How can a developing country be a source of innovation?
Here’s an example. ITC, the Indian subsidiary of British American Tobacco that has now branched out into hotels and the paper and food industries, has a novel program going on in India called e-Choupal [“electronic village meeting place”]. Sourcing farm products from scattered and subsistence farmers through intermediaries was proving to be inefficient for ITC, and so it decided to build an information network around the soybean belt in India. A successful farmer was picked up from each village, given a PC and Internet connectivity, and made responsible for information dissemination among the villagers. Both ITC and farmers have now done away with intermediaries and are reaping the benefits of a transparent, two-way logistics system. ITC has built a large network not only for sourcing agricultural products from subsistence farmers, but also, in reversing the flow, selling them its products, like seeds, pesticides, and lubricants. To take another example, today’s wireless revolution is
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