Breakthrough Ventures: Effective Business Models in Frontier Markets (15.232)

About the Class

Faculty

Why do some enterprises contribute greatly to the lives of the people they serve, while others fall short? Breakthrough Ventures: Effective Business Models in Frontier Markets explores novel and underappreciated approaches to delivering health, education, sanitation, energy, logistics, jobs, and more in some of the world’s most challenging settings. Understanding how breakthrough ventures succeed—or fail—in doing more with less could teach and inspire innovators in any sector, whether for-profit or not. Cases, videos, class guests, and student projects fuel our analysis of emerging and established enterprises that are remaking business models across the globe. Course overview Science and engineering generate countless advances that could greatly improve lives, yet the products and services that exploit these discoveries can fail to reach those who most need them. Ineffective business models may be to blame. Breakthrough Ventures: Effective Business Models in Frontier Markets investigates specific arrangements of organizational design, strategy, and function that ventures in low-resource markets are harnessing to achieve scale, quality, and sustainability. Case by case, we analyze novel business solutions to what experts call the ‘implementation gap,’ the failure to deliver effective technologies and interventions to everyone who would benefit from them. We look at commercial and non-profit enterprises that have customized their service and product offerings to understand how they learn about their customers or beneficiaries, address the gaps and opportunities in the community and the market, train and develop the people they Breakthrough Ventures: Effective Business Models in Frontier Markets. S23. A. Sastry, MIT Sloan. 2 work with, refine their production and delivery methods, reach the underserved, and collaborate with public, private, and civic organizations. Our approach capitalizes on MIT Sloan strengths in strategy, entrepreneurship, technology, innovation, sustainability, systems, and logistics along with MIT signature domains of economic development, healthcare, education, and energy. Anjali Sastry builds on her abundant on-the-ground experience with front-line enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and elsewhere, along with her background in system dynamics, organizational studies, and field research and a great network of experts. First offered in 2010, this class initially focused on healthcare. In response to student requests, 15.232 expanded to include business models in a variety of sectors, including education, energy, logistics, financial inclusion, and job creation. Lively class sessions explore varied cases, compelling video content, and insights from experts, along with students’ perspectives. You’ll learn that there are unsung heroes who have already built innovative and effective commercial enterprises and nonprofits that generate sustainable revenue. You’ll hone your skills in analyzing business models and build a personal library of examples that could fuel your future innovations. Customer value, scale, systems thinking, finance, and sustainability are all central concerns. We’ll explore these concepts in a variety of ways. Course design Throughout the course, we analyze the issues through case studies, readings, and discussions. As we build our collection of examples, you will refine your understanding of the relationship between business models, impact, and context. 15.232 takes on several linked themes: business model thinking; scale and growth; quality improvement and learning; financial and social sustainability; and tensions and tradeoffs in scale, sustainability, and impact. Via case discussions, you’ll discover how these themes connect to the management choices that leaders and entrepreneurs face across settings and sectors. In the final segment of the course, you’ll share insights from your own analysis of a promising business model, connecting your assessment of the venture with themes from the class. These presentations set the stage for an integrated discussion about innovations in frontier-market business models.

Anjali Sastry

Anjali Sastry is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She is also a Lecturer at Harvard Medical School. Sastry explores practical aspects of organizational and managerial effectiveness in settings facing complex challenges and pressing needs, where her grounding in system dynamics offers insights for innovation and improvement. Her study of practical management approaches for improving healthcare delivery in resource-limited markets connects management, strategy, systems approaches, and design thinking with global health and action learning. Building on her extensive experience with on-the-ground improvement projects in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, she designs and carries out field studies and impact assessments, develops cases and other materials for teaching, and conducts qualitative and operational research in collaboration with domain experts and frontline practitioners. Her work on innovative business models in frontier markets investigates the factors shaping scale, quality, and sustainability relevant to both entrepreneurs and established organizations. As a Principal Investigator with MIT’s Tata Center for Technology and Design, Sastry investigates health innovation in India. These research interests translate into teaching innovations at MIT Sloan. She founded and led GlobalHealth Lab, which collaborates with selected enterprises on the front lines of health care delivery. Built around the needs that partners identify, she has overseen 75 projects that address management, operations, and strategy. Students work at MIT to design specific improvements they then help implement on-site, working alongside enterprise staff. Now, Sastry is studying impact and refining a set of practical field-tested tools drawn from these projects. Press coverage on these projects includes the Financial Times, Forbes, AP, National Public Radio, and the Times of India. Sastry’s teaching experience includes undergraduates, MBAs, and PhD students; executive Sloan Fellows; both custom and open-enrollment executive education courses at Harvard, University of Michigan, and MIT; faculty development; and mentoring student entrepreneurs and researchers at MIT, Harvard, Tufts, Stanford, and Boston University. Her investment in teaching has led to a stream of ongoing research to explore how professional students learn from experience, practice, and action. She is currently at work on her third book with Yasheng Huang on the disruptive educational and social impact of action learning. Sastry's professional experience includes management consulting at Bain and Company and research positions at Rocky Mountain Institute, where she worked in India, and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. As an assistant professor at the University of Michigan and MIT Sloan, she used system dynamics computer simulation to research imprinting in organizations, institutional theory, organizational learning, and patterns of change in organizations. Sastry’s research has appeared in Administrative Science Quarterly, Energy Policy, Corporate Reputation Review, and Technology Review. She also writes for broader audiences, with pieces in Fast Company, the Huffington Post, the Atlantic’s Quartz, and WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and has appeared on Bloomberg Business Radio, SiriusXM Business Radio, CBC’s The Current, and PRI’s Innovation Hub radio shows. In 2011, Sastry was appointed Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she continues to collaborate in both teaching and research in executive education and degree programs. She serves on the board of directors and is a member of the executive committee of global nonprofit Management Sciences for Health. She advises Mumbai-based Tata Trusts (where she spent May-August 2015 in residence), WonderWork, the Ashoka Foundation, Merck for Mothers, and the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, among others, She is also a frequent collaborator with colleagues from the Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard University, MIT’s D-Lab, the MIT IDEAS competition, the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, and the Global Business School Network. Sastry’s first book, Parenting Your Child with Autism: Practical Solutions, Strategies, and Advice for Helping Your Family, (New Harbinger Publications, 2012, coauthored with Blaise Aguirre) combines her personal experience, study of the research evidence, and management expertise in a practical guide for parents. In November 2014, Harvard Business Review Press published her book on designing projects for learning and innovation, Fail Better: Design Smart Mistakes and Succeed Sooner (coauthored with Kara Penn). Anjali Sastry holds an SB in physics, an SB in Russian Language, and a PhD in system dynamics, all from MIT.