Daily Brief: The Bambulance (w/ Response)
Posted in Business and Development, Social Enterprise, Uncategorized by Marco Puccia with 6 Comments
Today seems to be a slow news day, so during my daily reading I was thrilled to come across the Bambulance! In business we talk a lot about innovative and disruptive design: creating a product that can dramatically change the balance of traditional product categories or industries. This is also a major discussion among BOPreneurs (entrepreneurs designing for the bottom of the pyramid). Designing for BOP markets requires a critical understanding of local cuture, but also local capacity (physical and financial). One of the best books I’ve read on the topic is Paul Polak’s “Out of Poverty”.
The Bambulance Project is dedicated to improving health transport in rural Kenya by providing safe, affordable medical transportation in the form of a bicycle-pulled stretcher made primarily from strong bamboo. Locally manufactured and distributed, the project also seeks to develop skills and provide economic opportunities within the communities it serves.
The Bambulance is a product of Canadian based Design for Development Society. From their website, I cannot get a good grasp on whether business models are being used in either the product development, sales, or implementation stages. Nor is there any information about the price structure involved. It does say that the project is “open-source”, presumably meaning that the parent organization (Canadian based Design for Development Society) is playing more a supervisory role in the whole process. While they are focused on creating a “sustainable design”, I would strongly encourage them to evaluate the business potential for their product. While the Bambulance may be environmentally and socially sustainable, it cannot be economically sustainable until a business model has been produced around it; This means that the product can be produced and sold without donor funding.
Imagine, through a single product, empowering local bamboo farmers, creating sustainable employment across the value chain, creating new periphery businesses (eg. maintenance, parts, etc.) and possibly entrepreneurs to create new private ambulance services. There is a lot of potential here for a seriously strong, socially conscious business that can empower local communities and individuals — and that will not remain dependent on outside funding. This is what we ought to be trying to achieve in development. Hopefully, we will soon see Bambulance handed off to local entrepreneurs with awesome results.
Here is a video of the production process:
Here are some links on the project:
