Kopernik is an on-line store of innovative technologies designed for the developing world – or the ‘base of the pyramid’ (BOP) - that also provides crowd-funded financial subsidies.
Through an on-line platform, Kopernik allows the most progressive technologies to reach poor people in developing countries. The goal is to accelerate development through ‘leapfrogging’ or skipping inferior, less-efficient technologies and practices and moving directly to more advanced ones.
Kopernik show-cases innovative products (such as solar powered products and water purification devices) and thereby provides a menu of options accessible to local organizations in developing countries. The organizations then develop short proposals explaining how they can utilize the products to overcome development challenges and impediments to growth. The public in turn funds the most promising proposals in order to make them a reality.
At the core of this idea is our realisation that:
- Development challenges are immense, yet the pool of ideas within the ‘development community’ remains limited. Many ‘solutions’ are recycled from place to place, and often yield limited results. It is surprising that innovation and technology play only a small part in solving complex development problems.
- Extraordinary technologies and innovations exist out there, and these are rapidly increasing in number. However, there is little awareness (by those that actually need them) about the existence of these products. As a result, they are rarely used in solving development problems.
- The cost of these products is also often too high for local communities to be able to afford them. In addition, technology providers frequently lack the means to scale and reach more communities in need of these solutions.
- Local organizations know best what the concerns of their communities are. However, they frequently lack the necessary tools and resources to be able to address them.