{"id":34744,"date":"2018-11-14T10:25:16","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T15:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/crowdsourcing-a-moonshot-can-a-redesigned-toilet-help-india-win-the-battle-against-human-waste\/"},"modified":"2018-11-14T10:25:16","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T15:25:16","slug":"crowdsourcing-a-moonshot-can-a-redesigned-toilet-help-india-win-the-battle-against-human-waste","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/crowdsourcing-a-moonshot-can-a-redesigned-toilet-help-india-win-the-battle-against-human-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowdsourcing a moonshot: can a redesigned toilet help India win the battle against human waste?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Crowdsourcing a moonshot: can a redesigned toilet help India win the battle against human waste?<\/strong><\/p>\n

On August 14th<\/sup>, 2011, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced the gold-silver-bronze winners in its Reinvent The Toilet Challenge, a competition that awarded $6.5m in prices to the finalists[1]<\/a>. The project that won the gold medal transformed human urine and fessed into fertilizer, hydrogen, and chlorine that the system uses to clean itself and recharge its battery cells. The competition required the winner to keep operational costs under five cents per user per day and to function without fresh water or sewerage infrastructure. However, after the seventh anniversary of The Toilet Challenge, the Gates Foundation has not been able to promote the first commercial launch of any of the winning designs. What is missing?<\/p>\n

The Challenge aims at a lofty goal, a moonshot. Currently, close to 1 billion people defecate in the open globally, out of which 564 million are Indians[2]<\/a>; this practice has costly consequences in India: according to the World Bank, 44 million children under five have stunted growth and every year 300,000 children die from diarrheal diseases[3]<\/a>. To develop an inexpensive sanitation system suitable for the developing world has the potential to save $106 billion per year in India alone after accounting for death, sickness, and lost opportunities costs[4]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Open innovation \u2013 that is the practice of outsourcing innovative development projects to third parties, commonly in decentralized platforms \u2013 have helped the Gates Foundation to quickly propose a revolutionary improvement to a system that saw its latest update in the mid-1800s. However, progress stalled the Gates Foundation faced one of the critical challenges for open innovation structures: is not possible to crowd-source the road to market of the product, and as a result organization, commonly for-profit companies, need to steer the commercialization of the product. The Gates Foundation is not alone; the X-Prize has been unable to market many of the revolutionary inventions promoted by channeling more than $140 million[5]<\/a> in prizes to date.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Source: Gatesnotes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many of these moonshot innovations lack a critical mass of early adopters that would comprise a demand sufficient enough to sustain a for-profit enterprise. Despite the Foundation\u2019s efforts to strengthen the supply of commercially viable projects \u2013 according to The Economist the Gates Foundation invests over $80m per year on sanitation-related research and projects[6]<\/a> \u2013 there has not been a steep pickup in toilet demand key players such as Indian and Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

Luckily, the market for improved toilets seems to be turning the corner. In 2014, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a campaign called Clean India which promised to invest over $29 bn in installing over 110 million toilets nationwide. By 2017, the program claims to have constructed over 49 million toilets, with another 61 million still to go[7]<\/a>. In the process, the program has declared 30% of India as Open Defecation Free Zone, up from 8% in 2015[8]<\/a>. The Indian Government is not alone, several international organizations have announced similar initiatives. For example, UNICEF announced a new sanitation market-shaping strategy to help scale and deploy product and service innovations and increase private-sector engagement. Also, The French Development Agency committed to double its yearly funding for sanitation up to \u20ac600 million per year, and lastly, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the African Development Bank announced commitments with the potential to unlock $2.5 billion in financing for urban sanitation projects[9]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The pickup in demand has had a positive impact in the ventures that resulted from the original Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. In November 2018, Bill Gates announced in his blog that the companies sponsored by the Gates Foundation will present their products at the Reinvent Toilet Expo in Beijing and are ready to start licensing their designs[10]<\/a>. The announcement will likely open the projects for external investment from commercial companies interested to profit from the uptick in demand from the Indian government and other organizations.<\/p>\n

Crowdsourced challenges can spur unprecedented innovation leaps at stalled industries. However, these challenges must be quickly inscribed into a believable road to market path to bring to life commercially viable products. How do organizations steer the subsequent commercialization phases is as critical as the innovation itself; as a result, a key question arises: are organizations such as the Gates Foundation or the X-Price foundation the best suited to bring these innovations to the market? Or should they engage for-profit enterprises from the beginning to steer the marketing strategy?<\/p>\n

(Word Count: 770)<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cWhy sanitation should be sacred,\u201d The Economist, April 22nd <\/sup>2014, https:\/\/www.economist.com\/the-economist-explains\/2014\/04\/21\/why-sanitation-should-be-sacred, accessed November 2018<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Sanitation Innovation Accelerator, 2016 Annual Report, p. 2, https:\/\/www.ircwash.org\/sites\/default\/files\/sia16_print_2.pdf, accessed November 2018<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> \u201cWhy is it so hard to fix India\u2019s sanitation,\u201d The Economist, September 25th <\/sup>2017, https:\/\/www.economist.com\/the-economist-explains\/2017\/09\/24\/why-it-is-so-hard-to-fix-indias-sanitation, accessed November 2018<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Bill Gates, \u201cIndia is winning its war on human waste,\u201d Gatesnotes (blog), April 25, 2017, https:\/\/www.gatesnotes.com\/Development\/Indias-War-on-Human-Waste, accessed November 2018<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> The X-Prize Foundation, \u201cAbout Us,\u201d https:\/\/www.xprize.org\/about\/about-us, accessed November 2018<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> \u201cFlushed with pride,\u201d The Economist, August 15th <\/sup>2012, https:\/\/www.economist.com\/babbage\/2012\/08\/15\/flushed-with-pride, accessed November 2018<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> \u201cWhy is it so hard to fix India\u2019s sanitation,\u201d The Economist, September 25th <\/sup>2017, https:\/\/www.economist.com\/the-economist-explains\/2017\/09\/24\/why-it-is-so-hard-to-fix-indias-sanitation, accessed November 2018<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Bill Gates, \u201cIndia is winning its war on human waste,\u201d Gatesnotes (blog), April 25, 2017, https:\/\/www.gatesnotes.com\/Development\/Indias-War-on-Human-Waste, accessed November 2018<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> \u201cBill Gates Launches Reinvented Toilet Expo Showcasing New Pathogen-Killing Sanitation Products That Don\u2019t Require Sewers or Water Lines,\u201d press release, November 6, 2018, on Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website, https:\/\/www.gatesfoundation.org\/Media-Center\/Press-Releases\/2018\/11\/Bill-Gates-Launches-Reinvented-Toilet-Expo-Showcasing-New-Pathogen-Killing-Sanitation-Products, accessed November 2018<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Bill Gates, \u201cWhy the world deserves a better toilet,\u201d Gatesnotes (blog), November 8, 2018, https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/pulse\/why-world-deserves-better-toilet-bill-gates-1e\/, accessed November 2018<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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