“I determined to put together the equivalent of an Apollo project for water,” he said.
This is exciting. Even better, it will work. Kevin McGovern was also the founder of KX Industries who developed the filter technology for PUR and Brita. Excerpt from Marc Gunther’s post:
(…) Sure, it sounds a little grandiose, but all successful entrepreneurs start with a big idea. And a key element to his approach is learning as much as possible from not only so-called experts but from the people he is hoping to serve.
“We have to build trust in the communities where we want to operate,” he explained. “The name of our game is not technology. The name of our game is distribution through a trusted system.” TWI has put together a protocol that it uses to roll out its network–you can find a summary of the company’s eight step process here.
While the notion that clean water is a human right has obvious appeal, McGovern made The Water Initiative a for-profit business to create economic incentives for people to buy and maintain the units, replace the filters and take a sense of ownership over the problem. He hopes to create thousands of micro-entrepreneurs all over the world.
“We can make a lot of money and we can create a lot of change,” he says.