A key turning point for Kiva was their decision to switch from business plans to "action" plans, getting out there and building their success from the ground up. Some of us would call this "rapid prototyping" or "failing fast." Whatever you choose to call it, it's an approach I firmly believe in. In places like Silicon Valley, getting it wrong isn't seen as a bad thing, and this encourages a "rapid prototyping" culture. Sadly, the story is very different in the U.K.

Some projects -- Kiva and FrontlineSMS among them -- are based on experiences gained in the field and the belief that a particular problem can be solved with an appropriate technological intervention. Of course, before any ICT4D solution can succeed, there has to be a need. It doesn't matter how good a solution is if people don't see the "problem" as one that needs fixing. In the case of Kiva, borrowers were clearly in need of funds, yet lenders lacked access to them. With FrontlineSMS, grassroots nonprofits were keen to make use of the growing numbers of mobile phones among their stakeholders but lacked a platform to communicate with them. These two initiatives worked because they were problems that found a solution.

The ICT4D space is exciting and challenging in equal measure, and by its very nature, practitioners tend to focus on some of the most pressing problems in the most challenging regions of the world. Whether it's a natural disaster, a stolen election, human-wildlife conflict, a crushed uprising or a health epidemic, elements of the ICT4D community spring into action to either help coordinate, fix or report on events. Interestingly, sometimes it can be the events themselves that raise the profile of a particular ICT solution or the events themselves that lead to the creation of new tools and resources.

In 2006, Erik Sundelof was one of a dozen Reuters Digital Vision Fellows at Stanford University, a program I was fortunate enough to attend the following year (thanks, in large part, to Erik himself). Erik was building a Web-based tool that allowed citizens to report news and events around them to the wider world through their mobile phones. This, of course, is nothing particularly new today, but back then, it was an emerging field. During the final weeks of his fellowship in July 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon in response to the kidnapping of one of their soldiers. Erik's tool was picked up by Lebanese civilians, who texted in their experiences, hopes and fears through their mobile phones. The international media were quick onto the story, including CNN. Erik's project was propelled into the limelight, resulting in significant funding to develop a new citizen journalism site, allvoices, which he runs today.