Q&A: Director of Vodafone Americas Foundation on the role of passion in addressing development needs

CANBERRA — In her 10 years as director of the Vodafone Americas Foundation, June Sugiyama has inadvertently become an expert in developing challenges. Since 2009, the foundation has been running the Wireless Innovation Challenge, which seeks innovative ideas using wireless-related technology to address social issues around the world. This year marked the ninth challenge, which awarded a total of $600,000 to projects addressing infectious diseases, animal poaching and mobile financial services. Years of leading the challenge have helped Sugiyama to refine ideas of what works in creating disruption to address social and other issues affecting developing countries. In a conversation with Devex, she explained that technology alone is not the key. Here is the interview, edited for length and clarity. The Wireless Innovation Challenge is quite remarkable in the diversity of ideas from winners. Are you surprised by the types of ideas you receive? I am surprised, but the great thing is that we get a diverse range of applicants each year. Everyone is quite creative, but this year we had a diverse set of applicants who also delivered strong ideas. And this is why they became winners. We find that there are people with all kinds of ideas, and really interesting ideas. But they are not always established enough, not collaborative or across disciplines. This year it turned out that the three diverse winners were really together and at a stage ready to scale. I think we are going to see this more often. What is the impact on development you are looking for in the judging criteria? We provide the freedom for the applicants to establish the impact themselves. But we do ask that it be in certain areas: health, education, economic development, accessibility and support of women and girls. We’ve also done a study on the actual impact of our 27 challenge winners that we have had so far. And they are touching about 40 million lives already, a figure that is continuing to grow. We select projects that are at a certain phase — middle to late stage, in prototype or testing or at the first phase of launch. It is not a conceptual stage and it is not pure marketing. It’s the middle where the money we can provide will propel it to go even further. What advice do you have for potential challenge entrants of past entries that have been unsuccessful? How can they give themselves the best opportunity for success? I believe that our competition is quite unique in that we do pay attention to the technology, and ensure the technology works, but we also need to ensure that the problem or issue is viable. We have a lot of critical problems all around the world, and I don’t think there is a problem in looking for issues to solve through technology. Our application is set in a particular way to be able to understand the level of passion and understanding that each of the applicants have of the issue and also the passion for the people they are trying to help. This challenge started out because of our frustration with research and development. At the time, solutions were built without including the people they were trying to help. And solutions were not developed cross-collaboratively. It could have been a health solutions that didn’t include a doctor or a nurse, for example. A solution that involved cross-collaboration, is cross-disciplinary and inclusive is really important. But the most important part of our applications is that they really do, deeply, understand the problem they are trying to solve. Secondly, they must show a passion for the people dealing with these problems on a daily basis. A lot of the people who research solutions are tackling the issue through the philosophy of “build it and they will come,” as opposed to really involving people and then building a design-centered solution. Those are the hints I would provide to the applicants. The people who spent too much time detailing their algorithm or technical blueprints and not describing the true problem, how that can be changed, and how it includes people that are suffering from these issues are not going to make it. Over the nine challenges you have held since 2009, have you refined what you are looking for or expecting from entries — especially in regard to their impact on developing countries? We find the people who have the deep character and passion for the problem are the ones that do the best. --— It is not quite scientific in terms of what we have learned. Once we choose a finalist, they are able to come here in person so we can look them in the eye, they can look us in the eye, and we can detect their passion. We find the people who have the deep character and passion for the problem are the ones that do the best. We have about three repeat judges with other judges we rotate. The judges range from journalists to doctors to industry professions and NGO and not-for-profit leaders. The repeat judges can look deep inside the individuals. And this is a capability that has been built and refined in all of us to award and support the best ideas. As far as how the contest runs, we have taken a survey with winners from each year and they have been giving us a lot of feedback and enabling us to improve the contest accordingly. As you mentioned, the entries have been diverse, developing some remarkable use of wireless technology. What have been some of your personal favorites over the years? I have several. The one that has been most successful is an early winner, Shivani Siroya, whose product was InSight, a financial education technology. She has since changed the name of her company to Tala, has done a number if TED talks, and provides financial technology to teach poor people how to save and connect to banks. Her philosophy is poor people are not poor because they don’t have money; some of them have two or three jobs. But it is because they don’t have access to banking, might be illiterate and just need to be introduced to that technology and skills. She has gone from education software to microlending and has connected people to banks and companies, connected low-income wage earners to savings programs through the companies they work with, and now has gone into credit establishment. Another individual, Nithya Ramanathan, has been involved in vaccine monitoring with her product ColdTrace. In the very beginning her gadget was quite cumbersome and unreliable. Now it is streamlined and is being manufactured, and she has contracts with many NGOs doing vaccine distribution. I am very proud of her. And I am proud of the SMART Diaphragm, which can prevent preterm birth. The device detects hormonal changes because a woman’s body changes just prior to it giving birth. And through a connected smartphone, it alerts the mother, the doctor, the father and more. The project combined medical and ICT expertise and is currently going through the FDA approval process. Those are most favorite, but they are all favorites because they are combining passion with technology. And this is what is helping to make a difference on millions of lives in developing countries. Read more international development news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive the latest from the world’s leading donors and decision-makers — emailed to you free every business day.