Acumen Fund and IDEO have developed a partnership over the last two years to explore how Acumen Fund’s focus on using entrepreneurial approaches to address the problems of poverty, coupled with IDEO’s human-centered approach to design, could create synergy and help both organizations achieve their broader goals.
Earlier this month, Acumen Fund and IDEO met with Jennifer Davis of Stanford University and Ranjiv Khush of the Aquaya Institute, experts bringing extensive experience working on issues of water and sanitation internationally. This was a unique group - bringing together Acumen Fund’s knowledge of water-related BOP market business opportunities, the creativity of IDEO’s idea workshop and the deep sector knowledge of water experts.
A pervasive challenge Acumen Fund has seen with both our current and potential water investments is how to assure safe drinking water for low-income consumers, who collect water from centralized sources, like wells, standpipes, handpumps, and water treatment systems. We saw this as an opportunity to pool the talents of the group to develop design innovations that could have an impact in the water sector.
Over a day and a half, we explored wide ranging issues related to water quality, health impacts, and storage and transportation challenges. One clear insight that emerged is that technology alone will not be the critical success factor to improving the health and lives of those that currently lack access to safe and sufficient water. What is needed are systems and services that improve the overall experience of collecting, transporting and storing safe drinking water for low income consumers.
We also engaged in a lively discussion about whether or not safe water storage was the most powerful way to impact people’s health. Are health impacts the biggest concern for those that lack access to safe drinking water, or are there other issues that are of more importance, and that should drive innovations in products and services. Rather than trying to convince households to change their behavior and invest in new products for the sake of health outcomes, could we instead appeal to concerns related to the time wasted collecting and treating water, the inconvenience of carrying heavy water containers, and the desire to consume water that is aesthetically superior - basically water that tastes better or comes from a more attractive vessel?
Another point of discussion was the impact of water quality problems on children under five years old. Two million children die every year from water-borne diseases, so how can interventions be designed and delivered that address this unique market segment?
Coming out of this initial workshop, we feel there is an important opportunity to address the questions that were raised - and to design the business models that will engage private sector players (both on a large and small scale) who can accelerate the provision of water-related products and services for the poor. Since we do not want to duplicate the efforts of the many respected experts and institutions that have wrestled with these issues, and devised effective products and broader interventions, we aim to bring something unique to the discussion through a focus on scalable and entrepreneurial models.
We will further investigate business models that build on our current network of entrepreneurs, while also exploring complementary models that could tap into the resources of both large multinational companies and small-scale local entrepreneurs. We will be actively seeking partners for this process, and welcome any ideas related to creative partnerships to enable entrepreneurship in the water sector.
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