This is the kind of thing (civilian spin-offs from rocket technology) the book I recently mentioned, by CK Prahalad, titled "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramd: Eradicating Poverty through Profits", might find is right down its alley. The book's amibitious aim is to push for the application of cutting edge technology and top flight management (a la MNCs and venture capital) to the alleviation of poverty problems in rural and urban areas of the world, which he calls the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) market. The "fortune" in BOP markets refers to the large absolute size in dollar terms even though individual customers (totalling 4 billion) live on a pittance of $1 or $2 per day.
The book is essentially the outgrowth of a field based project course taught by Prahalad in which his students fanned out to countries like India, Mexico, and Peru and documented examples of companies which were profitably catering to the needs of the poor and the infirm. The book presents 12 such examples, eight from India. There is even a 35 minute CD which comes with the book and provides a multimedia account about the examples. The conceptual underpinnings were earlier generated by the author in a series of articles in practitioner journals and are woven into the present work. The author himself admits in his preface that the questions which propelled him into this particular venture were not so novel. In fact, I myself was reminded of a book published in 1988 (sixteen years ago) by the renowned Japanese industrialist Konsuke Matsushita whose gigantic firm manufactured products under the National Panasonic brand(s) which he had titled similarly viz: Quest for Prosperity. In his peface he had written "The main focus of this book is on what I have done and thought in my long career as a manufacturer... I believe that my views on life and management will provide some helpful hints to younger people and may even assist them in IMPROVING LIVING CONDITIONS IN OUR GLOBAL COMMUNITY ... After all, part of our corporate mission was promoting a better society ...[Furthermore], I wanted my successors to think of EVERY MEMBER OF SOCIETY AS OUR CUSTOMER AND TO TREAT THEM WITH RESPECT COURTESY AND HUMILITY (emphasis added)." In fact the twelve Principles of Innovation for BOP markets enumerated by CK Prahalad and which constitute the intellectual core of the book, are redolent with ideas from Japanese industrial management which he and his western colleagues have drawn on heavily in their best selling books and articles some years ago. The book updates some of these ideas in the Internet era and in non-manufacturing (i.e. service) domains. In Goa the one salient project which could perhaps benefit from a BOP market perspective is the skybus project. Let s hope Goa's management students are able to document this project from a global BOP market perspective.