SOCIAL IMPACT & BUSINESS IMPACT OF ESG AND SUSTAINABILITY
Why Pilots Fail and Systems Win: 5 Counter-Intuitive Lessons from RISE
PECOWorld Summit 2026
Events & Summits Coverage · RISE PECOWorld Summit 2026
QUICK SUMMARY
At the RISE PECOWorld Summit 2026, founder Karon Shaiva and a lineup of
systems thinkers argued that India’s social impact sector must abandon
isolated “pilot” projects in favor of replicable, ecosystem-wide
structures. The 13th edition of the summit brought together voices
including disability rights activist Neenu Kewlani, Selco Foundation CEO
Harish Hande, and Professor Rajan Velukar to unpack five
counter-intuitive lessons on accessibility, sustainability, education,
and collaboration.
The discussions centered on the PECOWorld framework — Partnership,
Entrepreneurship, Citizenship, and Ownership — and on tools such as the
GoToExchange ledger, which requires participants to list what they can
give before they list what they need. Speakers challenged conventional
thinking on accessibility, environmental education, and institutional
design, arguing that India’s next phase of social impact work depends on
systemic wisdom rather than isolated success stories.

On April 1st, 2026, Karon Shaiva told her team they would be launching
the 13th edition of the RISE Summit in just two months. Some assumed it
was a holiday prank. After twelve years of fostering breakthrough
collaborations, the team had reached a crossroads: they had spent over a
decade perfecting “islands of excellence” and “good pilots,” yet
systemic impact remained stubbornly incremental. To achieve exponential
change, the mission had to shift from temporary projects to replicable
structures. The opening plenary of the RISE PECOWorld Summit 2026 made
the case for moving beyond the “safe” project and toward a demonstration
of change on the ground. Here are five counter-intuitive lessons from
the summit on why the ego of the individual project must give way to the
wisdom of the system.
1. Inclusion Is More Than a Ramp
We often treat accessibility as a box to be checked — usually by
installing a ramp at a building’s entrance and declaring the job done.
Neenu Kewlani, a seasoned disability rights activist, challenges this
surface-level approach as fundamentally exclusionary. True inclusion,
she argues, is not a special provision; it is a systemic failure of
attitude when it is absent.
Kewlani’s insights extend to the smallest details of dignity: the height
of payment counters, the texture of flooring, and even the availability
of inclusive fashion. When a wheelchair user cannot find functional
footwear, or is ignored by staff in a shoe store, the environment is
communicating that they do not belong. Kewlani cited a recent incident
at a resto-bar called “Tap,” where a wheelchair user was denied entry —
a stark reminder that the environment, not the disability, is the
barrier.

“Accessibility is therefore not a special provision for a few, it is a
fundamental requirement, a right, for creating a society where everyone
can participate with dignity, independence, and equal opportunity.”
— Neenu Kewlani, Disability Rights Activist

2. Sustainability as a Moral Commitment, Not an Environmental Department
Professor Rajan Velukar offered a provocation that dismantles the modern
corporate silo: nature is not a department of the economy — the economy
is a department of nature. He argues that one of the sector’s greatest
historical mistakes was teaching sustainability as a separate subject, a
niche elective for the environmentally minded, rather than a lens for
every discipline.
To build what Velukar calls a “Solution Factory,” sustainability must be
integrated into every field, from engineering and law to medicine,
resting on four pillars: Planet, Prosperity, People, and Culture. He
links the Culture pillar to collective wisdom — the courage to act on
what is already known. The sector’s challenge, in his framing, is not a
lack of data; carbon can already be measured with precision. The
challenge is a lack of the moral commitment required to act as better
ancestors.
3. The Death of the “Degree Factory”
The modern education system is facing a crisis of relevance, Velukar
argued, critiquing the rise of “degree factories” — institutions that
churn out graduates trained only to seek employment rather than solve
humanity’s greatest challenges. The world, in his view, does not need
more job seekers; it needs problem solvers who can tackle water scarcity
and food security.
Citing futurist Roger Spitz, Velukar called on institutions to move
beyond textbooks and campus walls to become Anticipatory (predicting
challenges), Agile (adapting rapidly), and Ambidextrous (improving today
while exploring tomorrow). This “3 A’s” model reimagines a campus as a
living laboratory, where students learn sustainability not from a
lecture but from the waste management systems and energy grids that
power their own classrooms.
4. Systems Wisdom: Learning from the Poor and the Politicians
Consider the expertise of a city banana vendor, who manages a complex
lifecycle with zero waste — selling premium fruit to commuters, bruised
fruit to juice shops, and soggy fruit for pulp. Harish Hande, CEO of
Selco Foundation, argues that the most effective systems thinkers are
the poor and the politicians, because they operate without the luxury of
hyper-specialization and understand the full “terrain lens” of their
environment.
Hande’s warning is provocative: as people become more educated, they
risk becoming less useful to society, because expertise narrowed to a
single 2% slice loses the ability to see the “drought lens” or the
“coastal lens.” This produces what he calls the “Typewriter Effect” —
solutions for the poor that are better than before but obsolete within
years. Building resilient systems, he argues, requires looking for
knowledge in unexpected places, such as how maternal labor rooms are
designed in rural Mizoram, to teach the “over-educated” world about
genuinely inclusive design.
“As we get more educated, we become less useful to society… because
our expertise becomes super-useless on the other parts.”
— Harish Hande, CEO, Selco Foundation
5. Breaking the “Ego and Logo” Barrier
The greatest hurdle to collaboration, in Karon Shaiva’s framing, is the
“ego and the logo.” She introduced the PECOWorld framework — Partnership,
Entrepreneurship, Citizenship, and Ownership — as a structural answer to
this human problem. The PECOWorld platform is designed to shift the
focus from “Me to Us” by requiring a giving-first ledger before need is
registered.
On the platform’s GoToExchange, participants must list what they can
give — resources, skills, or assets — before they list what they need.
It is not merely a nice idea; it is a methodology that uses a ledger of
contribution to bypass individual branding. By setting the logo aside,
partners are connected by a mapper based on collective goals rather than
individual gain, ensuring collaboration is a sustained structure rather
than a fleeting project.
Pilot Thinking vs. Systems Thinking
Dimension Pilot Thinking Systems Thinking
Design target Optimized for the average case Designed for the extreme,
then generalized
Ownership Held by a single project or funder Distributed across a
giving-first ecosystem
Accessibility A checklist item (e.g., a ramp) A default requirement in
every design decision
Sustainability A siloed department or elective A moral commitment across
every discipline
Knowledge source Credentialed specialists only Vendors, the poor, and
local terrain experts
Outcome Good pilots, incremental impact Replicable structures,
exponential impact
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the RISE PECOWorld Summit 2026?
It is the 13th edition of the RISE Summit, a gathering focused on
shifting India’s social impact sector from isolated “pilot” projects
toward replicable, systemic structures for collaboration and change.
What does the PECOWorld framework stand for?
PECOWorld stands for Partnership, Entrepreneurship, Citizenship, and
Ownership — a framework introduced by Karon Shaiva to move collaboration
away from individual ego and branding toward shared, sustained
structures.
What is the GoToExchange?
GoToExchange is a feature of the PECOWorld platform where participants
must first list what they can give — resources, skills, or assets —
before listing what they need, encouraging a “giving first” approach to
partnership.
Who are the key speakers referenced from the summit?
The lessons draw on disability rights activist Neenu Kewlani, Professor
Rajan Velukar, Selco Foundation CEO Harish Hande, and RISE Summit
founder Karon Shaiva.
What is the “Typewriter Effect” described by Harish Hande?
It refers to solutions designed for underserved communities that are
incrementally better than what came before but become obsolete within a
few years, because they were not built on a full systemic understanding
of the environment.
By Amita Nene | amita.nene@newsbizkoot.com
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Disclaimer: This article is based on proceedings and statements from the
RISE PECOWorld Summit 2026. Views expressed by speakers are their own
and do not necessarily reflect the views of NewsBizkoot.com.