A different take on the Pareto principle

Okay, here's a different thought. You've probably heard of the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule.  The original idea came from the observation that 20% of the people in Italy owned 80% of the land, and that in a certain garden, 80% of the peas came from 20% of the pods.  The general concept is that most of the productive output is the result of relatively few of the input factors.  In business it is generally considered that one should focus on the 20% that are causing the large effect, in order to achieve significant improvement.

Abe Lincoln made an interesting comment:

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax”

This suggests that most of the 80% "non-productive time" he would spend on preparing well for the actual productive time he did spend.  It seems he was aware of the need to prepare well, so that when the time came for the 20%, he was ready and could work effectively.

Okay, that's enough for a late night musing....

Lighting Africa

Here's a fast company article about an organization that is helping with the marketing of solar powered lights in parts of africa..

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/157/lighting-africa-solar-power-sub-sahara

Most Effective Micro-finance

If you are getting involved in anything, it always makes sense to figure out who's the best in that field and keep an  eye on what they are doing.  You may chose to be different, but it's still important to know what's going on.  With that in mind, in the micro-finance world, Accion are one of those organizations to keep an eye on. They've been named the most effective microfinance non-profit by Philantropedia.  Fast Company had this article about it.

Peanut sheller by Full Belly Project

Here's a You Tube video of a peanut sheller design being used in Uganda.  It's a part of the Full Belly Project http://thefullbellyproject.org/.  This could be very useful.  The organization suggests training before giving out the technology, and setting up a local business to produce them. (see the FAQ section).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Nut_Sheller

Support systems...

Here's an article recently published in the ontario society for professional engineers news letter. (link) It talks about how important it is for the local system to be in place to support infrastructure development.  Things like management, construction standards, accounting systems must be in place for large infrastructure systems to work.  Even for relatively small systems, if the support structures are not there, the projects will eventually fail.  This means its not just the technology, its the people and how they relate, the responsibility and social structures that are as important as the tools....

Maker Faire Africa and MultiMachine

This one is very exciting... The guys involved in TEDAfrica and Ushahidi are organizing and event for people from Africa to get together and display their inventions and exchange ideas.

http://makerfaireafrica.com/

If you are in Nairobi this August 27 or 28, you might want to head over to the university and see what's going on.  I want to see pictures and stories when it's over...

Starting and growing a business

Okay, so this one is a little off of my usual topic.  But maybe there's something here that can scale down to small businesses as well....

Found a couple of blogs via a fast company article here, that are by some venture capitalists in Silicon Valley i think.  They talk about business models and scaleable companies.  Stuff that is way out of my league, but might be useful if it can be distilled.  The first one is by Ben Horowitz, and one blog entry of his talks about the roll of a CEO in terms of passing on bad information and getting help solving problems...

Some how, from the comments of one of Ben's blogs, I came across this article by Steve Blank. Steve also seems to be one who knows a lot about building businesses, so it's worth following some of the posts he puts up...

Peace Dividend Trust

Okay, last one for tonight....

Link from fast company. com  article about a new initiative to help aid $ get spent locally rather than in the usual rich places that donated it... building local economies as they are being helped through gifts...

The idea is to deliver 5 services:

• Training local entrepreneurs on how to find and bid on international contracts
• Translating and distributing international tenders locally
• Maintaining an online database of local entrepreneurs who we have personally verified
• Matchmaking large scale international procurement needs (like bottled water for a big UN mission) to local vendors
• Advocating for the concept of buying local with our "Buy Local - Build Afghanistan (or Timor or Haiti) campaigns

So, the key is linking local people with the contracts to be fulfilled, hiring local people to help their neighbours.  It's one of those "why didn't I think of that sooner" ideas...

The Peace Dividend Trust website looks to have a large data base of reports and papers about development and peace building ideas... maybe another night i'll dig into it more...

The Peace Dividend Market site links local businesses with international contracts, and currently is operating in Afganistan, Timor and Haiti