Solomon Darwin

Even before it emerged as the "jewel in the crown'' of the British Empire, India held a unique position in the world. With its rich natural assets, cultural diversity, scientific leadership, and welcoming spirit, India created enormous wealth for other countries and companies around the globe. India has created much value to the world but failed to capture some of that value for itself to sustain, grow and continue to be a blessing to the nations of the world. Today, however, the country lags behind other economies. Can India regain its prominence as a hub of technology, manufacturing, and innovation? The answer outlined here is an emphatic "yes: 'This book lays out a business model for rebuilding India based on open innovation strategies and presents a roadmap for that rebirth and transformation. The first step is to build and strengthen trust among four key stakeholder groups: industry, government, academia, and customers. As a technique to build that trust, the book encourages these groups to engage in more robust dialogue and ask each other crucial questions about key topics such as speed, creativity, adaptability, creating business ecosystems, and effective diversification. The resulting conversations and heightened levels of trust will lead to new scalable and sustainable business models that can reverse the trajectory.

The COVID-19 crisis is a game-changer that will eventually benefit rural economies around the world. Around 3.4 billion people are living in rural areas lacking access to resources, tools, knowledge, and markets to find their way to prosperity. The exodus of millions of migrant workers from cities and back to their villages in India demonstrated that digital infrastructure that connects rural populations to the rest of the world is critical. Governments are missing resources to singlehandedly provide all the needed solutions for given challenges. How to Create Smart Villages shows how large corporations and startups can take upon the responsibility in solving villagers' needs while tapping into exciting growth markets. To get valuable results from innovation, businesses, governments, academics, and civil society must be reconciled while opening up their relevant resources, knowledge, and expertise. Solomon Darwin, Professor and Executive Director at the Haas School of Business, also known as the father of the Smart Village Movement, inspired the start of the Smart Villages Movement at UC Berkeley in 2016. This movement created a platform for innovators from private and public sectors to empower the underserved communities in rural India and beyond. Alongside Henry Chesbrough, Adjunct Professor and Faculty Director at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, and father of the Open Innovation paradigm, both define Smart Villages as "a community empowered by digital tools and Open Innovation platforms to access global markets". To the present, the Smart Village idea is being executed in three Indian states in close collaboration with the Indian government alongside companies such as Google, Ericsson, Intel, TATA group, TechMahindra, Dell, VMWare, Nvidia, Reliance, IBM, Airtel, Wipro, AWS, Intel, Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, ThyssenKrupp, Siemens, Enel Energy, SAP, Xerox, Oracle, and Salesforce. Solomon Darwin and Werner Fischer, an expert in sustainable development and a more recent scholar of Open Innovation at UC Berkeley, bring to this book their on-ground research and use cases from Indian villages. Alongside Henry Chesbrough, author of several management books and recognized as one of the top 50 business and technology leaders by Scientific American, they offer a thought-provoking process to unlock innovation in rural emerging markets. This book provides rare, unique insights from business-driven innovation in a demanding territory like rural India through powerful Open Innovation ecosystems to accelerate economic and social impact. It captures all the successes, learnings, and failures since 2016 to be finally shared with the world for contributing towards more effective sustainable development. Village communities are the source of food production and hence the source of life for human lives around the world. Join the Smart Village Movement to light up the dark world when providing a new, exciting way towards villagers' prosperity.

The COVID-19 crisis is a game-changer that will eventually benefit rural economies around the world. Around 3.4 billion people are living in rural areas lacking access to resources, tools, knowledge, and markets to find their way to prosperity. The exodus of millions of migrant workers from cities and back to their villages in India demonstrated that digital infrastructure that connects rural populations to the rest of the world is critical. Governments are missing resources to singlehandedly provide all the needed solutions for given challenges. How to Create Smart Villages shows how large corporations and startups can take upon the responsibility in solving villagers' needs while tapping into exciting growth markets. To get valuable results from innovation, businesses, governments, academics, and civil society must be reconciled while opening up their relevant resources, knowledge, and expertise. Solomon Darwin, Professor and Executive Director at the Haas School of Business, also known as the father of the Smart Village Movement, inspired the start of the Smart Villages Movement at UC Berkeley in 2016. This movement created a platform for innovators from private and public sectors to empower the underserved communities in rural India and beyond. Alongside Henry Chesbrough, Adjunct Professor and Faculty Director at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, and father of the Open Innovation paradigm, both define Smart Villages as "a community empowered by digital tools and Open Innovation platforms to access global markets". To the present, the Smart Village idea is being executed in three Indian states in close collaboration with the Indian government alongside companies such as Google, Ericsson, Intel, TATA group, TechMahindra, Dell, VMWare, Nvidia, Reliance, IBM, Airtel, Wipro, AWS, Intel, Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, ThyssenKrupp, Siemens, Enel Energy, SAP, Xerox, Oracle, and Salesforce. Solomon Darwin and Werner Fischer, an expert in sustainable development and a more recent scholar of Open Innovation at UC Berkeley, bring to this book their on-ground research and use cases from Indian villages. Alongside Henry Chesbrough, author of several management books and recognized as one of the top 50 business and technology leaders by Scientific American, they offer a thought-provoking process to unlock innovation in rural emerging markets. This book provides rare, unique insights from business-driven innovation in a demanding territory like rural India through powerful Open Innovation ecosystems to accelerate economic and social impact. It captures all the successes, learnings, and failures since 2016 to be finally shared with the world for contributing towards more effective sustainable development. Village communities are the source of food production and hence the source of life for human lives around the world. Join the Smart Village Movement to light up the dark world when providing a new, exciting way towards villagers' prosperity.

"A must-read wake-up call." - Ed Catmull, former President of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios "One of the oldest and most trusted tools for managing an enterprise - the balance sheet - is finally applied to one of the biggest and most daunting challenges we face - creating a more sustainable planet. It's a simple concept, with world-changing potential." - Conrad Hewitt, former Chief Accountant of the United States, SECPicture this, you are the new CEO of a multinational company. Unfortunately, due to poor previous management, the value of your assets is declining and you need to find a way to restore the balance sheet of your company. But there is a twist - Your company is the Earth What are you going to do to turn the tables around and save it? How to think like the CEO of the Planet: Restoring the declining balance sheet of the Earth, a book by Professor Solomon Darwin, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, takes a unique approach to the much-debated topic of depletion of natural resources. By providing a personality to the assets of the Earth such as the air, oceans and forests, this book allows them to voice their feelings and the hardships they have endured. This isn't a cry for help but a wake-up call to instill hope rather than regret in its readers. How to think like the CEO of the Planet evaluates the condition of the Earth's assets to form a Balance sheet and presents choices that can be made to ensure sustainability. In addition, the use of uplifting real-world examples, such as the Smart Village Movement in India, stimulates the minds of the readers and helps them come up with creative solutions to restore the declining balance sheet of the Earth. "We're only a few months into this world-changing experience of the COVID-19 pandemic], and it's far from clear what the world will be like as we emerge into a new normal". It is our duty to make sustainability the new normal. "Because everybody on the planet - not just you - needs to act as if they were Earth's CEO." - Professor Solomon Darwin. Please visit our website: thebalancesheetoftheearth.org to learn more about the balance sheet of the Earth and submit your innovative ideas. To learn more about the Smart Village Movement in India, see also the book, How to Create Smart Villages, by Solomon Darwin, Werner Fischer, and Henry Chesbrough. Follow us on social media to stay up-to-date with our latest projects: Instagram: @earthsceo (instagram.com/earthsceo)Facebook: Earth's CEO (facebook.com/Earths-CEO-109866977467087/)

It only takes one great idea to change the lives of 3.4 billion people. That idea is the Smart Village. For people in many parts of the world, removing the barriers holding back their potential doesn't require massive investment in infrastructure; it often requires little more than spreading knowledge and information. When you design innovations the right way, they fuel scalable and sustainable transformation for the economy and environment. People's lives are dramatically changed for the better and forever. The rural villages become Smart Villages in the Smart Village Movement. These villages can very quickly become new realities that unlock undreamed of possibilities for the more than 3.4 billion people around the world. The Road to Mori is the beginning of this journey. Mori, India is the village in South India where Solomon Darwin was born an untouchable. The book follows Solomon as he comes to America and, with drive, perseverance and persistence, moves from his more than humble beginnings to success. First in the corporate world, and then academia as the Executive director of the Haas School of Innovation UC Berkeley. The book is a record of his thoughts about what the idea of a Smart Village, and how it could become a reality. The story chronicles his return to Mori, India -- where he was born an untouchable -- to transform it from a struggling rural community to the first Smart Village in the world. A village where the villager's lives and happiness have been dramatically improved in ways that were previously unimaginable. A village that has become a beacon of hope for struggling rural villages and the 3.4 billion people all over the world.