In the business world, the repurposing of old products and technologies is commonplace. To take just one example, the product now known as Play-Doh began life as a wallpaper cleaner before its potential as a children’s toy was discovered. One of the most interesting parts of EGG-energy’s business model, to me, is our repurposing of an old battery technology. We use Absorbed Glass Matt (AGM) batteries. What distinguishes these batteries is the fact that the battery acid inside them is absorbed into mats made of thin glass fibers. This means that the acid can’t spill out in case the batteries are jostled or broken.
This rugged technology was originally designed for use in airplanes, so that heavy turbulence wouldn’t cause battery leaks. We’re using it so that our batteries can withstand transport along bumpy country roads.
What is interesting to me is the relative lack of this type of repurposing is the African market. For the most part, technology in Africa is repurposed using one of two common approaches: there is the throwback approach, where a much older technology, no longer in use in more developed areas, is used (and often improved) because it serves a need that no longer exists in the societies where it was developed; and there is the leapfrog approach, where a technology is used to skip an entire generation of products, infrastructures, and services that the developed world passed or is still passing through.
A good example of throwback repurposing is the use of various kinds of creative pump technologies in Africa, such as pumps powered by children’s merry-go-rounds. And the quintessential example of leapfrog repurposing is the adoption of the cell phone in Africa, where it is used not only for the original purpose of communication, but also increasingly as an access point for financial services.
Lying between these two models is what I will call the prosaic model of technology repurposing. This is simply when a current product or technology is moved from one purpose (cleaning wallpaper) to another (amusing children). This is the model under which EGG-energy’s use of AGM batteries falls, and it is a model not often seen in Africa. Why? If I had to give an answer, it would be that prosaic repurposing occurs when someone with a problem sees an existing solution already on the market, but being used in an entirely different way. To give an example internal to 3M, the post-it came into being when an employee with a problem keeping his bookmarks into place came into contact with a employee trying to promote use of a low-adhesion glue he had invented.
The difficulty then, as it so often is in the developing world, is that those with the most intimate knowledge of the problems faced there lack access to and knowledge of many of the products and technologies currently in use in the developed world. And vice-versa. The potential to see this gap bridged is an intriguing side-story to the gradual development of greater linkages between Africa and the developed world that we are currently seeing.
- Ben
