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HP Labs

HP Labs was looking for a win-win result when they created a ‘living lab’ in Kuppam, India. For Kuppam, this meant accelerated economic development, and for Hewlett Packard, new product and service ideas for their own long-term growth in developing economies.

Long-term innovation program

Kuppam is on the south-east coast of India, near the regional center Chennai. One in three citizens is illiterate and there is no electricity for most homes. HP’s living lab, also dubbed the ‘i-community initiative’, established partnerships with public organizations to create technology centers for local communities. The concept grew from understanding the limits of previous philanthropy; by applying their business expertise HP felt they could more effectively lift up the lives of others.

“By engaging the community and its leaders to design valuable new tools and capabilities, HP is gaining the knowledge it needs to be a stronger competitor in other developing regions.”

Debra Dunn
Former VP Global Citizenship
Hewlett Packard

But it’s not a one-way street, the engagement also pays long-term dividends for HP. The living labs help HP discover and unlock latent user needs. Using an iterative approach, HP has been able to prototype products and services and then observe residents’ experiences with them, enabling another round of iterative improvement and better results. HP also benefits through exposing talented people to very different conditions and having them develop new products that fit local conditions. In the first year of the three-year experiment, HP developed a solar-powered digital camera, and printer, that fits in a backpack. Using an approach that business thinkers Stuart Hart and Sanjay Sharma call ‘putting the last first,’ HP Labs is doing good (for Kuppam) and getting better, gaining the knowledge it needs to be a stronger competitor in other developing regions.

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