Last year the latest edition of Teresa Chahine’s book “Social Entrepreneurship” was published featuring ColaLife as a case study. Teresa then incorporated the case study into her course at Yale on Public Health Entrepreneurship & Intrapreneurship and on 24 April 2024 we were invited to join the ColaLife session for a Q&A with students.
Teresa has subsequently written up the case study so that her colleagues can deliver it if they wish to. She has kindly permitted us to re-publish this here.
Public Health Entrepreneurship & Intrapreneurship
Teresa Chahine, ScD, Yale University, Spring 2024
Session 10: Cola Life: Ecosystem Entrepreneurship
Case:
ColaLife
ORS/Zinc Co–pack alliance (ORSZCA)
Required Readings:
Case Study on Institutionalizing Innovation
Social Entrepreneurs as Ecosystem Catalysts
Supplementary Readings (Optional but highly recommended!):
Results of ColaLife trial: Emulating value–chains of fast–moving consumer goods
Design thinking and customer needs: lessons from ColaLife
Videos (Optional):
The Cola Road documentary
How many lives could be saved with focus on co–packaged ORS and Zinc? presentation (10min)
Recent interview ithe Simon Berry
Case Analysis Questions:
- The founders of ColaLife want to exit. Their approach since the beginning has been not to start anything that can’t continue without them. They closed down ColaLife on 31 March 2024. Would you have done the same? What are the pros and cons? Would you do the same, and why? How would you decide whether, when, and how to exit?
- The innovation behind ColaLife was packaging and distributing oral rehydration salts with other goods through retail channels. What other public health needs do you think this could be applicable for, and in which kinds of settings? What would be needed to make it work in those settings? Discuss potential limitations and unintended consequences.
- How does the approach in this case compare with other approaches more commonly seen in Public Private Partnerships (PPP), such as Project Last Mile or others you’ve come across? How might the learnings from ColaLife be used to enhance the social impact of such partnerships?
Note to Instructors:
This case was taught as part of a case-based course at Yale School of Management, which met twice a week for 80min over six weeks (half a semester). A description of the course and learning objectives can be found in the appendix on the next page. Here are the slides for the course intro lecture and wrap up for further context, and here is the course framework.
The format for case discussions is generally a 5-10min intro, 15-20min per discussion question, and 5-10min conclusion. For each discussion question, I start by hearing the thoughts that students have prepared, and then chiming in with my observations.
In this particular case, the ColaLife founders agreed to join the class virtually, by zoom. I kept the intro and conclusion short (slides here); and after hearing from the students on each discussion question, I turned to our guests to chime in. Once we heard their thoughts on all three discussion questions, we asked them to share any closing thoughts, general comments and reflections on their entrepreneurship journey. (This last segment felt pretty short; I had honestly hoped there would be more time for general Q&A, but the case discussion itself took up most of the class time.)
The learning objectives for this particular case study were for students to understand the meaning of ecosystem entrepreneurship (building something bigger than your specific intervention or company, that can continue to grow beyond your individual endeavor); to compare the relatively more decolonial approach of this endeavor with others (for example with more typical public private partnerships like Project Last Mile, which we had discussed in the class session prior to this one); and to think critically about different paths to exit.
The discussion can vary widely depending on the students in the class. My students are a mix of MBA, MPH, MPP, MEM, MDiv and a few undergraduate students. I taught two sections back-to-back, and while there were similar themes, the students’ answers also took the two conversations in slightly different directions. You can view the photos of the whiteboard here: section one and section two. Section one was smaller, with about thirty or so students, and had more MPH students. Section two was larger, with almost fifty students, and had more MBA students.
A recurring question we asked this semester across both sections and across multiple cases was: What does success look like, both in process and outcome? Some of the conversations that took place around this question were shared in Season 8 of the Impact & Innovation podcast, recorded with other case protagonists from this semester who joined us in person on campus.
For Further Info:
To discuss the teaching of the ColaLife case, or just to talk about social entrepreneurship in general, please don’t hesitate to contact me. My email is teresa.chahine@yale.edu
Appendix: Course Description
This is a case-based course about innovation and entrepreneurship for health equity and drivers of health. Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires addressing obstacles to health such as poverty, racism, gender and other biases and their consequences, including powerlessness and lack of access to good jobs with fair pay, quality education and housing, healthy foods, safe environments, and health care. We refer to these as drivers of health. The cases in this course bring to light the complexities in drivers of health, and the role of entrepreneurship and cross-sectoral collaboration in eliminating health disparities. Class discussions are aimed at providing students with experience in understanding potential benefits and pitfalls of applying public health entrepreneurship to improve health equity and drivers of health.
We examine cases of entrepreneurship for health equity in the U.S. and globally, using a research-based framework to analyze the role of design justice, resource mobilization, financial viability, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and systems strengthening. Cases include start-ups and new ventures within existing institutions, referred to as intrapreneurship. We also examine cases of collective impact, or innovating across multiple institutions. Over the years, students in this class have began referring to these as extrapreneurship. This course brings together students from the Schools of
Management, Public Health, Environment, Global Affairs, Divinity, Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and undergraduates.
Course Objectives: By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Apply design justice and systems thinking to evaluate public health innovations through the lens of health equity
- Critically examine the role of stakeholders across sectors in shaping the drivers of health
- Understand revenue streams and financing options for public health ventures in new and existing organizations
- Analyze the range of potential outcomes resulting from public health entrepreneurship, including the positive potential for partnering across sectors to improve health equity, and also the potential for unintended consequences which may result in propagating or exacerbating the status quo.
Course Requirements:
Engagement (35%) – points added for meaningful contribution to collective learning, and also for being fully present and not multi-tasking
Paper 1: Written case analysis (30%) – sign up for one of the cases in advance
Paper 2: Critical analysis of PHEI framework (35%)
