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KickStart II: Overcoming Manufacturing Challenges
KickStart was founded by Martin Fisher and Nick Moon to design tools that would enable Africa’s poor to launch and sustain profitable businesses. Its first product was a line of manually operated irrigation pumps — branded “MoneyMaker Pumps” —…
KickStart III: Marketing to Hard-to-Reach Consumers
KickStart was founded by Martin Fisher and Nick Moon to design tools that would enable Africa’s poor to launch and sustain profitable businesses. Its first product was a line of manually operated irrigation pumps—branded “MoneyMaker Pumps”—that…
KickStart IV: Measuring Impact
KickStart was founded by Martin Fisher and Nick Moon to design tools that would enable Africa’s poor to launch and sustain profitable businesses. Its first product was a line of manually operated irrigation pumps — branded “MoneyMaker Pumps” —…
Lattice games and the economics of aggregators
We model the strategic decisions of web sites in content markets, where sites may reduce user search cost by aggregating content. Example aggregations include political news, technology, and other niche-topic websites. We model this market…
Life Force Kiosks II: Engaging Local Talent
Life Force Kiosks is a nonprofit that aims to reduce preventable waterborne diseases like typhoid, cholera, and diarrhea to save lives in the most vulnerable communities. The organization developed a new model of preventing water contamination by…
Life Force Kiosks I: Reporting and Accountability
Life Force Kiosks is a nonprofit that aims to reduce preventable waterborne diseases like typhoid, cholera, and diarrhea to save lives in the most vulnerable communities. The organization developed a new model of preventing water contamination by…
LifeStraw Carbon for Water: Sustainable Funding for a Public Health Intervention
Vestergaard Frandsen (VF) is a for-profit company that operates under a humanitarian entrepreneurship business model. Committed to supporting the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, VF creates and deploys technologies…
Making Banks Transparent
It was March 2007, and in the Mediterranean resort of Monte Carlo, Matt King was making dire predictions about a collapse of the U.S. subprime housing market-a subject that must have seemed as inconsequential as it was foreign to most of this…
Maternova: Bringing Together Buyers and Sellers
Maternova was founded in 2009 as a mission-driven for-profit organization with two main objectives: (1) to provide an online knowledge platform that would allow health workers, innovators, organizations, policymakers, and individuals working in…
PATH I: Building a Direct Sales Force
In late 2006, the PATH Safe Water Project received a $17 million grant from the global development unit of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its purpose was to evaluate how market-based approaches could help accelerate the widespread…
PATH II: Demonstrating Products in Rural Areas
In late 2006, the PATH Safe Water Project received a $17 million grant from the global development unit of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its purpose was to evaluate how market-based approaches could help accelerate the widespread…
Phoenix I: Generating Preliminary Sales
Phoenix Medical Systems was founded to manufacture an incubator designed specifically to address the needs of low-resource healthcare providers in India. Initially its founder, who also designed the device, tried selling his incubator through the…
PlayPumps International: Gaining User Buy-In
Trevor Field, a retired British businessman and outdoor advertising executive, was deeply moved when he observed women and girls in rural villages of South Africa shouldering the daily burden of collecting water. When he became aware of a…
Psychological Aspects of Social Communities
Social Network Analysis has often focused on the structure of the network without taking into account the characteristics of the individual involved. In this work, we aim at identifying how individual differences in psychological traits affect…
Steptacular: an incentive mechanism for promoting wellness
The paper describes Steptacular, an online interactive incentive system for encouraging people to walk more. A trial offering Steptacular to the employees of Accenture-USA was conducted over a 6 month period. Over 5,000 employees…
The East Meets West Foundation: Expanding Organizational Capacity
The East Meets West Foundation (EMW) is an international development agency with the mission to transform the health, education, and communities of disadvantaged people in Asia. Through its Breath of Life (BOL) program, EMW provides a complete…
The JaipurKnee Project I: Getting the Need Right
When a team at Stanford University accepted a challenge to design a low-cost prosthetic knee joint that could be produced locally for use in the JaipurFoot Organization’s clinics across India, the students were eager to dive into the technical…
The JaipurKnee Project II: Scaling up the Business
When a team at Stanford University accepted a challenge to design a low-cost prosthetic knee joint that could be produced locally for use in the JaipurFoot Organization’s clinics across India, the students thoroughly researched the problem,…
d.light II: Market Research and Prototyping in Remote Regions
d.light design is a for-profit social enterprise whose purpose is to create new freedoms for customers without access to reliable power so they can enjoy a brighter future. The company designs, manufactures, and distributes solar light and power…
d.light I: Securing Early Funding
d.light design is a for-profit social enterprise whose purpose is to create new freedoms for customers without access to reliable power so they can enjoy a brighter future. The company designs, manufactures, and distributes solar light and power…