TY - JOUR
T1 - Economic development as design
T2 - 21st International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED 2017
AU - Subrahmanian, Eswaran
AU - Eckert, Claudia
AU - McMahon, Christopher
AU - Reich, Yoram
N1 - Funding Information:
Eswaran Subrahmanian was funded by Distinguished Visiting Fellowship DVF1617\ 5\ 80 from the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Economic development is aimed at improving the lives of people in the developing world, and needs to be carried out with design at its heart, but this has often not been the case. This paper first reviews dominant approaches to economic development including the use of subsidies or the creation of markets and demand and the testing of initiatives using randomized control trials. It then introduces 'development engineering' as a representative engineering design approach to engineering and technology in development before presenting the view that successful development needs to involve continual learning through innovation in context. The PSI (problem social institutional) framework is presented as a basis for guiding such development as a design activity, and its application is illustrated using examples from India of the unsuccessful introduction of new cooking stoves and then both successful and unsuccessful approaches to rural electrification. A 2-level approach to PSI is taken, in which the lower level represents daily operation of communities and the 2nd level represents the development project including addressing misalignments between the different PSI spaces and levels.
AB - Economic development is aimed at improving the lives of people in the developing world, and needs to be carried out with design at its heart, but this has often not been the case. This paper first reviews dominant approaches to economic development including the use of subsidies or the creation of markets and demand and the testing of initiatives using randomized control trials. It then introduces 'development engineering' as a representative engineering design approach to engineering and technology in development before presenting the view that successful development needs to involve continual learning through innovation in context. The PSI (problem social institutional) framework is presented as a basis for guiding such development as a design activity, and its application is illustrated using examples from India of the unsuccessful introduction of new cooking stoves and then both successful and unsuccessful approaches to rural electrification. A 2-level approach to PSI is taken, in which the lower level represents daily operation of communities and the 2nd level represents the development project including addressing misalignments between the different PSI spaces and levels.
KW - Design theory
KW - Economic development
KW - Participatory design
KW - Social responsibility
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85029752793&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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AN - SCOPUS:85029752793
SN - 2220-4334
VL - 1
SP - 229
EP - 238
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED
JF - Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED
IS - DS87-1
Y2 - 21 August 2017 through 25 August 2017
ER -