identities and empower makers around the world.
7. Steve’s favorite:
-book: Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander
-movie: Pootie Tang
-place on earth: Serengeti
-travel destination during last year: Sasquatch! Festival in George, Washington
-food: Dumplings
-drink: Naked Green Machine
- quote: “Life is about the people you meet and the things you make with them.” – The Holstee Manifesto
Reposting this answer from Jonny Miller (got lost when we switched servers):
"Really interesting! I guess one of the biggest problems is that intellectual property rights don't hold up in many of these places...
How about organising a series of crowdfunded innovation prizes for grassroots innovators. Instead of getting a patent rights they could get prize money, and their idea/innovation could be freely revealed and hence more widely diffused - leading to possible further innovations down the line...."
Reposting this answer from Steve (got lost when we switched servers): "Kyle, that's definitely important, but Scot is absolutely right that there are two pieces to the puzzle: culture and resources. New product development is more complicated than traditional micro-enterprise and requires first a mindset of ambition, creativity, and continuous technological learning; and second they need resources in terms of technical support, equipment, business training, markets, and financing. These are the types of services one might find at an incubator, consultancy, or innovation hub. That's what I'm attempting with the new project I mentioned Makerspaces.
In reality we know very little about which of these components will have the most impact. Grassroots makers report that their biggest needs are access to markets and credit, but these don't necessarily lead to innovations that solve local problems. It's entirely possible that a simple exercise in design thinking could be transformative for an already skilled and ambitious maker. I was inspired yesterday by a video that showed what happened when girls from Kenyan slums started tinkering with electronics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6m-nNck4BM
I hope Makeshift and Makerspaces can help answer some of these empirical questions.
Resources:
- Making Do (http://makingdo.analoguedigital.com) has a bunch of case studies and goes in depth into the resource gap in chapter 5 with the best data I could find. It also speaks to the cultural piece in chapter 6 and what the Maker Faire Africa (http://makerfaireafrica.com) is doing to promote a culture of innovation among makers.
- REculture (http://postconsumption.posterous.com), a blog on informal reuse and repurposing
- The Survival of the Fitter, a book which relates the experiences of the Intermediate Technology Transfer Unit in Ghana"
Microfinance for grassroots inventors is going to be Micro Venture Capital! Yeah! at least that is my dream. If the inventors can dream big enough then it is worth it to take a risk and invest some money in expanding their business. What do you think?
I think capital is one part of the equation, but so many grassroots inventors I know lack access to key resources, fluency in the "language" of business, and other elements that pre-empt the fundraising stage. Even more people lack confidence in their abilities to invent and create solutions because of displacing influences and products from the outside world.
We need to focus first on empowering and facilitating inventors to do their thing, and supporting them throughout the process.
Steve - any case studies or examples you can share now?
Reposting this answer from Steve (got lost when we switched servers):
"Great idea Jonny! You're right that intellectual property rights don't apply here (it's like the Chinese shanzai culture on crack). I have some theories on how alternative forms of intellectual property might be enforced (see chapter 4 of Making Do), but you're probably better off circumventing it altogether. Offering a reward of seed capital could reduce the risk involved with R&D and being a first mover. Let me know if you want to talk about this more!
Kyle, I've thought more about your micro venture capital idea and even though it's not a complete solution it's an attainable goal to focus on. What if there were a Kickstarter for grassroots inventors where you could donate money in exchange for rewards OR offer in-kind services like technical support, access to markets, and mentoring? Let's talk!"
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