Over the past few months we have been part of this awesome start-up accelerator called MassChallenge. We wrote a guest entry on their blog a few weeks ago describing our experience. If you missed it, check it out here.

We’re pleased to announce that we have advanced to the final round! We are now one of the final 26 teams. Check out the press release here. We just went through 2 rounds of serious pitching with some pretty all-star judges. It was an intense experience but we learned a lot in the process. Plus, it turns out Mario is amazing at making slides!

There is a big final awards ceremony at the Boston Convention Center on October 23rd. If you’re in the Boston area and want to check it out, details are available here. Until then, keep your fingers crossed for us!

We’re currently a Finalist team in MassChallenge which is an awesome start-up accelerator that just happens to be right here in Boston. Through the program we have access to amazing  mentors, training, media, and office space, not to mention the opportunity to take home some serious prize money at the end of October.

We recently wrote a guest entry for the MassChallenge blog describing our experience and highlighting the social impact space. Check it out here!

We’re tearing through Reverse Innovation by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. In fact, if we were better at multi-tasking, we’d probably be done reading it by the time we finished writing this post. The book presents itself as the blueprint for scaling growth in emerging markets. With the gap between rich nations and emerging economies closing quickly, the dynamics of global innovation are changing accordingly. It used to be that large multinationals innovated new products at home (in the US) and then if they wanted to bring those products to emerging markets, they would just slim down the offering by removing a bunch of features and lowering the cost. The authors call this “glocalization,” which means taking your global product and later adapting it to local needs. But as the authors discuss, and we have seen time and again ourselves, this just doesn’t work most of the time. Customers in emerging markets and developing countries have unique needs that require custom solutions. And if you get the product right for emerging market customers, there is great potential to bring that innovation back home– hence the title, Reverse Innovation.

The first half of the book reviews the general concepts and guidelines of reverse innovation, and the other half provides case studies of companies like PepsiCo, GE and Procter & Gamble who have successfully reverse innovated.

This book really resonates with us because we see the development of the LFC as an exercise in reverse innovation.  We worked with wheelchair riders and manufacturers in developing countries to design a chair with a completely different set of assumptions than US wheelchairs.  Since we started the design in a completely different region of the design space, we ended up with a product that is fundamentally different from everything else on the market in the US.  The LFC’s differences are its key strengths; the lever drivetrain, the simple design based on bicycle parts, and the rugged off-road nature of the chair itself; and position it to succeed in both the developing and developed world. We’re really excited to be on the cutting edge of the reverse innovation trend, designing a product for the developing world and then repatriating it to satisfy market demands back home.

If you have any other book recommendations, let us know! We’ve got some long-haul flights coming up soon.