Final presentations – finishing with a flourish | International Development Design Summit

For three weeks, nine multi disciplinary and multi cultural teams worked together on technologies and ventures that they believe can have a positive impact on communities in the developing world. The variety of ventures worked on at the conference was fascinating, with work being done to solve problems related to health, water, agriculture, energy and even one focused on bamboo construction! As the conference wore on, each team had to merge their P2P(Prototype to Product) and P2V(Project to Venture) tracks to focus on how they would move forward as a business. They were put through two testing Design Review’s before finally being prepared for their final Presentations on the 28^th of July.

Crossman opens the Final Presentations with his customary panache

The final presentations at this year’s IDDS marked a substantive shift from those of previous summits. Whereas in the past, the final presentations could legitimately be said to be looking back at the work that had been achieved over the previous month, this year the focus was very much on the future. Each team had been tasked with creating a business model for their technology, and listening to the team’s present their 6-9 month plans, I was struck with just how much IDDS has evolved over the past few years. It was thrilling to see that the projects worked on in Colorado will be continued forward post summit, and some may go on to become fully fledged long term social enterprises.

Daniel from Running Water International, presents

Part of this is attributable to the difference in focus this year, and the curriculum we have been following, but it is due too in large part to the founder system that was employed for this summit. Project’s were submitted by entrepreneurs, tinkerers and engineers but one key criteria was the founder’s willingness and ability to work on the project post summit.

Mitesh and Aron field questions on the SEED project

In line with this, many of the innovations which the teams spoke of at their presentations were in relation to their business models, rather than their technologies. With key funders and judges attending from Acumen Fund, the Lemelson Foundation and NCIIA, the teams were keen to show they had a solid business model in place to scale up production of their product and/or service.

Unfortunately, the video taken at the final event is still being processed, but we will be posting up video footage of the teams individual presentations, but in the meantime, here are their presentation slides and team photos…

SEED’s Final Presentation at IDDS