By Palak Sheth
“Design is Creative Problem Solving” – Paul Polak
The zero-based design framework that prolific social entrepreneur Paul Polak, founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE) and author of “Business Solutions to Poverty,” developed provides social enterprises pushing innovative products that help to ameliorate poverty with a framework emphasizing rapid scale and sustainability.
IDE has pioneered low cost, agricultural tools that have benefited smallholder farmers, and stands out in its ability to scale sustainable solutions to poverty globally. While Polak’s the zero based design framework, composed of ten different criteria for gauging a successful innovation grew out of his vast experience in empowering farmers, the framework lends itself well to a number of innovations for the bottom of the pyramid, across numerous different sectors.
For example, Embrace is a non-profit organization whose mission is to “advance maternal and child health by delivering innovative solutions to the world’s most vulnerable populations.” (Embrace) There is a significant gap in solutions for maternal and infant mortality around the world, a problem that disproportionately effects poor, rural, women. Each year, “over 20 million low-birth-weight and premature babies are born around the world, and over four million die within their first month of life” and those that cannot regulate their body temperature at birth are aided by often futile methods such as blankets, light bulbs, and heated water bottles.
To attack this issue, Embrace created an innovative low cost non-electric infant warmer that maintains premature and low birth weight babies’ body temperature for up to six hours for vulnerable new-borns. This innovation costs just $25, approximately 1% of the cost of the traditional incubators, which retail for about $20,000.
Most social entrepreneurs, even Polak would argue that Embrace is an impactful social enterprise – it is a disruptive innovation that serves vulnerable populations for a low-cost per life saved. However, as many enterprises have done in the past, it’s formation as a nonprofit, rather than for-profit model will likely hinder Embrace’s scale, its financial sustainability, and even innovation.
Without an income generating activity, whether it be licensing fees, purchases from large NGOs working within the public health space, or otherwise, Embrace is reliant upon donations for their scale, which is tied to the number of mothers and children it impacts. Lastly, one may argue that IDE has been so prolific in producing agricultural tools due to their for profit structure, allowing them to invest in the development of new solutions for this issue with their profits. With a huge market, affordability, and the ability to transform the market, Embrace has the potential to fulfill most components of the zero based design framework, but must look to convert its nonprofit model to a hybrid or for-profit entity if they are to achieve the scale needed to make an powerful impact in infant mortality.
