Mid September I attended the IoT & AI for Frugal Innovation Bootcamp Pitch Day and Award Ceremony at Christ’s College Cambridge, where global talent came together to tackle pressing challenges using frugal engineering, AI, and IoT.
The bootcamp brought together academics and industry experts with brilliant young engineers, doctors, managers and economists from three continents. They were learning how AI and the Internet of Things can be applied to solve global challenges, using the principles of ‘frugal innovation’, which is a way for companies to produce high quality products with limited resources.
The bootcampers worked in small groups to develop some fascinating solutions to three challenges: climate change in agriculture, monitoring blood pressure in resource-limited scenarios and safety at work.
I left the event feeling hugely optimistic. Hearing how they’d collaborated to innovate and harness technology gives me hope that humanity can solve the many challenges we face.
A special thanks to Claudia Peverini (Program Director) for the opportunity, Professor Leandro Pecchia and all the partners for welcoming me into the Bootcamp family, I’m excited to see how these new connections will continue to grow.
Frugal innovation is also a hugely exciting concept. It upturns the idea that you need a large R&D department to innovate. Instead, restraints can actually unlock creativity and ingenuity. I know many of my start-up clients have experienced this, including Patchai who were recently acquired by Alira Health so I am excited to see developments in the coming months.