PATH and the Safe Water Project: Empowering the Poor through User-Centered Design Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

This case offers an overview of the nonprofit organization PATH and its Safe Water Project-a five-year effort started in late 2006 with $17 million in funds from the global development unit of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The goal of the grant was to evaluate to what extent market-based strategies might help hasten the widespread adoption and sustained usage of home water treatment and safe storage products by low income populations. Through a portfolio of field-based pilots, PATH thought to experiment with different sales and distribution strategies to enhance consumer access to safe water solutions, including water filters and chlorine-based water purification pills.

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It also intended to analyze consumer financing models and different pricing to deal with the affordability of these products. Nevertheless, an additional issue was exposed by wide-ranging market research -few goods in the space designed expressly to satisfy the unique demands and preferences of these consumers and were both powerful. So, PATH applied for and was awarded $7 million in additional grant funds from the Gates Foundation to propose a water filter product which will meet high standards of effectiveness, be desired-or aspirational-to low income consumers, and operate successfully within the rural states where the prevailing majority of the poor lived. The PATH team will accomplish this via a process that the entity labeled as user-focused design.

PUBLICATION DATE: April 01, 2013 PRODUCT #: OIT107-HCB-ENG

This is just an excerpt. This case is about LEADERSHIP & MANAGING PEOPLE

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