You Can Always Find a Coke!

In villages where essential medicines are difficult to distribute, you can still buy a coke.

This was the striking observation that Simon Berry, founder of ColaLife stumbled across during field work in Africa. Having spent time volunteering in Africa as well, I understand this surprise. In the same village I lived and worked in, children were dying from a lack of life saving medications while nurses bought bottles of coke on their breaks.

Ambitious and socially minded organizations strive to deliver essential goods that could greatly improve the lives of individuals. However, so many of the people who could benefit from these goods live in rural areas that are difficult to distribute to without high costs to usually small companies. Yet Coca-Cola just seems to be everywhere.

Simon Berry focused on this seeming disparity and decided to utilize the distribution power of a giant like Coke to meet the needs of underserved people. With this idea in mind, he stated the organization ColaLife and developed the AidPod. The AidPod is a container that fits between the necks of coca-cola bottles in their crates and can hold essential items such as vitamins. The pods do not take up any extra room in the crates because they occupy the unused space.

Berry makes clear that the AidPods would be focused on the needs of communities as determined by the members of those communities. By allowing the consumers to decide what is most vital to their communities, they actively participate in the development of their public health sector.

While Coca-cola has not officially agreed to partner with ColaLife, the project has influenced the company to investigate alternative social uses of their elaborate distribution channels.

What I find most compelling about this project is its combination of an innovative product, the Aidpod, and the creative solution to distribution problems. We’ve discussed in class and through the readings that great ideas often fail because there is little consideration to how they will be distributed or sustained. Berry’s innovation has those considerations built into the design. In fact, it would even seem that the product idea developed from the solution to distribution. What other innovations incorporate clever implementation ideas?

The partnership of innovators and large global companies is becoming more common. What other creative partnerships between for-profit companies and socially minded organizations exist?