Mary kicks the blanket off, flopping to her side on the bed. She peels her eyes open to see the alarm clock smugly looking back at her with 2:00 AM written on its face. Feeling like she is lying in the middle of a desert, she makes her way down the seemingly miles-long hallway to get a drink of water from the kitchen.
Mary quenches her parched throat, as many of us do, with running water in her home. However, running water is a convenience still not available in many parts of the world.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 780 million people globally do not have access to running water.
On Tanna Island, one of the many islands in the nation of Vanuatu, women, and children walk miles per day to fetch fresh drinking water from wells and boreholes. The lack of localized running water creates a host of practical challenges for families and entire communities:
· A healthy person can reasonably carry only one, five-gallon bucket of water.
· Obtaining the needed amount of water requires multiple trips per day.
· Water sources are miles away.
· Multiple trips comprise four to six hours per day, every day.
A lack of funding, arduous and treacherous terrain and the inaccessibility of construction equipment meant that new solutions to a lack of freshwater were hard to come by. But by making slight adjustments to an existing tool and introducing the solution in a completely new scenario, innovation was born.
In 1991, Pettie Petzer and Johan Jonker, two South African engineers, used a water roller that flattens lawns and dirt to create level surfaces, as a water transport tool. The Hippo Water Roller allows one person to roll twenty-four gallons of water in a single trip, saving hundreds of hours, multiple trips, and miles of daily trekking.
See this innovative tool in action in the video and consider that innovation is not limited to countries with a need to tote drinking water. Using lessons from the roller story, and developing solid innovation habits, you can spark your creative thinking for application to everyday business needs.
Meaningful solutions do not always require new inventions or technology. Better outcomes can often develop using what is currently available in a slightly different way. What are some processes, tools, or systems in your business environment that could be improved by reimagining something already used?
