MiracleFeet and INSEAD: Business as a force for good
MiracleFeet’s partnership with INSEAD, one of the world’s leading and largest business schools, started in 2021 when 600 INSEAD students gathered for the 10th Master Strategy Day—a competition to create a strategy for MiracleFeet to expand clubfoot treatment in middle-income countries. Since then, the partnership has continued through a course in INSEAD’s master’s in business administration (MBA) program called Business as a Force for Good.
MiracleFeet and INSEAD staff design the course collaboratively identifying challenges partners face in treating clubfoot. INSEAD student groups are then matched with a MiracleFeet partner to discuss the identified challenge, relevant context, and potential solutions. The practicum concludes with an in-country meeting including visits to clubfoot clinics and home visits, as well as two full days of in-person interactive sessions. On the last day of the convening, INSEAD students present their final recommendations. Following the practicum, student groups reconvene to reflect and offer updates to their final deliverables.
This year, the Business as a Force for Good Practicum culminated in a trip to The Gambia where 23 MBA students and six MiracleFeet Partners from five countries participated: Gambia Clubfoot Foundation (The Gambia), Fondation Axian (Madagascar), Association Premier Pas (Morocco), Health & Development Support Programme and The Straight Child Foundation (Nigeria), and Health Link (South Sudan).
Outcomes
The goal of the practicum is to support MiracleFeet partners with solutions that are beneficial, desirable, and financially and operationally feasible. Bonus points if the solutions are also replicable across geographies and/or beneficial to future partners.
This year, each group came away with tangible, actionable, and realistic solutions to challenges around low enrollments, weak key performance indicators (KPIs), and insufficient stakeholder relationships. The group also benefited from peer-to-peer learning, exposure to new and different perspectives, and new connections.
Solutions and recommendations from this practicum included:
- The Gambia Clubfoot Foundation – Identify high-priority stakeholders and design an action plan focused on high-impact, low-resource steps to increase access to clubfoot treatment.
- Fondation Axian – Identify high-impact stakeholders and create a series of action steps to leverage stakeholders.
- Association Premier Pas – Present a business case for creating low-resources partnerships with regional health clinics.
- HANDS – Identify key geographic areas for increased attention and develop a low-cost plan to provider transportation in key areas.
- The Straight Child Foundation – Develop a pitch and a pilot project for shuttle transportation services to help families get to and from clinic appointments.
- Health Link South Sudan – Design a roadmap for improving KPIs in Juba that can be applied in other regions of the country.
INSEAD is one of the world’s leading and largest business schools and their MBA Program is consistently ranked among the top in the world. With campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, INSEAD brings together faculty students from across the globe the build a better world.
A collision of teaching, innovation, and social good, the Business as a Force for Good course challenges MBA students to design strategic solutions to achieve meaningful business and social impact goals. MiracleFeet and our partners are grateful for this collaboration and for the thoughtful brainstorms and recommendations that will help our partners implement our mission to bring clubfoot care to more children across the globe.
