But then I’ve been thinking about universities much, much longer. Are they the appropriate vehicles for driving innovation in emerging economies, let alone inclusive innovation?

The answers would be different if the question were asked about the American model of the university? To a certain extent, the American university, even a place like Reed College which is focused on undergraduate liberal arts education, is a good platform for innovators. Just read Steve Job’s famous commencement speech.

As Nannerl Keohane states:

This way of learning has several distinct advantages: It’s insurance against obsolescence; in any rapidly changing field (and every field is changing rapidly these days), if you only focus on learning specific materials that are pertinent in 2012, rather than learning about them in a broader context, you will soon find that your training will have become valueless. Most important, with a liberal education you will have learned how to learn, so that you will be able to do research to answer questions in your field that will come up years from now, questions that nobody could even have envisioned in 2012, much less taught you how to answer.

One would assume that the research universities like Stanford, where Jobs gave his speech, are better platforms for innovation. On the outside, yes, it so appears. But in reality, actual innovation occurs in organizations and locations that are part of the university’s eco system, but are not necessarily controlled and directed by the university. I am reminded of statements like every university department being a collection of small businesses, rather than an integrated, coherent organization. We all set our research agendas, decided what we would teach and what we would not, and so on. These things were not centrally controlled.

The question before us is not innovation by or in US universities. It is about the role of emerging-economy universities in innovation.

The questions then are whether our universities have created the kinds of environments that would allow a Steve Jobs to emerge and innovate, and whether, in contrast to the “collection of small businesses” model of the US, our universities are capable to directing the energies of faculty to produce innovation.

My answer to the first question is an emphatic no. The answer to the second question is more complicated. It is tempting to support the central control of the work of faculty because they are so unproductive now. But if this is done in a creative enterprise, is there no danger that the creativity will be stifled? You may be able to get them to write more research articles or teach more students. But innovate? No.

More will be posted as the workshop develops.

The story was about an award. But what I noticed was the role of telephones in the story. The award winning innovation is not just one new thing; it is a collection of process improvements. Critical elements involve phones as easy ways of contacting mothers on the one hand and health workers on the other.

Without the phones, would the innovation have been possible? Without the innovation, would the increase in immunization rates have been possible? Without the increase in immunization rates would it have been possible to save lives?

Without the reforms, would there be phones? Would it be possible to assume that all health workers could be reached, and that the mothers would have phone numbers to give when being registered?

These benefits, it appears, far outweigh the millions of dollars generated by the telecom industry for government.

Even better, imagine if you could email a letter to the post office, pay for the stamp online, and never set foot outside of your door? You could send mail digitally, with minimal fuss. People still like receiving letters, if it wasn’t such a pain sending them we might do it more. All of these are simple innovations which barely even amount to innovation at all. They would just bring the post office up to the operating level of a modern teenager.

The Internet boom
On a broader level, the Internet boom in America saw renewed business for the post as people began ordering more from Amazon and eBay and online delivery sites. Sri Lanka looks poised to see a similar boom in eCommerce, but few trust the Postal Service to deliver. Most local eCommerce start-ups I’ve talked to consider courier services (either their own or outsourced) their first resort. To a degree this is natural (even the US Postal Service has lost out to UPS and DHL), but if the Sri Lanka Post was even slightly proactive, they could at least get into the game.

The column.

In most developing countries, a high proportion of the work force is engaged in agriculture. Therefore, one cannot envisage inclusive development occurring without agriculture being transformed from a laggard sector to a leading growth sector. In this context, Bill Gates’s thinking on innovation is highly relevant to any discussion of inclusive innovation:

We can help poor farmers sustainably increase their productivity so they can feed themselves and their families. By doing so, they will contribute to global food security. But that will happen only if we prioritize agricultural innovation.

Gates concludes a highly informed and thought-provoking discussion on problems in agricultural livelihoods and solutions, thus:

When I talk about innovation, it can be abstract for some people. But the direct link between the challenges Christina faces when her crop is destroyed and the solutions that Dr. Ndunguru is working on every day makes it very concrete. Disease-resistant cassava is an answer to Christina’s prayers, and I look forward to the day when Dr. Ndunguru’s work is done and I can go back to Tanzania and see Christina’s field thick with healthy cassava plants. That is why I say that innovation has been and will continue to be the key to improving the world.

Because of years of work on family planning, child health and womens’ education, its fertility rates are declining and the country is just entering the golden period in terms of demography: declining child dependency; increases in elderly dependency not yet started; and a bulge of unencumbered working-age people.

But dividends come with dangers: if the demographic bulge finds no opportunities for making a living, they will rise in rebellion (e.g., the three youth revolts in Sri Lanka in the 1970-90 period). For this it is necessary to remove stifling regulation and encourage investment.

Sadly, the government of Bangladesh seems to be doing the exact opposite, as reported in the influential Economist:

The government is calling for the Grameen empire to be brought together “under a single structure”. Bangladeshi businessfolk are horrified. If a Nobel prize is no defence against expropriation, that doesn’t bode well for the security of property rights in Bangladesh.

Grameen’s foreign partners are keeping quiet, for now. A spokesman for Telenor Group, in an e-mail, says that the firm expects that its relationship with Grameen Telecom “will continue based on professionalism, openness and in the best interest of Grameenphone.” Eric Lesueur of Grameen-Veolia says he believes that the new management of Grameen Bank “will respect the growth plans and strategies developed with Professor Yunus.”

Contrary to the declarations made at the G20 summit meetings in earlier years, the world leaders seem to have finally given up on the possibility of concluding the trade talks within the parameters on which they had launched them as a single undertaking. At the G20 Summit meeting held in Cannes on November 3-4, 2011, the leaders had recognised that ‘it is clear that we will not complete the DDA if we continue to conduct negotiations as we have in the past’. At the APEC Meeting on November 12-13, 2011, while expressing deep concerns at the impasse confronting the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), the leaders similarly came to the joint assessment that ‘the reality is that a conclusion of all elements of the Doha agenda is unlikely in the near future’. Likewise, at the MC8, there was consensus that ‘it is unlikely that all elements of the Doha Development Round could be concluded simultaneously in the near future’. On the way forward, both the G20 and APEC meetings have called for fresh, credible approaches for furthering negotiations.

Analysts are expecting Nokia to rapidly reassert its relevance in the smartphone market, which it had largely to itself before the 2007 introduction of Apple’s first iPhone. Over the next 12 months, Nokia will expand its smartphone market share more than sixfold, to 12.2 percent, overtaking Research in Motion, the makers of the BlackBerry, according to I.D.C.

By 2015, Windows and Nokia will be the world’s second-largest smartphone operating system, I.D.C. estimates, with 21 percent, trailing Google’s Android, with 47 percent, but ahead of Apple, with 19 percent.

“What people are underestimating is how much operators in Europe and elsewhere are beginning to support and push Windows phones,” Mr. Jeronimo said in an interview.

Report.

As I wrote in a column in November, people will soon be able to download files of physical objects and print them out at home. Although being able to print out a new mug or toothbrush at home sounds magical, I said that there would surely be copyright problems that occur as a result of this technology’s going mainstream.

This theory struck oil this week when the Pirate Bay, a notorious peer-to-peer file-sharing Web site that is a source of free copyrighted music and movies, said it was creating a new download section on its site that would enable people to freely take files a 3-D printer can recreate into physical things.

The possibilities are sketched out in a piece I wrote two years back, but has still not come out in print:

Gone were the days of massive manufacturing plants that made lots of identical things that were then transported to far places at great cost and damage to the environment. Instead, goods were now produced through decentralized smart manufacturing processes that were controlled from central design centers at the nodes of massive data networks. Instead of making the same thing in millions of copies, the new manufacturing allowed customer input into the design process in ways that made supply follow demand, not vice versa. The relentless pressure to drive down transaction costs that emanated from the budget telecom network model that South Asia pioneered stood the region in good stead. Combined with the paradigm of design for extreme affordability that drove corporate strategy in the region in first few decades of the 20th Century, it gave South Asian tortoises an edge over the Chinese hares that had prematurely got locked-in to old style mass production.

In 2009, Dr. Hossain was assigned to two districts where immunization rates were 67 and 60 percent, respectively. In 2010, they were 85 and 79 percent. These rapid improvements were the result of Dr. Hossain’s innovative approach to running an immunization program. He instituted a process of registering pregnant women with their expected date of delivery, location, and phone number, so vaccinators knew when children were born, where they were, and an easy way to contact their mothers. He provided annual schedules for vaccine sessions to make vaccinators more accountable to the community and had the vaccinators put their phone numbers on the children’s immunization cards, so parents with young children could get in touch with a health worker. These may seem like small innovations, but they show how looking at old problems in new ways can make a profound difference. Improvements like these are spreading to other locations because of the commitment and creativity of Dr. Hossain and many others like him. Delivering lifesaving vaccines takes the dedication of many well-known players like GAVI, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF; government officials; and perhaps most importantly hundreds of thousands of heroes on the frontline like Dr. Hossain.

What I love about this story is the simplicity, almost banality, of the innovation. It’s just better record keeping and follow up. Nothing that a Patent Office would recognize as an innovation. But it is considered worthy of a Gates Foundation Prize. And it involves, centrally the mobile. Not a telecenter, not a subsidized device, but the standard mobile connection that today one can assume among the poor.

The Za­mbian government has confirmed expectations and will renationalise the local mobile network, Zamtel, which is 75% owned by Lybia’s Lap Green Networks.

The government has also dissolved the board of directors and appointed its own interim CEO.

Zamtel’s bank accounts were also frozen last week in an allegedly unrelated investigation into money laundering claims, which the company denies.

The previous government sold the 75% stake in Zamtel to Lap Green Networks in 2010 for US$257 million – a figure which the then-opposition claimed was substantially below the book value for the company.

Story.

TAX BADS RATHER THAN GOODS A good rule of thumb is that when you tax something, you get less of it. That means that taxes on hard work, saving and entrepreneurial risk-taking impede these fundamental drivers of economic growth. The alternative is to tax those things we would like to get less of.

Consider the tax on gasoline. Driving your car is associated with various adverse side effects, which economists call externalities. These include traffic congestion, accidents, local pollution and global climate change. If the tax on gasoline were higher, people would alter their behavior to drive less. They would be more likely to take public transportation, use car pools or live closer to work. The incentives they face when deciding how much to drive would more closely match the true social costs and benefits.

Economists who have added up all the externalities associated with driving conclude that a tax exceeding $2 a gallon makes sense. That would provide substantial revenue that could be used to reduce other taxes. By taxing bad things more, we could tax good things less.

I can agree with him on gasoline. The decision makers in most South Asian countries appear to agree as well. They tax the hell out of gasoline.

My gripe is re mobile telephone user charges. Why are they being taxed excessively? Therefore, they are being consumed less. Why? Do the governments think the use of mobile phones is a bad? No need to say it is good; just be neutral. Treat it like anything else.

But I hope I am wrong and that there will be real implementation. A low-hanging fruit is bilateral lowering of roaming charges and termination charges for calls from Sri Lanka to India and vice versa. We have been waiting for SAARC to implement these things, much easier if India and Sri Lanka show how it can be done.

Sri Lanka and India have signed an agreement to set up a mechanism of technical and institutional cooperation in telecommunications. It aims to develop telecommunications in both the countries particularly in the areas of technology and access to telecommunication services, a statement from the Indian High Commission said.

The deal covers oversight of service provision, convergence, next generation networks, new technologies, spectrum issues, number portability, and economic regulation, it said.

“It’s one of the last areas on the Internet where there really isn’t anything yet that addresses core needs for this group of people,” he said, adding that “trillions” are spent each year on global scientific research. Investors are betting that a successful site catering to scientists could shave at least a sliver off that enormous pie.

Dr. Madisch, of ResearchGate, acknowledged that he might never reach many of the established scientists for whom social networking can seem like a foreign language or a waste of time. But wait, he said, until younger scientists weaned on social media and open-source collaboration start running their own labs.

“If you said years ago, ‘One day you will be on Facebook sharing all your photos and personal information with people,’ they wouldn’t believe you,” he said. “We’re just at the beginning. The change is coming.”

“Let us be clear,” the White House statement said, “online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs.”

However, it added, “We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

The bills currently under consideration in Congress were intended to combat the theft of copyrighted materials by preventing American search engines like Google and Yahoo from directing users to sites that allow for the distribution of stolen materials. They would cut off payment processors like PayPal that handle transactions.

The bills would also allow private citizens and companies to sue to stop what they believed to be theft of protected content. Those and other provisions set off fierce opposition among Internet companies, technology investors and free speech advocates, who said the bills would stifle online innovation, violate the First Amendment and even compromise national security by undermining the integrity of the Internet’s naming system.