SCAMPER and the Washing Machine

What are your past experiences of mind mapping (if any?). 

I have never really used Mindmapping outside of a specific task that required me to use it. I feel that I have a relatively good ability to organise my thoughts, though I am certainly not as creative or innovative as I would like to be. I found the mindmapping exercise to be very interesting. I will attempt to utilise this in my work and life in the coming week. Next week I will blog about how this process has gone.

Could you pick on object from around the house and apply SCAMPER to see how you could come up with a new product?

My mind is slightly clouded by the 1st assignment in which I focused on the cooking stove. For this exercise, I will focus on the washing machine, which represents perhaps the appliance which creates perhaps the single biggest waste of water out of all household appliances.

The Washing Machine

Substitute the external water supply and drainage system with re-usable water and a filter/ treatment function. The vast majority of water is wasted when cleaning clothes. The re-use of the water could be achieved by cycling the water back into a container which filters and treats the water to ensure it is clean and can be used again for the next washing cycle.

Combine the washing machine and tumble drier. The tumble drier wastes all of the water that is contained in the clothes that are to be dried. By cycling this water back into a combined washer drier water filter/treatment device, this wastage could be eliminated.

Adapt the washer/drier to reuse water. (Alternate, additional idea could include water from the shower or the sink). 

Modify the device to incorporate a water filter/treatment function. This would require a water tank with sufficient storage capacity for a given load. In order to ensure consumer confidence, the water quality once treated would need to be almost on par with the water quality from external sources. With modern technology, this could be achieved. (Alternate idea: FLOW> Central Water Source- Washing Machine/Drier- Toilet- Central Water Source).

Put to Other Uses The alternate idea above involves using the washing machine/drier water as the water for the toilet. This would still require a home based water tank, but would remove the need for such extensive water filtration/ treatment).

Eliminate The key goal here is the elimination of waste. Water can be re-used rather than wasted.

Reverse the flow of waste water from Central - Washing Machine - Central to Central - Washing Machine/Drier - Home Tank - Washing Machine/Drier - Home Tank etc.

Rearrange Household water usage flows. Centralise water usage across Washing Machine and Drier (and possibly sink, toilet and shower).

FInding a place in the new world

As an international development practitioner, I was interested to take this unit for these three primary reasons. 

1. The World- The Big Picture

Since the end of World War II in 1945, the world has tried to devise ways to decrease the gap between the richest and poorest people in the world. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that getting the rich to sacrifice things so that the poor may have a better standard of life was a difficult proposition. The reasons for this seem to be twofold. Firstly, there are some people who just do not care enough about the 'invisible poor' on the other side of the world. What is important to them is what they see right in front of them, in their suburb, city, state or country. Asking these people to dig into their own pockets to assist people that they have never met is unlikely to be successful. Secondly, even those people who do care enough to contribute financially to the plight of the poor do not know how to do so effectively. This concept applies equally to private citizens and private companies. 

Consequently, the terminology most used today in relation to improving the welfare of the poorest people in the world relates to "lifting the poor out of poverty." This implies that the rich are not willing to sacrifice much themselves in terms of changing their own lifestyles to be more sustainable, but rather they would like to lift the poor up so that they are a level closer to their own.

If we look at economics, historically one of the key factors in countries achieving economic growth has been the introduction of technology. What economists call technology, others may call innovation. This does not refer simply to machinery or capital stock, but rather the new ideas and processes that can be used in order to improve a countries revenue.

One of the ways to look at innovation is to think of ways in which to generate more output from the same number of inputs into something- or how to "do more with less." This is critical for the developing world where inputs are limited and many people find themselves in a poverty trap as a result.

It is clear then that innovation is vitally important to the world at large if we wish to see people lifted out of poverty.

If we look at infrastructure as an example, it is estimated that in order to fulfil the worlds infrastructure requirements by the year 2050, a significant percentage of the funding will need to come from the private sector. Though traditionally, infrastructure financing has come exclusively from the public sector. One of the hot topics at the moment in the international development community is how to develop new mechanisms for funding infrastructure which include the private sector. This has led to a whole new discipline called Public Private Partnerships, which looks at innovative finance models for infrastructure.

2. My Profession - Career Growth

As the readings for week 1 demonstrate, more and more jobs are being automated. Capacity Building is one of the key skills for an International Development Practitioner such as myself (for now at least). Traditionally, capacity building was achieved through classroom teaching. People today still devote their lives to teaching people how to do their jobs better to enable better public services to be delivered. Though through the use of new technology, the face to face capacity building models of old are being phased out through interactive online training courses, and what is now known as the "master trainer" model. Even in the developing world (in fact, at times especially in the developing world), innovation is becoming par for the course in how we implement international development programs.

So it is becoming increasingly clear, that in my profession, which is linked closely to my first point above, innovation is critical for me to demonstrate excellence in my field. An understanding of what leads to innovation, and how creativity and innovation can be encouraged, will be crucial for me to further my career.

3. My Technical Skills - A Ray of Hope

The week 1 readings were heartening for me. I have always considered myself to be an executer. I hope one day to start a business which can assist people in the developing world to achieve greater standards of living, while still being sustainable. I have always struggled, however, to come up with new ideas which could be implemented to create efficiencies or to disrupt the common practices that we see in the developing world. Until I read the readings for this week, I thought that innovation was simply not for me. Though even now, in day 1 of the unit, I am seeing that I could still add value in the innovative process, through my skills in execution. I have always been good at taking new ideas and putting them into action. 

Perhaps through this unit I will also learn to foster the creative side of my brain to actually be the one to come up with new ideas, rather than just implement them.

I am excited!