The conversation explores the need to equip an army of climate entrepreneurs in the global south to address climate change.
Guest: Dr Sebastian Groh, Managing Director at SOLshare and Professor at BRAC Business School
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-groh-solshare/
On Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/sebastian.groh.14
On YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@solshare
Hosts:
Alejandro Juárez Crawford
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford
Miriam Plavin-Masterman
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
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Episode Introduction
We discuss the limitations of relying on a few major players to solve the problem and emphasizes the importance of empowering local innovators who understand the challenges firsthand. The conversation also highlights the need to redirect investments towards climate solutions and away from companies that contribute to emissions. It suggests creating a platform or portfolio of climate entrepreneurs in the global south to provide funding and support for their initiatives. Collaboration among these entrepreneurs is seen as crucial for accelerating progress. The conversation explores the need to empower regular people to become entrepreneurs and create solutions to local problems. It highlights the importance of developing a mindset that believes in the ability to make a difference.
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Resources
How SOLshare’s Sebastian Groh Wants to Create a Wave of Climate Startups: https://www.wired.com/sponsored/story/how-solshares-sebastian-groh-wants-to-create-a-wave-of-climate-startups/
To solve the climate crisis, go global – and bottom up: https://www.climateandcapitalmedia.com/to-solve-the-climate-crisis-go-global-and-bottom-up/
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Episode Sponsors
Are you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?
👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/sponsor-the-itspmagazine-podcast-network
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For more podcast stories from What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman, visit: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford and https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
A Hundred Thousand Small Experiments | A Conversation with Dr Sebastian Groh | What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:00)
There are all these skills we learn in order to be adaptive in our lives. Some of them have to do with social situations, some have to do with career situations, economic situations. But I'm really fascinated today with the skills we learn because we wanted to get our parents to do something, to let us do something. And specifically, what is it that each of you learned, I wonder, as I'm just thinking aloud here, to get your parents to let you stay up late?
I can tell you my one big trick. I only had one trick. But I'm curious. Did you ever have to bargain with them or you could stay up as late as you wanted? What was it like for the two of you?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (00:38)
Sebastian wanted to go first as our guest.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:40)
All right. All right. So I think it definitely has to do with some sneaky way of tricking them. I mean, it's basically playing on time, right? The clock works for you. The longer you reset the clocks in your family's home, you could try that skilled clockmaker at this point. They're running a minute takes 90 seconds. I wonder what your deal was with time.
This podcast, you know, we got to be on actual time. Yeah. Yeah. No, but distraction, right? I mean, I think obviously the parents figure that out sooner or later, but the later it is, the higher your success. Mm hmm. Yeah. Nothing fancy, but I know that Mim has something really fancy.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (01:27)
I mean, I don't know if I love the phrase, it's sneaky, but you're probably right. My parents had this rule, I have a younger sister and we did not always get along. And the rule was if we were doing an activity together or playing a game and we were getting along, we could stay up late. So we figured out how to extend the already really long game of Monopoly, which I mean, that game takes hours to play anyway, but we figured out how to extend it by playing cooperatively. So we would...
make each other go land on go to get more money to stay in the game, we would say.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (02:01)
What would you normally do? So normally in Monopoly, in case there's any listener that has ever played this game, what do you do in order to beat your sister if you're not trying to stay up together?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (02:04)
No, I mean, so normally, if I was trying to beat my sister, I would try to drive her into bankruptcy and take all of her properties that she had acquired and force her to end the game.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (02:16)
which is kind of the point of life in general with anyone else you're working with. Yeah, go ahead.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (02:20)
I mean, for some people, sure. So in this game, right, so in this game, we would kind of make up rules that would enable us to play it longer. Like we would, nobody would get the monopoly on the two most valuable properties. Each of us would have one. We would trade properties to make sure we had the same number or value of monopolies. If my sister said, I don't have any money, I would say I'll waive the rent. Like, versus you're supposed to collect the rent and take all their money.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (02:23)
Yeah, it seems to be the trend in America, but go ahead.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (02:46)
So, you know, is it distracting? Sure. I mean, I'd like to think my parents were onto it, but they were just happy we were getting along. So, like, they let us stay and learn to collaborate. Right, right.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (02:53)
And learn to collaborate.
They were willing to let you lose your competitive edge against each other so that at least you weren't in a knockdown drag out fight. And then they, no one was thinking about, per your point about distraction, that you were staying up as late as you wanted, right? Yeah. For me, there was one trick, which was that if I asked my mother incredibly hard philosophical questions, then we could talk for hours. And you know, still, this is just like when I want things to go on, we just - At what age did that start?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (03:07)
Right, pretty much.
Yeah, right, exactly. Exactly.
What age did that start?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (03:29)
I mind -melded the philosophical questions to my mother. It's funny, I do wonder the extent to which it's these things that we never talk about, economists don't study them to my knowledge, that actually make us who we are. And speaking of who we are, I'm particularly happy today to have Dr. Sebastian Groh.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (03:34)
There we go.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (03:59)
I call him Basti, but his students call him Dr. Sebastian. I try to get them to stop, but it's really hard with us today, who is one of my favorite people. I have him here. We have new technology. It looks like we're right next to each other. Pretty cool, right? And Sebastian is the founder, co -founder, and managing director of a really incredible firm called Solshare, which has led the way globally.
Not just building on Bangladesh's world -leading peer -to -peer solar network, but also now with vehicle -to -grid solutions. Really conceiving what an energy future could look like if we asked what if instead and did it. And so Sebastian is not only the leader in that, but he also is a professor at Bracu. And I've had the opportunity to collaborate really closely with him through that work. And what amazes me about you,
not to embarrass you here, is that you didn't just say, hey, I am leading the way, winning the major global prizes for an energy transformation, which I know is central to what you're doing. You're also asking this question, wait a minute, is my work enough or do I need to launch tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of others? So what I was hoping in a moment we could get into is that second point along with the first. But before I do,
I want to make sure to reintroduce my redoubtable co -host, Miriam Plavin -Masterman, listeners you already know, Mim, and mention what we're all about here on What If Instead. If you ever have looked around you and thought, this is just backwards, what if instead it worked this other way? Well, in this podcast, we explore what it takes for people to reimagine the world around them.
what stands in their way. I'm Alejandro Juarez Crawford, and we're on a mission to make experiments of your own feel as normal as watching videos on your phone. Welcome to What If Instead, the podcast. Thank you. Let me digest that intro first. It's all gonna get cut probably, too much of me. But what I wanted to zero in on right now, Sebastian, is you gave a speech at the
festivities before COP28. I don't know if it was festive or not. Maybe it's one of these end -of -the -world parties. But you gave a speech in which you said that we needed to do things in a vastly different way. And I believe your words were we needed to equip an army of climate entrepreneurs in the global south. And what I was hoping we could focus on here, today what it said is, what does that mean? And could we actually do that? And if so, how?
I think let's start with the question, what do we want to see? Do we want to see a Google like giant solving climate change? And before everyone says, yes, think this through What that means and what's the likelihood that this comes about in time in time means we have this very quickly closing window until the end of this.
decade, probably not even if we trust the latest projections, it's probably within the next three, four years that things become irreversibly damaged. And irreversibly means irreversible. We cannot undo that. So that's a sunk cost in the worst, worst sense. So.
If we believe that there is these... We leave every hope we have left in the hands of a few people, that's more like a Hollywood scenario, and then, you know, the miracle happens and then the world is rescued, which usually happens in the Hollywood movies, but this is reality. And I would have a very hard time in just being a passive observer and hoping that this climate change Google comes up.
if we observe what is happening right now in terms of where the money goes, who receives the investment, it's exactly this what the world is betting on right now. And I think this is very, very risky. So we're betting on the superhero, the Hollywood hero coming in and saving all of us at the last minute. And we're hoping that that superhero understands a problem.
to an extent necessary to come up with this magical fix, which magically also then works for the whole world. And despite being actually very far away from that problem. Please. So the superheroes, the ones we're betting on are the people who are most insulated from the enemy at the gates.
Exactly. And when we think about climate change, we also need to stop thinking that it is just this mitigation problem. Yes, that's it, right? But we also already have massive impacts we have to deal with. So it's not only climate change mitigation. The other side of the coin is adaptation, which essentially hits the countries which are most vulnerable and they tend to be.
poorer countries and island nations. Now, paint for us for a second. And, Mem, I know I asked three questions in a row here, and you probably have a very good one right ready to rock here. But just paint for us for a second what those impacts look like. What does the world look like for someone who's already suffering some of the effects of climate change? What does it look like if we don't hit that?
goal in the next five years, five to six years that you described or less. And then what does it look like for someone who's insulated from climate change? Let me actually not talk about in five years because then we always think, oh, there's still time. Let me tell you what's happening right now, today, and not an example, oh yeah, there is flooding and there is this. Let me give you a very different example. We have recently found proof that in the south of Bangladesh,
there is a very high likelihood for women not to be able to have children. And this reason was derived with a very high significance, a very high likelihood that it is 100 % correlated due to the impact of climate change in this region to the salination of the soil there and the food they eat from there. Very strong evidence. Now...
We always talk about this loss and damage fund. So, okay, so someone suffers a loss. Usually we think, okay, there's a, someone dies or whatnot. And then we need to assign somehow, okay, whose fault is it? And that can all be done by now, right? We know human induced climate change, who emits how much, so what's the percentage of each country's fault? So now you would need to quantify in dollar terms that this woman for goes to chance to have children.
Instead of this woman, let's say there's a hundred thousand women. Bangladesh is a country of 170 million people, right? What's the dollar value of that and how should they be compensated for that? Because they didn't do anything, but they faced the brunt of the challenge. I'm just giving this extreme example because we always hear the hurricanes and whatnot, but this is something which is very severe and we have no answer and nobody wants to answer to that because it's very uncomplicated.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (12:02)
So this is fascinating. And actually, one of the recent guests we had earlier talked a lot about this in her book, Conceivable Future, about these issues about even having children or whether to have children or if you can have children. So that's just one observation I want to make. I like these little through lines and connections with other guests. But I wanted to follow up on something you said about people who are insulated. And I guess I was hoping you could define it. Do you mean geographically insulated? Do you mean economically insulated?
What are we talking about here? And I think that would help me situate kind of how far away are the heroes we're trying to go to, to help save us.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (12:41)
Let me again just go with a very concrete example instead of trying to explain it on broader terms. When we created the idea for Solshare, we tried to develop the first product on Stanford campus. And my professor there was of Indian origin and we were designing the product and he went like, oh yeah, and then at 3 a .m., you know.
we have the washing machine running that will be nice for the energy usage pattern. And I looked at him for a couple of seconds and he was like, when was the last time you were in an Indian village? There is no washing machine. And long story short, we didn't get it done. And I tried more. I tried than in Berlin, where I was a PhD student in a graduate school. The only time when we managed...
get the first prototype out, which actually worked was when we had hired engineers who came from villages in Bangladesh who didn't have electricity, who really understood the problem. And though that's the point I'm trying to, I'm not saying they're insulated in thinking or what, it's just if you're exposed to something every day, day in and day out, then you have a good understanding what this problem is. And probably whether you want it or not.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (13:47)
Hmm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (14:05)
you have spent time on trying to fix it. And if these people are empowered, I think then we get the real good fixes. And these are not necessarily only just simple, tiny local fixes. I think we try to prove that at Solja that it can have much more ripple effects and much more application potential where, and that's the important part, that there can be a learning process from the global south to the global north.
which many people also don't want to get in their head because they are still stuck in this, oh, these are the poor people. Oh, yeah. And they have climate change. Yeah. OK, let's send them some money, which then is usually spent on consultants which come from that country who sends the money. And I mean, we all know how that story goes. And it's pathetic. Right. So this needs to be thought completely differently. The people who are closest to the problems come up with the best solutions and those should be empowered. And this is where the money should go.
not the other way around. And that's this big difference of one big climate change, Google, and Google is just a placeholder, obviously. Wouldn't it be much better if we had a hundred thousand small experiments and hatch our bets around those with those who really understand the problem and see which of those experiments scale really big, ideally, but even if they don't, they will fix real problems in their local soil, in their communities. So even if things go not well in a VC term that is not...
800 X or whatnot. It's not this unicorn thing. You still have all these positive impacts. You can't really lose with this approach. I want to ask you, because when you describe it that way, it makes sense when you say, wait a minute, this guy at Stanford was worried about the washing machine that didn't exist in the village. But when we worked with the people who understood the problems, they were able to derive solutions. When you say that, I wonder if...
Anyone doesn't say, hey, wait a minute. I've been in a situation where the person who understood the facts on the ground came up with the best solution. It's common sense. And yet, the way our resources are currently allocated is so far from that. You sit in discussions with investors and VCs and government officials and NGOs. It appears to me that the ways of thinking
It's not even just a lack of good intentions. It's an incapacity to imagine seeding those experiments. And so what would it take to build a bridge from here to there with very little time? If there were three, four, five things we could do to make it possible for that person close to the problem to derive a solution, find their collaborators, prove something out and...
actually garner resources, real resources, what would we do? And is it that we need to tell a new story to the existing resource providers or bring new resources online? I think both. I mean, for starters, I can only fix a problem if I'm aware of it, normally. Yes. So we all have this bias that, I mean, we think that this process of raising money is fair, right? I mean, we know it's not.
And it often ends up despite good intentions, oh yeah, that's true that those who understand the problem solve the problem. Yeah. That gives you, that gives you a small edge. But at the end of the day, the investor would invest in someone he or she identifies with. Feels. So now the catch 22 years, where's the money? The money is in the global North or let's say in the U S being since we're here right now. So the money goes to U S companies.
will stop. And even if it doesn't, it goes to company or to people who probably have studied there. Like in my case, I have a big advantage over other other founders, and I'm very much conscious and aware of that. And and that's problematic. So we have to break that. And that, I mean, the problem is, you said we have a very short time, I would say, yeah, so we need to talk about it like now and we need to get it out there. We need to get in everybody's head. But that's a very long winded route. Right. So we probably can't afford.
that much. We should do it, right? But we can't bank on that only. The other thing is maybe we have to look in other places. What you said. And here, I think we had the discussion once, is that we often think, and since you mentioned the conference of parties, the COP, I usually hear people say, oh, how many private jets landed there and how much CO2 is that? That's not the point. The point is that the resources that are there in terms of
dollars, the money, the wealth we all have. What do we do with that? It's not so much how many times we go for holidays or whether we eat meat or not. Yeah, we can all work on that. But the majority of the emissions we cause is what our money is doing. Where do we invest it? Which ETF is it? And which companies is this going? And especially, I think the statistic was the richest 10%, 80 % of the emissions they cause.
is how they invest their money. And I think that's an angle if that everybody gets in his head, okay, look, I have to put my money to good use because otherwise I can't do anything with it anyway, because we are all losing out. So this is the case that for the wealthiest, the lion's share of carbon is investing activities. Sorry, when I say the wealthiest 10%, right? We usually...
Automatically think we are not part of that But you have to look at the world population and how wealth is distributed Yes, many of us listening to this are part of this you should check carefully the wealthiest It's not only the Bill Gates's right. It's much much a wider cost net, right? So Saying observing that we have very little time and we need to begin now What would the call to action be? for listeners
to this conversation? Do they check where their investments are going? Do they get involved in social enterprise? Do they need to get more exposure to different kinds of innovators? MIM has done a lot of studying about what enables innovations to happen when an innovator works with the people in their surroundings. How do we need to change, let's say I'm your culprit, what do I do?
I think, I mean, that's what I did. I looked at the money I saved and I had a few ETFs and I was like, ETF has an exchange rate of fund, which is basically an index. I was like, hey, no, no, no, no. I know that company is up to no good, right? I have to divest from there. And we see these movements, the university endowment funds and whatnot. I think these are good things, because this is a key. I think for too long, we were...
Mim Plavin-Masterman (21:04)
Hmm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (21:16)
we were played for fools. We were told if you fly less, we'll solve the world. Yes, we do. But I think we should focus our energy on the much, much bigger pieces. And that's how, where does the money go? And that's really important. So that's one simple thing. The question is, can we also...
build a vehicle where people could fund. So somehow we need to get the money to the right people. That's the problem. So how do we invest into this army of entrepreneurs working on climate in the global South? They are not listed on a stock exchange. So usually they don't get anything. And if it's often development money, which has different complexities and strings attached, you...
often don't see, or we have this whole movement of social impact investment. And then they would just ask, okay, social impact investment. So who does them, who gets the money? Is the money actually going to companies really deeply rooted in their communities? Or is it just some, some guy was sitting in his, in his New York loft and thinking he could do something great in some.
Sub -Saharan African state. So I think that's, that's, yeah, it's a tough question, but what do you think? Yeah.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (22:45)
I mean, as I'm hearing you talk about this, there's that micro grant site called Kiva. Have you heard of it? So it sort of sounds like you're saying Kiva, but on a much larger scale and almost like portfolios of.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (22:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
We need a Black Rock Kiva.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (23:03)
Yeah, right. And the portfolio of climate potentialities or whatever you call it. Here are 10 entrepreneurs and you bundle them all together and you invest in the portfolio. And some of it works and some of it doesn't so that we hedge or something like that. That's kind of what I'm hearing you say. Is it I'm close -ish?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (23:20)
That's right, that's right. But I mean, money doesn't solve everything, even though probably the last 10 minutes of my talking sounded a bit like that. So when I say empower those entrepreneurs working on climate in the global South, it's obviously more than money, right? But that's often a key ingredient. But I think often these people who are exposed to most of those problems, they also...
They need to be given the opportunity. And it's not just if you write them a check. Right. So, and we also don't need to reinvent the wheel all the time, right? Yes, it needs to be not one size fits all. It needs to be very customized. But wouldn't it be amazing if we had these thousands, 10 ,000 and then eventually 100 ,000 of these experiments and that these experiments who run them can collaborate and work with each other. I think that is another key.
Because we don't have time that we in every village of the world run into the same problem and then have to find a fix. Probably we can shorten that development cycle significantly if we have collaboration there, like you in Monopoly. Much more successful. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (24:34)
It was very successful, small scale, but very similar. It worked in our local setting with my parents' rules. It worked great. So, yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (24:46)
Let's zero in for a second, not on how you got to stay up late by playing Monopoly collaboratively, but on shortening that development cycle. And Sebastian, there was a comment you made in passing that most of the folks close to problems aren't even listed on an exchange. And maybe we can take that even further and to say that the folks who could build tomorrow's world, a world worth living in,
aren't even necessarily in the game of building that world much of the time. I've had conversations with you about the need to actually develop and give rise to this army of entrepreneurs. It's not like they're sitting there with no boots, right? We need to enable regular people to take that role and then bring collaborators, resources, knowledge to them. So I want to put you on the spot in an interesting way right now, to me at least, which is why I'm doing this, for my own interest.
which is to say, first of all, can you talk to us about some of your work at Bracu trying to develop real entrepreneurs, some of your work globally doing the same with partners around the world, and I know you're thinking about creating new efforts right now, and if you are comfortable, I'd love to hear some of your ideas on the kind of organization and platform that could build this army for real.
Yeah, I think the worst thing that can happen to us if we see the problems, see the challenges and then get paralyzed and feel powerless and passive. So I think the biggest aha moments in what we're doing at BRAC U, we are a part of this bigger network which tries to...
identify problems for the students in their community and then over the course of a semester to systematically develop a model to address those problems, to come up with a solution and ideally to come out of the course and found a company. So for someone who's never been exposed to that, what does that mean? I'm sitting in DACA or outside of DACA and how do I systematically
develop a solution. Break that down maybe with an example or two. Sure. So there was this bunch of students last semester and Bangladesh is a huge manufacturing hub for textiles, including leather. And they looked at that and they saw these, these
these raw hides of leather, macronuts, and then the bleaching of this, and then all this goes into the river, and then in Dhaka we eat the fish from that river. It's all very much interconnected. And so I said, look.
could we come up with an alternative? And these students, and I think this is part of the strengths of this program, they came from different backgrounds. One was a chemical engineer, one was a biologist, one was a lawyer, one was a business student. And they came up with a way to... And that was during the course, that we have all these fruits here and these fruit peels and they experimented with it.
and they managed to create a type of natural leather based on a specific fruit peel, which is a fruit which only exists in Bangladesh. And I know in the course nobody believed that this could actually work. And then one day in class they showed it, right? I mean, they showed it in the video because it was the global class, it was cohorts of students from all over the world. But...
I had them in a local and I saw it. So I called a friend who I knew that he is the managing director for a very famous lady handbag brand. So the type you find in these very luxurious stores at every international airport. And I showed him, look, why can't you use that leather? And he looked at it and said, send the students over to my factory. So he invited them and he said, look, in order for you to be a supplier, you need to fulfill that, that, that, that, yes. But he also said, you need to.
from a quality assurance distances and the students looked at them and said, we can do that. And they went back to the lab. This is all already post the semester. So the grade was already given. And just a week ago, H &M Foundation gave them another grant. They won a competition to further, because they need money in order to develop that prototype further. And...
They're on a good track and now they hired a lawyer to incorporate the company. And these are undergraduate students. I think this is incredible. So I think this is one of these stories. And if this product works, why wasn't it done by anyone else? Well, that fruit only exists in Bangladesh. Right? I mean, it's, it may not work, but if we do a hundred thousand of those, we get, we'll get it done. We'll get the problems fixed.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (29:53)
That's awesome. It is incredible. Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (30:17)
So you're telling me that a situation was created by you and your colleagues in which they were able to derive a solution that no one was otherwise going to think of. It was even worse, Alejandro. The day they were supposed to... So the way the course works is you identify that problem and that's often, you know, there's a lot of text until the real deal happens.
And over the course of semester, you develop a problem, a solution, a marketing plan, a financial plan, and so forth. How we go to market, how do you sell, and what's the price and whatnot. And then at the end of semester, you need to pitch in a competition, but only a subsection, like the best whatever, five, six projects pitch. And they were selected. And they called me and said, why did you select us? We don't think we actually have a good idea.
I think there must be a mistake. And I was like, hmm. And I told them, go for it. If 10 professors think your idea is good.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (31:12)
Hahaha.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (31:23)
maybe you just have imposter syndrome right now, your idea is actually good. Yeah, but I'm not sure this will become a comp... Relax. One step after the other. And they pitched at the competition and they won. And I think that everything which happened after winning the H &M, going to this factory, developing the product further, none of them would have happened because they didn't believe in themselves. They didn't believe that they were able to change something. And that's...
Mim Plavin-Masterman (31:38)
Wow.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (31:52)
I think closing the circle, what I said in the beginning, the biggest threat is that we all feel powerless. We can't change anything and passive. How can we get, as you say, everyday people, even so I think these are all small heroes. How can we turn them from this sentiment to hang on? I can do that. And that's just aha moment we're trying to create. And I think that is the big game, not the guys who are full of themselves that they become the next Google and they know everything.
I think I would rather put my bets on these guys. Hey Thomas, go ahead.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (32:22)
Great.
But it seems like there's a fragmentation though to find these hundred thousand people. Like you happen to have a cluster because you're at Brac -U, but the people who are in, I don't know, Borneo or who are in the Gambia or just these places, it just seems like there are people there who have these ideas, but there's no way to get them.
There's no clear path to get them the resources, the structure, the framework to do this.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (32:59)
Absolutely. And I think, I mean so far we have South Africa, Colombia, Palestine, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Bangladesh. We already have like 10, 15 countries, right? And the reason I'm here right now is we're trying to find a way, exactly to what you're saying, how can we democratize access to the aha moments?
in the fastest manner possible. And this for us right now is how can we do what we're doing, but at a much larger scale reaching much more. And that doesn't only need to be universities, right? That can be community groups, that can be corporates who also say, Oh yeah, I have a large footprint. What, what am I supposed to do? I don't know. Tell me. Right. So I think we, there is also a need to believe that
Most of us don't do these things on purpose. We have good numbers. We simply don't know how to change it. So how can we put the tools into all of our hands to make that change possible and to democratize this access? And as you said, we need a cohort from the Gambia and in all the other places. Is a world feasible where regular people, and I like your point, it's not like there's heroes and regular people, but where...
Peter Parker gets to try slinging webs, right? Is there a world where all over communities in every continent, on every continent, could have those tools in their hands? What would that world look like if we can just take a second and imagine it? I do believe so. And I think that the problem is that so many things today,
work by themselves, that we don't have the time nor the interest to look a little bit deeper and realize that, you know, everything we do and we use, that's a Steve Jobs quote, right? Is made by people no smarter than ourselves. And once we realize that, as the quote goes, yeah, and we can't know, then we realize we can change them. And I think this is the students or, or,
In that group, the Rheinkoh team, which I was referring to before with the Bioleather project, they realized very late into the semester, we worked for weeks already, huh, we can actually do that. And I think that's the crux. How can we get this aha moments to as many people as possible? Your line from before, I think there must be a mistake. It really made me think that...
Maybe the kinds of people with the willing to think differently enough, speaking of Steve Jobs, to do this often are the same kinds of people that might doubt their prerogative for doing so. I fear that we live in a world where the person who's always a man on the make with the latest Bitcoin solution that he's going to talk your ear off and you can't get him to stop.
is someone who's convinced that he's supposed to be doing these things, whereas all over the place there are folks who actually have something pretty freaking original, whether it works or not, right? Could be making those experiments and they're the ones saying, I think there must be a mistake here. So you're making me think that part of the game is to create that space where people can have the experience that this team has had. And so I want to go...
Back to the question, Mim, if you'll allow me, what would it take? What would a world look like in which all over the world, future Rindcos had that space, had that opportunity, had those tools in their hands, as you put it? Sebastiaan.
I think on a large scale we have to channel our focus and our resources to those people closest to the problem and have to empower them. The way we do it is through this teaching platform, through this co -learning experience, very project based. And we want to scale that up and I think this is a good pass. I think having not one Kiva but many, I would also reference...
the impact investment exchange, IAX, which is one of the investors in Solshare, who basically put those kind of people on an exchange. I said before they are not, right? But I actually had to correct myself in an afterthought. So there are initiatives who do that. Why shouldn't we have an, if we have a Dow Jones, why don't we have one on social impact and exchange, which puts those experiments,
on an exchange and could give all of us in investing in ETF on those experiments. Right. And as I said, if you think about it, they will all come up with solutions in their local community, which will definitely have very positive impacts. And I would argue giving that money directly to them is probably to better than the average development dollar, which is, which is paid where.
We know that only eight cents on average are actually reaching the final beneficiary. I'm not saying that these experiments companies should only get development money. I do think they should get commercial money as well. But for the sake of the argument, I think we really need to see how we can channel more, create platforms to make them visible. As you said, Mim, they are invisible, right? How do I do that? So we need to focus our efforts on
putting them onto platforms and channel the resources to them and make them learn from each other. I think that's also very important. They won't learn much from this Stanford professors. They learn more from a similar experiment done in the neighboring country. And that's happening? That learning from other countries that's feasible? You're seeing it? In our case, it's happening because we have those codes. Even though I don't want 10, I want 100, right? And 1000. So we need to build it for scale.
Mim, I've been very selfish here with my line of questioning. I do want to know what it means to build that for scale, but excuse me. Go ahead.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (39:46)
So I had one sort of observation slash question, which is that we started off where you were talking about the sort of the elites and a very top -down approach to innovation. But it sort of strikes me that that is at least a path to getting funding in a lot of these parts of the world of sort of, for lack of a better word, co -opting the institutions of higher education and sort of the large businesses in these countries to get them kind of on board to say invest.
here invest locally. Is that something that you think is feasible? I mean, again, it involves so much work, but it seems like that's a way to get the top down support that kind of meets the bottom up innovation in all of these places.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (40:29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it is, I think it's very hard, but I think we shouldn't give up on it. Again, to quote an example, at Solshare, what we did is, what Alejandro was referring to earlier, is we saw these houses having solar home systems. That's essentially why I came to Bangladesh 10 years ago, because I was, I'm originally from Germany and it...
supposedly we were the leaders in the energy event, the energy transition, which should be called transformation. And I realized that Germany had then one, two million rooftop solar systems and Bangladesh had four. I was like, something's wrong here. So I went and - Four million. Four million, sorry. Yeah, four million. So I went and to find out how is that possible. It's supposed to be a luxurious, that's 10 years ago, right? Or even more.
It was supposed to be a very luxurious technology which only worked in very advanced countries because nobody could afford it otherwise. And there is this country which is in the public eye half the year, half underwater and all these solar systems. And so we interconnected those systems and created the world's first, we didn't know that then, but peer -to -peer trading platform. And that caught the eye. And we then...
got investment from the largest energy utilities in Europe. That's EON, that's EDP, who said, well, hang on, this is what we think the energy future could look like for Europe, but due to regulation, due to whatnot, we never could try that here. If you are trying this for us, and I say something I would say, it says it's a very cheap learning experience because if we invest in you, right?
And they did. So I don't give up on that kind of capital MIM because I think there is a thing or two, the global norms are probably a lot more than a thing or two. That can be, the learning can go both ways. And I think that's very, very important. And so in our case, it did work. So Solshare has investors in its board on its cap table, which are financial VCs, which are corporate VCs. So that is possible because...
I mean, it's also if you have 170 million people, this is all and your economy grows six, seven, eight percent every year, this is where the growth happens right now. But that also means this is where the fight against climate change is decided. Because if we in the EU or in the US even bring down our emissions by a couple percent, but at the same time they increase in South Asia, in India, in Bangladesh and these markets.
That's worth nothing. Because net, we still lose. Right. And Mim and I have actually published an op -ed arguing that... It's not worth nothing, sorry. I didn't take it personally. Please do it. No, but on net, it's not going to get the job done. That's the question. We've argued that what you're describing, contrary to popular belief, is the only way waves of innovation have ever happened. That's right. Throughout...
Mim Plavin-Masterman (43:27)
Hahaha!
Thank you.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (43:46)
history, it's when we've gone beyond the usual suspects. I don't know if I learned that term from you or vice versa, and we're both misusing it from Casablanca. But at any rate, when we go beyond the usual suspects and do what you just described in each of these examples, that we start to find new ways of doing things and to generate those waves of growth. So it may be that our growth versus sustainability
divergence is rather false actually and that the way in which to build an economy of the future if we don't just mean GDP growth but we mean improvement in the ways we live is actually what you're describing. No, I would sign that and I mean the task ahead of us is so big.
If we, I mean, we tried, right? With the usual suspects and it didn't work. So maybe it's time to try something different. Round up some different suspects. You mentioned at one point, and Mim, I know we always look at the people. What is this like for the individuals involved? And Sebastian, you said something which caught my attention, even though it was in passing, about the people involved. And...
what it means to be on that team where they said they're saying I think there must be a mistake. Is part of what you envision a change in mindset that makes this possible? We've talked a lot about money and tools. What about the people? Does it happen by doing it? Help us out. No, absolutely. I mean, these bunches that this is a mistake.
they were doing it and then they were realizing that they can actually do it. You can't get this effect in any other way unless you do it. Unless you do it. And what if it doesn't succeed? Is it still worthwhile to them? And does it matter that there's a chemist and a lawyer and a biologist on this team? No, I mean, we have also many examples where students came up with fascinating projects and then realized it doesn't work. And that's okay. But then after the course,
they didn't stop. And we didn't ask them to continue. The course was over. And they got together and said, Hey, this didn't work. But I think now we know how to make it work. And they came up with a new idea and went on to be very serious. I think this is an example from Palestine, right? Yeah. It was Ahmad Hishawi who were actually in a scene next week in New York. Yeah. Fascinating, no? So, um,
Mim Plavin-Masterman (46:31)
Absolutely.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (46:32)
I think these are really the examples where students, we always say go beyond the classroom. I mean, it cannot become more literal than that. And we should say that although Ahmad is the one that got written up in the Stanford Social Innovation Review for this, we see this over and over. Right. And so when you, Mim, raise this question of could this happen in other places, I think part of the key is that
just enabling folks to have that experience then allows them to take it to other places, right? In a kind of a contagion that can occur when folks have that experience of realizing they can do it or they can at least endeavor it.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (47:14)
I think that's true. I think that that's also still challenging though, because then we were relying on these social connections of you have to know someone to take it to. So to go back to your example with the leather, you knew someone who worked at this handbag place and you could put them in front of that person or those people. And so in some ways you're kind of relying on those connections to either develop or for people to realize they have them or whatever that is. It seems like a very unplanned thing.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (47:44)
But that's part of entrepreneurship, right? So as an entrepreneur, I have limited resources and I have to make the most of it. And especially I have to rely on whoever I know or who I know, who knows, who knows, who knows. So, yes, it's unplanned, but it's very much pure entrepreneurship. The way we do try to generate a higher likelihood that these things happen is that on our platform, we actively nurture those mentorship.
relations. And this is baked into the program, right? So that because without external support, without these connections, it's close to impossible to succeed. So it's also part of the teaching. We have a course where we actively urge the students and they often say, then we do this and this and then mostly the feedback from us professors is
have you tried it? Like, did you sell that product or did you ask anybody? Like, have you spoken to your customers? And if the answer is no, you go, okay, come back next week after you have actually spoken to them. We have to reach out and we have one course where we actively urge the students to go out and speak to stakeholders, lead interviews with a certain...
just to get out there, right? Because this is a very, very important skill, especially for people who are rather shy. This is very, very, very important. And I mean, without network and connections, for me also with Solshare, we would be dead three times over, right? And what I'm hearing you saying is that you're creating a, almost a marketplace for those connections to occur. By design.
by design and that it's not just geographically local, that marketplace. Because many of us, we grew up in an ecosystem where we don't rub shoulders with people who can make those connections. I think that's part of your point, Mim. What I'm hearing you... And that's the thing we need to change, right? Yes. Otherwise, only those students who for some reason managed to get into those elite Ivy League schools and then could build a network...
they are the only entrepreneurs, but maybe they are not the best with the best ideas. That's the whole point, right? That we provide a network to those who don't have it otherwise, because that's how we hatch our bets. That's how we democratize it and make sure that the best ideas win, which is the whole point of innovation, right? And that is a network effect. If there's one thing the digital space has done, it has been to expand my social net. What I'm hearing you describe,
is that I can also expand my creator's net or whatever so that it doesn't just have to be people that I'm talking to about some hit song, nothing wrong with that, but it can also be people I'm collaborating with on a vision for how things could work. Right.
We only have a moment here, so let's end with this question. Is a world in which it's normal to do what you've described, to look around you and say, you know what, let me try making this work differently and actually access opportunities to try. Is that something we could achieve in this decade? This is not a question. There's no choice. We have to, I mean, we have to change things fundamentally.
And that's not going to be one company to do that. That needs to be all of us. So the biggest challenge is how do we put the belief in all of us that we can do it? I wouldn't even pose it as a question. It's a commitment. It's what we have to do. Sebastian Crowe, thank you so much for being with us here on What If Next Day. Thank you, Alejandro. Thank you, Mim.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (51:48)
Thank you for joining us.