Reverse Innovation - a blessing for western nations during this Covid time ..

I have been teaching Reverse Innovation in my Operations Management classes as innovations that originate in the Eastern developing nations and which get popular and is accepted in the developed western nations as low cost effective innovations. The term Reverse Innovation has been popularised by mainly three people, Prof. Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Timble from Tuck School of Business and Jeffrey Immelt from General Electric.

While going through Covid infections and casualities, it is common knowledge how certain Asian and African countries have managed to successfully escape the Covid pandemic. Vietnam, a country of 95 million, has had zero deaths during the past seven months, while Italy, a county with just 60 million has had 35,000 Covid related deaths and a death per million population (DPMP) metric at 579 deaths. Belgium, a county with 11.5 million population in Europe has had 9800 deaths, topping  the DPMP metric for the world at 844 deaths. The DPMP metric in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, China including African countries like Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sierra  Leonne, Uganda etc has been in single digits, while in India it is in two digits. For the developed countries of Europe and US, the DPMP metric is in three digits.  

Why is it that these developed countries of the world have failed miserably while some of the less developed countries of the world have done exceedingly well ?

Another interesting metric worth understanding is R, the Effective Reproduction Number. R signifies the average number of people that one infected person will pass the virus to. <weforum.org> If R is two, one patient passes the virus to two people, these two to four new people, four to eight and so on. 

In China the R value initially was in the range of 2 - 6.6, but they have effectively controlled it now. The city of Mumbai has, over successful containment efforts of the past four months like lockdowns, been able to get an R value of 1.1, which is considered very good, compared to a rate of 1.67 in Bangalore.  The city of London has been able to bring R to between 0.6 - 0.9 while Germany has been able to bring it down to 0.7 by late April '20. (Click here for the WEF doc on R number)

The reason for low fatality and DPMP values in Asia and Africa, cited by doctors from around the world and experts from  United Nations and World Heath Organisation Health is that the people in these developing countries have got earlier experience handling such related epidemics like SARS, MERS, EBOLA, Nile fever and the like and hence could act fast to prevent a recurrence this time.  Is there some thing the world can study from these less developed countries of the East - yes, be alert .. 

The healthcare innovations of low cost prevention and early action that have been adopted by the eastern developing economies can be emulated by developed countries of the West to fight this Covid 19 virus. The Yangji hospital in South Korea for the first time in the world introduced plastic negative pressure booths with rubber gloves inserted through the walls allowing staff to take nasal samples without direct contact with the patients inside, and with an added benefit, without having to wear any Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Plastics pollution from used and rejected PPE is a great source of pollution the wold over, as a fallout of the Covid crisis. In St. Johns Hospital Bangalore, the healthcare professionals including doctors wear a PPE on three occasions of 6 hours each before discarding it for a new set. This is found to be an economically and hygienically safe and sound practice and at the same time, less taxing on the environment through plastics pollution. 

Learning from African countries, US has been able to improve their contact tracing operations. Contact tracing aims to prevent infection spread at the source itself before it spreads to other people. Employing contract workers, US government is now able to utilise the services of 1700 contract workers who make 8000-10,000 calls daily on  quarantine and treatment patients in US in an effort to arrest the spread at the source itself. This is a standard practice bring employed across the world now. 

What are the Covid Reverse Innovation lessons for the developing world ?

1. need for a global mindset to absorb great ideas from the less developed countries of the world

2. need for an open mind to accept innovations and developments that offer simple lasting solutions to tackle daily problems

3. need for people who move regularly between developed and developing and less developed countries are very valued in reverse innovation instances

4. Use national organisations like Community Training Collaborative or local self government officials (in India), to diffuse innovations to healthcare and other organisations across the country

5. Having a central repository with United Nations or WHO of global best practices to fight global pandemics like Covid or any other which are to come in future. 

The world needs to act unitedly and learn from each other to fight this pandemic of Covid 19 and eradicate it from the planet till a safe vaccine or drug is developed to counter it. So far we have relied on forward Innovation from the developed to developing world which is a total failure, now is the time to embark on Reverse Innovation from the developing to developed world.  

George..

With inputs from Ravi Ramamurthy in Using Reverse Innovation to fight Covid 19, HBR, June '20