"No multinational has the capability themselves today. They just don't have it right, so they require local partners but they have convening power. They have the ability to be catalytic and then the ability to kind of role this stuff out, right, on potentially a world scale, so if we're going to have the kind of impact we need in terms of shifting right, kind of turning the ship that's the way it happens in my view."

"This is where the multinationals can actually learn and those are the natural partners, but I think one of the greatest fears is that, oh, these big multinationals come in and they're going to put all of these local companies out of business. I think quite the contrary, they're the natural partners..."

"As great as Light up the World is, they can't possibly bring this to scale in a way that's going to make that much of an impact. So this is precisely why Philips has now gotten interested in it and they're partnering with Light up the World. So this kind of brings home my earlier point that the innovation has really come from the NGOs and from the companies in the developing world."

"You can always add cost and features on to a low cost platform. It's much more difficult to take cost out of a high cost platform and try to trickle it down. So this great leap idea right, is the way you combine the idea of next generation inherently clean technology with serving the base of the pyramid and then you can imagine trickling it up over time, so initially it's all about creative creation..."

"It's the most expensive and it's also the most toxic with roll to roll batteries coming on quite rapidly, but anyway Light up the World was able to put together these components into a rural lighting system and then used micro finance, micro credit, right 'cause let's face it, a household in the rural area that earns $500 a year in income can't afford one of these systems even though they're looking at pricing it around $50-60 retail..."

"So first lesson, you have to optimize the technology for what the early needs are, you know what the real needs are and not necessarily just the top of the pyramid needs. So a lot of it is technology optimization and then it's systems thinking that if you want light at night then it makes sense to leap to the most advanced lighting systems, not to go back to incandescent bulbs which are you know, energy inefficient and contribute to climate change problems and greenhouse gas emissions..."

"With current technology, it's not fundamentally a technology problem. Now, there'll be continued technological innovations that will bring the cost down and the case becomes even more persuasive, but you have an NGO for example called Light up the World, Canadian NGO started by an engineering professor at the University of Calgary, really interesting little NGO and he has basically figured out how over the last 10 years how to assemble a rural lighting system out of existing components..."