• Opportunity to Learn from a Major Market: India is like a real laboratory where we can learn without much investment. “We can already anticipate the problems . . . and attack them at the source. India has a fantastic opportunity where we can work outside of the shackles of existing technology,” Rahul Sharma, IBM Executive.
• India is a Source of Frugal Innovations: Emerging economies are a great source of frugal innovations as they are birthed in a resource constrained environment surrounded by many frugal innovations (first seen or likely to be used first) in the developing world – eventually migrating to the industrialized world. The term “Reverse Innovation” refers broadly to the process whereby goods developed as inexpensive models to meet the needs of developing nations are then repackaged as low-cost innovative goods for Western nations.
• Comes with Commitment at the Top: Indian Prime Minister Modi and Chief Minister of Andhra State where the prototype is being developed made this a high priority to move the nations forward.
• India is the future:
  • Represents future growth – India is growing at 7% faster than China according World Bank
  • India’s Strength: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
  • Source of future talent: largest youth (10-24yrs.) population ~400M vs China 269M; US 65M
  • Growing middle class: 50M to 200M by 2020 to 475M by 2030 – more than the US population

The request to UC Berkeley for “Prototyping a Scalable Smart Village” came from the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, one of the most progressive states in India. The Chief Minister was impressed with the work done by the Berkeley students in the fall 2015 Smart Cities class. Given that close to 70% of the population in India still live in Villages isolated from access to resources that cities enjoy, the Chief Minister launched a Smart Villages initiative to improve the quality of life, productivity and by providing access to state of the art technology – removing barriers for innovation, communication and community consensus. Take a look at his current dashboard that hangs in his office: http://core.ap.gov.in/CMDashBoard/Index.aspx . His government has opened up its data to UC Berkeley given that we are a research organization – Better Data = Better Decisions.

“We also set up seven development missions, five campaigns and five grids – power, drinking water, gas, road connectivity and broadband connectivity. In this regard, we need to make every village Smart in which the community (individually and collectively), is empowered to make smart decisions using smart technologies with the support of smart manpower to be self-sufficient for their inclusive and sustainable development in 20 non-negotiable development commitments. We believe this would lead us to make the State of Andhra Pradesh Smart. We must also move in sync with the global transformation initiative. We sincerely believe that our objective cannot be achieved in totality without participation of people/community in the development process. Hence, I appeal to the people of Andhra Pradesh to proactively come forward for collective collaboration in the development process without waiting for someone from outside to come and help. I appeal to all individuals, partners, community members, institutions to optimally utilize all existing local resources; maximize available services, improve service chains, adopt appropriate technologies, create learning platforms, improve existing knowledge and skills (for collective actions to bring social change towards village self-sufficiency) and advance inclusive growth for the last mile.” –  Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh 

1. Evaluate the “Smart Village Program” rolled out by the Chief Minister (Program Summary is attached)

a. What are the critical success elements of the program?

b. What aspects are important to village communities that are NOT being addressed?

c. Is the program adapted to the social, political, and economic dynamic in the villages?

d. Identify the weakest links that need to be addressed to make the program a success.

2. Evaluate the existing technologies being employed and explore alternative technologies that will lower the operating costs and offer new revenue opportunities for the village.

3. Evaluate traction for Public Private Partnership investment at a strategic level. Independent return on investment analysis to the stakeholders will be required.

4. Based on your research and analysis, recommend Innovative Business Models for the selected villages being prototyped.

5. Evaluate Apps or platforms that could be used by the villagers for e-governance to make faster decisions, curtail costs or enhances revenue streams for the entire ecosystem.

6. Provide an independent assessment about the effectiveness of the proposed plans, layout, architecture, design, infrastructure, technologies, resources, and talent necessary.

7. Suggest Open Innovation processes and platforms for soliciting external innovations that will help build a smart village.

8. Group Project: Your project, once it is complete, will be submitted to the Chief Minister’s office for review and comment.

UC Berkeley is collaborating with IBM, Nestle, Tyco, Cisco, SAP, Solar City, DuPont, HCL, Intel and Wipro to make this happen. We have several student researchers on the ground working on this project and collecting the needed data. This will enable us to suggest better models to the government. The students will need to work with people on the field to collect more data to complete this project. The information and findings from this project will be utilized to develop the prototype that will be showcased in a selected village in the East Godavari District in Andhra Pradesh, India. The exact date is yet to be determined, but it will be sometime during last week of December or first week of January 2017. The prototype will need to be co-created with the local people to address their pain points that will address their needs, provide access to better and timely information to improve their lives. Communication to the CM’s office will be done in “real time” via dashboards to transmit their needs, promising growth and access to more resources needed to develop 24/7 connectivity so that villagers voices and concerns are heard.  Simple apps that farmers can develop to communicate via SMS, etc. Several professors at UC Berkeley and Stanford have joined hands to help in this effort.

Prototyping a Village as a Platform: The prototypes will be: a) Instrumented, b) Interconnected, and c) Intelligent (data capture/cognitive analytics) at price points that villages can afford. The purpose of the platform is to bring villagers into the managing process individually and collectively to enhance: a) community consensus, b) transparency, c) skill development, and d) entrepreneurial activities.

Items being considered for showcasing within the village:

a) Smart House – being developed by a Stanford professor

b) Smart Clinic

c) Clean Water Systems

d) Smart Sanitation

e) Clean Energy

f) Information Center – powered by cognitive computing

g) Skill Development Center and Business Education

h) Community Engagement Center for ideation

i) Business Resource Center to further small scale industries using local resources

j) Cultural Center to build brand identity for the village to foster tourism. Scalability of these villages is what will drive future revenue growth for MNEs like IBM, Nestle, etc.

Mid-term: 20%; Blogs: 20%; Final Paper Presentation: 50%; Attendance: 10% = Total: 100%