Stanford Center on Ethics Event: Ethical Issues in the Design of Entreprenurial Ventures in the Developing World

Now in its fifth year, Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability is a graduate-level course taught in Stanford's d-school. It is an intensive, two-quarter, hands-on, project course in which graduate students apply design, engineering, and business skills to create comprehensive solutions for challenges faced by the world's poorest families. Multi-disciplinary teams collaboratively design product prototypes, implementation plans, and user experiences for entrepreneurial ventures in developing countries. Students teams have developed both industrial products (e.g., water pumps, irrigation systems, solar lights, food processing equipment), and medical products (neo-natal incubators, an asthma medication device), some of which already are being distributed by partner organizations around the world, including organizations founded by course alumni. Professor James Patell and Mr. Todd Johnson, legal counsel to the course, will discuss ethical issues they have encountered in this process, such as role of intellectual property, the question of what might constitute unhealthy dependence, and the interaction between the course and the governments of the host countries. R. Todd Johnson is the founding partner of the Northern California corporate legal practice of Jones Day. Todd has counseled and represented many Silicon Valley public and private ventures in all phases of their operations: new venture formation, public offerings or equity or debt, intangible asset valuation, and mergers and acquisitions. Todd has special expertise in international transactions, and he now is on the Board of Advisors of Good Capital (a social venture fund) and of Pura Vida Coffee. James M. Patell is the Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management in Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He also is a founding core faculty member of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, where he has taught Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability for the past five years.