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Entrepreneurship
Throughout our research and design process, our team put great importance on the realistic implementation of our project. We corresponded with established industry leaders and community groups in our target populations. This page aims to describe the invaluable insights we gained from them and how they shaped our finished product.
GoSol
We were very fortunate to have worked with GoSol, a social enterprise aimed at achieving energy independence for NGOs and businesses in low-resource settings. The GoSol team are a renowned group of innovators and environmentalists based in Finland. Their extensive experience in the field of solar technology has been gathered from years of work dedicated to their many international projects. GoSol specialise in solar concentration systems and played a major role not only in shaping the design of our product but also providing an action plan for the implementation and commercial feasibility of our overall project.
Implementation action plan
To start, we decided to go for an open source humanitarian solution rather than a profit driven business. This idea was inspired by GoSol’s Kenyan project. We feel that the humanitarian approach demonstrated by GoSol was in line with the iGEM philosophy of solving real world problems with responsible technology. This principle greatly influenced our design. Instead of going for a “black box” model where we could patent and profit, we decided to make our design as open source as possible. The product developed from a piece of complementary hardware into a reproducible solution with responsible production. From their own hands on experience, GoSol provided us with a realistic action plan that is aimed towards producing a commercially viable solution for our target population. They suggested that we reach out and try to build upon existing commerce structures instead of designing a standalone unit. They described how we could follow a plan similar to their international projects. Instead of shipping and distributing the whole solar incubator product they encouraged us to rely on local fabrication as much as possible. This led us to refine our product into a simple microcontroller and multi-valve package. This refinement greatly increases the scalability of what we hope to achieve. By relying more on local fabrication we essentially encourage energy independence and in turn, with our product, independent pasteurisation and vitamin A supplementation.
Applied Science and technology
We gained an amazing insight into the potential of our project by communicating with the Applied Science and Technology group. This group is based in Telangana, one of our target populations in India. They are prolific developers of solar thermal technology, with particular interests in technologies related to food production. The group expressed great positivity regarding the use of our design in milk pasteurisation. We were grateful to gain an insight into the culture in which our project will eventually be utilised. The group shared information confirming that we could achieve local fabrication and utilisation.
Beyond iGEM
We have undoubtedly succeeded in creating a starting point for commercial utilisation of our design. In the 10 week period, we conceived and refined a design worthy of implementation in our target populations. Beyond the iGEM competition, we endeavour to continue with this project. We hope to work further with GoSol and develop a pasteurisation system that can be built into their existing projects. We aim to reach out to more groups like Applied Science and Technology and coordinate local fabrication of a prototype.
