The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator by Ken Banks

Author:Ken Banks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
Published: 2013-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

Hal Aronson leading the backyard assembly of Solar ­Suitcases for Haiti. Photo by author.

As the Solar Suitcase was introduced to new countries, we worked to adapt the suitcase configuration to meet local requirements. ­Sometimes we learned the hard way. We discovered, for example, that an initial design short-cut – using an American AC-style outlet for our DC lights in Nigeria – was confusing in Haiti, where AC wall outlets accepted (and overpowered) our 12V DC lamps. We redesigned the outlets, and I flew to Haiti with a volunteer engineer, Brent Moellenberg, to retro­fit our Solar Suitcases with the new design.

After our experience in Haiti, it became clear to us that our programme was gaining traction. Hal and I dived into the project, converting our home into a Solar Suitcase assembly line. Equipment was strewn all over the house and the living room became our shipping and packing line. We juggled a steady stream of part-time volunteers, including many who were quite talented, but none who could sustain a hefty long-term commitment without remuneration.

Eager to gain increased exposure and support, we entered several competitions, enlisting the support of a talented UC Berkeley MBA student, Abhay Nihalani, and a recent MBA graduate from Duke, Michael MacHarg. In 2010 we applied for (and won) ten competitions and ­fellowships, including the Global Social Benefit Competition at UC Berkeley, the Ashoka Changemakers Healthy Mothers, Strong World Award, the Global Social Benefit Incubator at Santa Clara University, and a PopTech Fellowship.

This whirlwind year brought me into contact with other social entrepreneurs and mentors, and helped me gain perspective about ways to extend our reach. As I shared our limited experience in Nigeria and Haiti with social entrepreneur groups, we were asked to scale up our operations.

Hal and I had no experience in this realm. Hal had been a solar educator for years, initially creating hands-on solar electricity projects for students, and later, developing a curriculum for educators. My career in medicine demanded clinical and surgical acumen, not project management skills. We needed a thoughtful approach to scale up.

Some advisers suggested the best approach would be mass production of a simplified prototype. They encouraged us to immediately strip down some of the more costly features of our early design, and to manufacture a cheaper, less ambitious version of our product. ‘Fewer bells and whistles’, we were told.

We were worried about this approach. We had used an iterative approach, evolving the design of the Solar Suitcase to meet the needs of health workers working in unfathomable conditions. We didn’t want to downgrade the functionality of our product, and we weren’t ready to commit to one particular design without more field research.

Our dream was to create an optimised version of the suitcase incorporating existing feedback from our field installations, and to conduct further research on this model in a limited number of health facilities. Since our formative experience began in northern Nigeria, we thought this would be a good testing site. But we knew this would require staff, time and money.

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