Innovation for the other 90%

If you enjoyed the Design for the Other 90% exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, you’ll enjoy this… MIT is putting together an event for innovators in developing nations:

“This summer, organizers of the first International Development

Design Summit at MIT are going to talk about problems in the developing

world and then create real, workable solutions to them – all in the

space of four weeks. More than 50 people from 16 countries, many

hailing from developing nations, will arrive at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology this weekend for the first-of-its-kind

conference. Organizers hope that by including participants with a

variety of technical backgrounds, the group can take an

interdisciplinary approach that will yield hard results.”

What’s interesting is that this innovation summit is actually the result of the vision of a “genius grant” recipient:

“The

summit realizes the vision of Amy Smith, who received a master’s in

engineering from MIT in 1995 and won a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant in

2004. Smith, one of the conference organizers, is dedicated to using

technology to design simple yet efficient solutions for problems in the

developing world.”

For more on the work of Amy Smith, be sure to check out her page on the TED site.

[video: Amy Smith at TED]