Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
costs are the limiting factor, and large companies where short-term proitability and lack
of innovation are the limiting factors.
In hindsight, the BoP protocol has been justiied by the inal result if one hypothetically
multiplies a billion people by the very small amount of capital available from each con-
sumer, resulting in a very large potential number. Such a perspective ignores the kinetic
pathways required to get to that end point, in which large sums of capital must be applied
for long periods. It is arguable that the inancial return available from other investment
opportunities substantially renders the BoP protocol a theoretical exercise as opposed to
a practical one.
21.4 Scaling with TWI 2.0
Although the TWI 1.0 product was a successful innovation in that it was established in
the marketplace, the growth rate was not high enough to effect the desired change and be
sustainable. TWI wanted to bring pathogen- and arsenic-free water to more people more
rapidly, and to do this, more iteration with the business model, technology, and market
application was required to arrive at a more eficient and thus self-sustaining deployment
model.
The TWI 1.0 product built brand for TWI in Mexico, especially with local communities
that TWI 1.0 served, as well as with the local municipality oficials and the federal authori-
ties (CONAGUA particularly) in Mexico. Because of this brand and these relationships,
TWI was encouraged to continue engaging local municipalities in alternative business
plans. After all, TWI had converged on the basic set of technologies required to solve the
arsenic problem, and the municipalities theoretically had the resources to deploy the solu-
tions faster.
As market application, technology, and business factors all interact, it is not a surprise
that the new market (municipal solution to the arsenic problem) changed the technology
and business model. TWI needed to make a signiicant change to adapt to these factors. A
sustainable model dictated that we generate greater cash low allowing us to serve more
people. We consciously changed our goal from a “one-to-one” to a “one-to-many” model
and determined to target the municipality itself as our primary customer. This required us
to rethink all the factors, as we wished to forge a path never traversed—sell a municipality
on a POD model—convince them that our approach was superior to the traditional central
treatment, supplemented by bottled water, approach.
We determined that an innovative model for the municipality required a device that
was effective from a cost and technology standpoint, and must be durable, requiring no
replacement or maintenance over extended periods.
TWI took the municipal requirements back to the laboratory and developed a new solu-
tion built around the same core 1.0 technology. New clever engineering was required, and
the result is the TWI 2.0 (Figure 21.5), which is our current municipal product. The result
is an ambient temperature unit that will purify the water of arsenic and pathogens for
5 years at a price point that resulted in high demand for the product. The 2.0 cleans all the
water (no discharge waste) and requires no electricity for iltration, with a high 1.5 liter
per minute (LPM) low rate at low applied pressures of 10 pounds per square inch. TWI
utilizes a proprietary, nanostructured, high-capacity material to effectively mitigate ele-
vated arsenic concentrations, resulting in long lifetimes. Figure 21.6 shows a plot of arsenic
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