BRUTE LABS has, over the last few years, implemented a number of innovative and exciting projects. BRUTE: Standing Out is my story as an outside advocate of the team, its projects, and its mission. My interests span entrepreneurship and international development, but only when Josh To and I expanded our friendship as Google.org consultants in East Africa did I understand how to conjoin the two. While representing Google.org in TechnoServe's national business plan competition, "Believe, Begin, Become," Josh and I delivered 24 hours of lectures to Tanzania's top 70 entrepreneurs, led market estimation cases, and provided 160 hours of business plan feedback.
We came to observe sequential business taxonomy, and in Stanford Social Innovation Review, I attributed this to an Abraham Maslow hierarchy of opportunity in Africa. Though on the side we managed to chase lions in Ngorongoro and commission a one-way, cash-payment, Ramadan flight to Zanzibar with only a cell phone number as promise for return booking, our growth came in a dusty back-alley. Beneath the coconut palms, to the chorus of children playing soccer on the road-side median, we met Gregory Mchopa laying oil to canvas, conjuring imagery of the Masai.
Today the BRUTE LABS project featuring the work of Gregory Mchopa is open for business, but through the process of meeting the artist, developing the website on a dial-up connection from the lobby of Dar es Salaam's Golden Tulip Hotel, and co-founding a General Partnership, Josh and I learned a lot about entrepreneurship.
I have told the story of MCHOPA in the context of doing business in Africa. In 2008 I presented the story to Google Dublin, Google India, and as a representative of Columbia University at the Global Public Policy Network Global Governance Conference in Paris, France. In a recent Yale Journal of International Affairs article entitled "Bringing Africa Online: Leveraging Technology to Empower Entrepreneurs", I've articulated road blocks encountered, and suggested palliative technology changes. As a writer for Harvard's Internet & Democracy Project, I attempt to detail technology changes around the globe, and their impact on commerce and politics, and as a writer at Stanford Social Innovation Review, distill ways in which business and non-profits can seek innovative solutions.
But to me BRUTE stands out. It has created a precedent for innovative, open-source community problem solving that has impelled me to choose action in the form of voice. BRUTE invites your grassroots change, your tangible action.
We came to observe sequential business taxonomy, and in Stanford Social Innovation Review, I attributed this to an Abraham Maslow hierarchy of opportunity in Africa. Though on the side we managed to chase lions in Ngorongoro and commission a one-way, cash-payment, Ramadan flight to Zanzibar with only a cell phone number as promise for return booking, our growth came in a dusty back-alley. Beneath the coconut palms, to the chorus of children playing soccer on the road-side median, we met Gregory Mchopa laying oil to canvas, conjuring imagery of the Masai.
Today the BRUTE LABS project featuring the work of Gregory Mchopa is open for business, but through the process of meeting the artist, developing the website on a dial-up connection from the lobby of Dar es Salaam's Golden Tulip Hotel, and co-founding a General Partnership, Josh and I learned a lot about entrepreneurship.
I have told the story of MCHOPA in the context of doing business in Africa. In 2008 I presented the story to Google Dublin, Google India, and as a representative of Columbia University at the Global Public Policy Network Global Governance Conference in Paris, France. In a recent Yale Journal of International Affairs article entitled "Bringing Africa Online: Leveraging Technology to Empower Entrepreneurs", I've articulated road blocks encountered, and suggested palliative technology changes. As a writer for Harvard's Internet & Democracy Project, I attempt to detail technology changes around the globe, and their impact on commerce and politics, and as a writer at Stanford Social Innovation Review, distill ways in which business and non-profits can seek innovative solutions.
But to me BRUTE stands out. It has created a precedent for innovative, open-source community problem solving that has impelled me to choose action in the form of voice. BRUTE invites your grassroots change, your tangible action.
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