IXL Social Enterprise Case Studies Water March 2011 | Page 9

Getting Safe Water and Sanitation to the Bottom of the Pyramid through Bold and Game-Changing Innovations

Right-size the solution
It is important to zoom in on the specific needs of
the people being served and customize solutions
around those needs; however, sometimes less is
more. In the telecom space, companies are rightsizing their services to the BOP’s need for quickand-easy communication at the cheapest price
possible. Globe Telecom in the Philippines is
making use of “sachet marketing” that empowers
customers to purchase phone minutes in their
own personalized allotments, rather than be
restricted by standardized, pre-set values – “you
only buy what you need, when you need it.”
As a result, customers can “package” their own
service plans as they deem fit, and only pay for
services that they plan to use, when they plan to
use them (a combination of voice and cheaper
text messaging, only text messaging, etc.).59
Keeping things cheap and simple has been a key
to success for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC)
initiative. Its vision is to provide all 2 billion of
the developing world’s children with their very
own laptops to help “revolutionize how we
educate the world’s children” (1:1 computing
programs). OLPC’s laptop had to be sensitive
to the needs of both the user and the purchaser
– kids’ need for something fun and easy to use
and developing countries’ requirement for an
affordable, low-cost computer. With access
to electricity oftentimes a challenge in the
developing world, it also had to be able to run
on little power. The solution was to deliver a
laptop computer (the “XO”) that was priced
less than USD200, with features quite different
from sophisticated Western standards—a rugged,
low-power laptop requiring less than two watts
of power and able to run on human-generated
and solar energy sources (conventional laptops
require 90 percent more power). On October 13,
2009, Uruguay succeeded in providing every
one of its public school children (between 6 and
12 years of age) with a free laptop through its
purchase of around 400,000 XOs.60
Having local parts and local knowhow
The most sophisticated and advanced innovation
is not necessarily the best solution. In fact,
sometimes it may lead to an assured failure.
“Incubator graveyards” in the developing world’s
hospitals are an unfortunate example: thousands
and thousands of generously donated state-ofthe-art baby incubators sit around useless and
collecting dust. The combination of expensive
high-tech sophistication (USD40,000-plus per
incubator) and highly specialized parts drags
them down to their eventual doom—nobody
knows how to fix them and nobody can afford
or access the required parts anyhow. One idea

for a solution is to build a 4Runner for Babies
incubator made from Toyota 4Runners, which
can be easily found throughout the Third World.
Cheap, “organic resourcing” would use the
Toyota’s headlights for heat, its air filters for
air purification, and its car alarm to warn of
emergencies.61
Sophisticated electric and solar pumps or hightech water treatment devices in developing
countries also fall victim to their high-tech
complexity. While they may work great at first,
many times local people using the equipment
are not skilled in how to maintain it and so when
a problem arises, the pump or device gets put
completely out of commission. Water.org has
a “technology agnostic” approach just for this
reason – sourcing parts from the local project
area so that they are easy for the people to access,
and then educating them on how to operate and
maintain the equipment for the long-term.62
Information exchange saves time and
generates profits
Something as easy as a quick cell phone call
can provide people with invaluable information
that leads to time-saving and profit-generating
decisions. With the onset of mobile phone
coverage in 1997, fishermen in Kerala in the
south of India saw their businesses thrive. Prior
to 1997, they threw away 5 to 8 percent of their
perishable catch when their home market was
oversupplied and there was not enough demand
for the day. But now with a cell phone in hand,
in just a matter of minutes, fishermen can call
several markets from their boats and head over
to the one offering the highest prices. Eventually
the varied price of sardines along the coast settled
down to a single price, creating a more efficient
market that drove fishermen’s profits up by about
8 percent and consumer prices down by about
4 percent. As development economist Robert
Jensen of Harvard University said: “Information
makes markets work, and markets improve
welfare.”63
Information enables holding people, not
organizations, accountable
With increasing worldwide use of the internet
and social media sites such as Twitter and
Facebook, informational transparency and
personal accountability are on the rise and
the world, in effect, is becoming “smaller.” In
Iran, protestors of the 2009 Iranian presidential
election used Twitter (and other social media
sites) so much to communicate their message
that their demonstrations became known as the
“Twitter Revolution.”64

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