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    Case Study

    EssentialMed Foundation: A stuck innovator

    By Leif M. Sjöblom, Ahmed Lateb, René Monnard, Henry Rourke, Rati Farini Srihadi and Pascal Widmer
    14 pages
    December 2015
    Order this case study
    Reference: IMD-7-1768

    Today, 14% of the world’s population (US, Japan and Europe) accounts for over 80% of the medical devices market. Lower income countries (aka the Global South) do not have access to essential medical imaging devices such as X-Ray machines. The main reasons are initial costs, reliability and maintenance. An EPFL-led team of 40 academics and specialists developed a proof-of-concept for a digital radiography machine. It was designed specifically to address the harsh environment and unreliable electrical supply found in the Global South at a tenth of the cost of competitors. Bertrand and Klaus, the two project leaders, have been struggling to find investors to enable their EssentialMed foundation to complete the development and commercialization of the product in Africa. But investors didn’t seem to get it. What were they missing? EssentialMed was nearly out of funds, with its one full-time equivalent employee position at risk. EssentialMed desperately needed to raise additional funds but did it have the right strategy, business model and approach to investors?

    Learning Objective

    The case can be used to achieve the following learning objectives: 1) How to create and capture value for end users and investors. 2) How to provide access to high capital intensive equipment to low income countries (service instead of product). 3) How to compare and choose financially between different projects (e.g. IRR, NPV, breakeven). 4) How to involve stakeholders in product development (co-creation).

    Keywords
    Strategy, Business Model, Customer Insight, Innovation, Internal Rate of Return
    Settings
    World/global
    EssentialMed Foundation, Healthcare, Medical Equipment
    2009-2015
    Type
    Field Research
    Copyright
    © 2015
    Available Languages
    English
    Related material
    Teaching note
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