We spent the day at Pixar, and it was as if the ghost of Steve Jobs was in every piece of wood and steel and glass. We were there to attend the first Intersection Event. And it was exactly what it said — the intersection of social entrepreneurs, leaders in technology, academia, philanthropy and media. A mash-up extraordinaire. The confluence of trying to do good and do well.
We met Peter Frykman, who visited Ethiopia when he was a mechanical engineering graduate student at Stanford, and he saw that existing irrigation systems were ineffective for small subsistence farmers. Not enough water or water pressure.
So, in 2008, he developed an innovative technology and manufacturing process to elegantly solve the problem (he laser-cut very tiny holes in a simple, inexpensive polyethylene sleeve), and today his company, Driptech, is successfully selling its product in India and China.
Read the rest at UT San Diego.