Breakthrough designs for ultra-low-cost products

Not every designer dreams of serving the luxury market Apple inhabits. Many want to solve problems for the poorest people in the world, and the question then becomes: how can you make something that does the same job for a tenth, a hundredth or a thousandth of the cost?

In this 2010 TED talk, R.A. Mashelkar, a chemical engineer and former Director General of India’s Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, shares three stories of ultra-low-cost design from India. Each uses bottom-up rethinking and clever engineering to bring expensive products, such as cars and prosthetics, within reach of everyone. The artificial leg developed in India is a particularly striking example.

The talk is a useful look at ingenuity under constraint, and at how to get things done well but cheaply.