Total Innovation Podcast
Welcome to "Total Innovation," the podcast where I explore all the different aspects of innovation, transformation and change. From the disruptive minds of startup founders to the strategic meeting rooms of global giants, I bring you the stories of change-makers. The podcast will engage with different voices, and peer into the multi-faceted world of innovation across and within large organisations.
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Total Innovation Podcast
18: Harry Sangree: Humanitarian Crowd Solving - Part 1
Harry is a career-long specialist in generating and applying innovation. Passionate about innovation to solve the hardest problems in seafreight and humanitarian causes.
Three times a key member of the leadership teams of early-stage technology companies that aggressively innovated, including once as a co-founder. Two grew from pre-revenue to enterprise values over $100 million. Domain expertise in the automation of the logistics of container shipping, global trade and export/import.
He has had direct management roles in corporate strategy, sales, marketing, business development, product management, channel sales, field operations, consulting, software development, finance, and mergers & acquisitions.
Harry's specialties include: Expert in raising external funding and positioning companies for strategic sale or investment - Directed and participated in raising over $100 million of venture and private equity investment.
Learn more about Harry’s work at Seafreight Labs and how innovation is driving solutions in humanitarian challenges: https://www.seafreightlabs.com/
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Total Innovation Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Simon Hill. This podcast is part of a two part special on humanitarian crowdsolving. Our guest today has enjoyed a successful business career building and creating value, founding, growing, and successfully scaling two companies from pre revenue to over a hundred million dollars of enterprise value. He has subsequently dedicated part of his focus, time and resources to what he has come to call humanitarian crowdsolving. In the process, setting the foundations for positively impacting the lives of millions of people globally. A humble and inspirational gentleman, please welcome Harry Sangree, founder and president of Seafreight Labs, to the podcast. Welcome, Harry.
Harry Sangree:Thank you.
Simon Hill:Very good to have you. And, uh, I'm looking forward to this. As I said, this is part of a two part set series that really, I think you created, um, through the great work that you have enabled us to do. And this, this concepts of humanitarian crowd solving normally on the podcast, I read out these lengthy introductions. I didn't need to do much for you, but I thought maybe you can come and just talk a little bit about your background to start with, right? What is it that led you? From that successful business career and maybe talk a little bit about that through to The second part of your of your life if you will in terms of uh, humanitarian crowd solving.
Harry Sangree:Well, thanks Well, my career has been long. I've been working about 40 years now, and I work mostly in Uh, software and in small startup environment type companies involved in global logistics. So, as you said, I had two startups that both got to a hundred million dollars of enterprise value, both involved in the logistics of global trade. Uh, then after I finished the second of those, I worked in consulting in global trade and container shipping in particular for a number of years after that. And I was getting tired of working for somebody else. So I decided to start my own thing again and work for myself and try and bring new thinking to the container shipping industry. Container shipping is a very old industry or shipping at least as a group old industry. Container shipping is a new flavor of that, but. Shipping is old. And so I thought it could benefit from some new, fresh thinking. And I decided to start this company that would try and do that, called Seafreight Labs. The whole concept of the company was to use the crowd, global crowd, as a platform. And a framework to bring in ideas that weren't in the container shipping industry so far. And I was really excited about this new concept. No one had done that before in container shipping. And this is going to be a way to help container shipping. Open a new chapter of innovation, but this was around early 2020 when I had everything all set up and ready to go and I was just getting ready to fly out to California to launch the company at a big event there called TPM and we got a message from the people who are running that event saying, oh, we just canceled the event. COVID is happening. No one knows what COVID is, but we're afraid. And so we're not going to have our event. So this meant that I couldn't go meet all the people I was planning to meet and try and do all the sales efforts I was going to do. And then very soon thereafter, all the people I was going to meet told me, Harry container shipping is. In a potential crisis, no one knows what's going to happen. We're not going to try anything new. Uh, thank you very much. Uh, don't call us. We'll call you. And so
Simon Hill:I,
Harry Sangree:I didn't know what to do, but I had a platform. I had a concept. I had a partnership with Bazooka's, uh. The predecessor company to Wazoku in this line of work called Innocentive, which had a software environment for doing this and a methodology for doing this. And so I thought, okay, what, who else could benefit from this kind of capability? And I was talking to my wife about this and she said, well, Harry, we give money to a number of organizations. Maybe we should call them and see if they have any problems. That they can't solve because maybe your whole thing could work for them, even if nobody in container shipping wants it right now. So we called up a couple of the organizations we gave money to, one called Habitat for Humanity, one called World Vision. And we got to the right people after a couple of phone calls. And we said, well, do you have any problems that you wish you could have help on solving? And they said, of course we do. And so we made an arrangement where we could help them solve their problems by bringing them to the global crowd. And my company, Seafreight Labs, would provide the, what I call, project advising or consulting on how to do this. My title became Project Advisor. And I was now working with these two organizations, which is a very far away from container shipping, but I was going to get to try out, uh, this whole idea of crowdsolving to see if it really does work like the Innocentive website said it works. At the same time, I was, uh, I had always wanted to be doing the work I did in some kind of structured way. Where I could have, be part of something bigger than just myself and doing a little bit of nonprofit work. So I found a group called the Pledge 1 percent Movement, which is actually something that's from California, Silicon Valley. It now has 18, 000 companies who are members of the group. It's a group where the company says we would like to do something to help our community and we commit to giving 1 percent of something of importance to us. Either our profits or our time or our product or our equity, or you can do all of those if you want to. But in my case, I wanted to do my time and my product. And so I said that I'm going to use the political present movement to be the framework for how I work with Habitat and with World Vision. And so that I was able to structure the deal with them so I could give my time as part of the whole deal to let them try out this. This new methodology, the whole methodology worked better than we expected. And between 2020 and 2022, we did a total of eight crowd solving projects. And I'm sure we'll talk more about that in the coming minutes, but, uh, we did an eight of them and six of them turned out to be what we call successful. That is the. Organization awarded prize money to a solver because the solver successfully brought a solution to the seeking organization to that made them happy enough to say, okay, yes, we'll pay you for this. We'd like this and we want to, we want to take it forward. And so that was very. It's exciting that the whole effort, this pivot that COVID led to, then led to a happy outcome a couple of years later.
Simon Hill:Yeah, it's a pretty incredible journey, right? And um, it's a story that, you know, I love telling for all of its different bits and pieces of it. From an entrepreneurial perspective, it's, it's, it's got all the, it's got all the right edges and corners, the COVID impacts that, you know, this could have, you It's kind of been a story about innovation and shipping in containers and it turned out to be a totally different, different one in a very different part of life, but that fit very, still very closely with the personal drivers and motives that you, that you talked about behind 1 percent pledge and. Um, and other pieces as well. Talk to me a little bit about this humanitarian crowd solving concepts. Then, you know, was it something that you are familiar with? Is it something that you you've invented yourself? And what, like, just let's try and bring it to life a little bit for people.
Harry Sangree:Yeah, well, humanitarian crowd solving is is not something that I knew about before this initiative. Maybe somebody else had already tried it before that before, but I was not aware of it. And I've come up with this definition. It's a tool whose use is intended to enable large global humanitarian organizations to do their work more effectively, and that is better, faster, or cheaper. By tapping into the knowledge and expertise of the global crowd to find new ways to do important program related tasks of the sponsoring humanitarian organization. So that's a very long definition, which has a lot of pieces. So let me unpack it a little bit. The first concept is that it's a tool. So this is not some magic. Uh, thing that just makes problems go away. It's not something which will be the one stop shop to do everything the humanitarian organization needs to do to make its problems go away. It's just a tool in a tool set that the organization would have of other tools to move their mission forward. And the organization should think of it that way. It's just a tool, not the tool. It's aimed at large. Global humanitarian organizations. So you need to be big enough to have the scope to know what the problems are in the world. That are high impact problems and then have the scope that if a problem solution is discovered to build a commit to taking the solution and trying to develop it into a commercial product that then could help hundreds of thousands or millions of people. So it's not really designed for a small organization that just has small problems. The way I think about it is it's really designed for finding and solving big problems. The whole purpose of the Program is to help the organization be more successful at what it does. And I define success as better, faster, cheaper. So to let the non profit do what they do in a more effective way by doing it faster or doing it cheaper or doing it more effectively. And it achieves this by trying to find somebody in the world or maybe a few somebodies who have a different way of thinking about the problem or a different way of Solving the problem than the large nonprofit had done before the whole premise of crowd solving in general is that the world is very, very big and no matter what your organization is and how many people you have working for you, you don't have everybody working for you and therefore you don't have all the expertise of the world in your team. And if you can just find a way to tap into more expertise, then you could find a solution that you haven't had before. And my experience with humanitarian crowd solving is, yes, that's true. It's not just, it's not just marketing hype. And the last part is you, you, you, with this methodology, you can find new ways to think about problems and new ways to solve problems because there are people out there who, who look at the world and the problem differently than you do. And these. These people, if you can find them and you can bring them into your, into your team, then they can help your team be more successful at whatever it's doing. So that's the, that's the way I talk about humanitarian crowdsourcing now with, with other large nonprofits that I run into. And, and as you know, we have, I found one more organization that wanted to try it, the International Rescue Committee. And that's the second part of your two part series. Exactly. Talk, talk with them. We've been working the last two years together with them. On their problems.
Simon Hill:Yeah, on a very successful, successful program with them and. Definitely looking forward to pushing that narrative and that story out because it's yeah, there's some really inspirational stuff that's been enabled through it. Is there anything specific to humanitarian organizations that you think makes this particularly either, you know, attractive or troublesome, problematic for, for them, particularly when you're bringing this concepts. To them. Um, and then maybe we'll talk about, you know, some of the, some of the successes before we get into other, other lessons learned.
Harry Sangree:Well, I think every organization always wants to believe that it is doing a great job and it, it doesn't need help because it knows what it's doing. And probably humanitarian organizations have that same, uh, thought process somewhere inside the organization. But, uh, because nonprofits in general often have. Donors, private donors and volunteers involved, they may be more open to the idea of crowd solving than other kinds of organizations because they, their lifeblood is the interest of donors and private people and the crowd is really just a different kind of donor. They're giving intellectual gifts and, uh, IP gifts instead of money gifts. And so if you, if you think about it that way, from a nonprofit's point of view, then it's just a way to go out to go get different kinds of donations. And it's structured in a business structure through the prize, uh, context of crowdsolving, but it's something that I think. Nonprofit shouldn't be afraid of because it's just a different kind of way to reaching out to the larger community to ask for help in pursuing their mission.
Simon Hill:Just, just talk a little bit about how that process works. You know, you've walked it from challenge one now over. A number of these things. There's probably not many folk out there that have done as many of you at this point in time. And so a vast body of knowledge, but take you back to those early days. And, you know, your, your pivot away from business model one to business to business to into humanitarian space. Like, what did you, what did you learn about that process and how it works and anything resonant to the, to the humanitarian setting around that as well?
Harry Sangree:Well, the most important thing for any success in humanitarian space is to have an executive sponsor inside the organization who is going to support the effort. Because the effort does involve reaching out inside the organization to look for problems. And you don't want to have the team that's looking for problems be accused of meddling or messing things up or getting out of their lane. So, in all three cases that I've worked on Uh, Habitat for Humanity, World Vision, and the International Rescue Committee. We've had an executive sponsor who was willing to try the idea. None of them had any confidence, any guarantee it would work. They had hope it would work, but none, no one had any guarantee it would work. But they, they were willing to try it and they were willing to give the, the executive support to the effort. And then you need to have a, a team whose job it is to run the project. Inside the organization. So in all three cases, I had very committed people who wanted to help solve problems and wanted to give this a try and were open minded about how it could work, and so the coaching we gave them was the most important thing to do to make this whole thing work is get the first project you pick to be one that is likely to succeed, and that means look for a good problem, what I call a good problem that is a problem that is potentially high impact. It's got the potential for, uh, the crowd to deliver many solutions and to have expertise where they could deliver value and has the potential to have something tangible come out of it. So it can't just be something, uh, broad and hard, like. Solve inflation in Sierra Leone. This is my, my classic example of what's not a good problem. If the experts all the world can't solve inflation, then certainly the crowd can't solve it because it's not solvable. It has to be something that somebody, you believe somebody in the world has a solution to. It's just a matter of let's find them and get them to give us the solution and then we can tap it for our purposes and then use it. So the executive sponsor, the field team going out to the field, getting good problems, and then just follow the Was Zoku process was, Okra has this process that I've done now 15 times and 13 times out of 15. It led to a award being given to a solver. To see, yeah, it's over. And that that's very good odds. It's 87 percent success rate and in the innovation space and 87 percent success rate is. Is fantastic. It's highly unusual to have that kind of, uh, success. So the methodology plus those few setup things on the humanitarian side have what led to this kind of success.
Simon Hill:Yeah, finding those problems. I think that example you give was even one that was maybe brought up in early conversations with, uh, with various people as well. Right. So they're, they're real and they're analogous to all, all the similar things that you see in organizations around the world. Right. Like really focused down on. A problem you can control. And as we get into the, the subsequent discussion with the IRC, they'll, they'll even start to bring that to life a little bit more from their perspective as well. So with that phenomenal success rate, 80 plus percent, and you know, it, it, it does blow my mind because these are. Big hairy problems that we're dealing with in very complex settings as well. Can you share a couple of the success stories that you're, you're most proud of, or that perhaps have got most development against them from some of those early challenges?
Harry Sangree:Yeah. So I have two, I'd like to talk about the first one is from world vision. Uh, we're vision is a large, uh, organization that focuses on, uh, the division I was working with was focused on wash water, sanitation, and health. And the problem that they wanted solved was. Uh, for under $500, find a way to measure. The free chlorine levels of rural pipe water systems, the landscape for this problem is that the World Vision used to install wells in communities without water, and then people would carry the water from the well to their house and then use the water from a bucket in their house. And they were, they found that many people were having the water get contaminated on its way from the well to their house. So now they're changing their strategy to then build pipe water in the community to take it from the well much closer to the homes and then have spigots. Either in the home or very close to the home and that way they can reduce the contamination risk that the water has. The problem with doing that is that if you have pipe water you have to have chlorine in the pipes to make sure the water is not going to contaminate it while it sits in the pipe waiting to be pulled by the Open the spigot and the current technology for that cost 5, 000 per monitor. So if it cost 5, 000 per monitor, it really limits how much World Vision can do as far as installing new pipe water systems, because that's a lot of money to spend on just a monitor. The goal of having it be one 10th, the cost was something that was local. We told me, uh, told world vision not to try because it was just too hard. Nobody can think of a way to lower the cost by 90%, but world vision said, Oh, we need it that cheap. So let's just ask if somebody in the world can do it that cheap. And then if no one can, then we'll. We'll give up, but if they can, that'd be great. And so they ran the challenge with that as the goal, 90 percent reduction in the cost of the materials from the current commercial solutions, they got 286 people around the world who registered, they were from 64 different countries, they gave us 22. Solutions that they submitted that were considered quality solutions, not the kind that just were, were, uh, throwaways and that led to two finalists that were extensively reviewed and then one final winner who was from Bulgaria, who was a private inventor. Who just wanted to help with this problem and knew about the kind of technology one can use to screen, uh, water, uh, chlorine, uh, world vision would have had no way to find this guy. And this guy would have no way to, to participate with, with world vision for, I think it was a 25, 000 prize. So it was, it was a large sum of money, but not that large in the scheme of things. And if it can really save, uh, 4, 500 per installation, it's going to pay for itself very, very quickly. And so that was very exciting. And now, uh, World Vision engaged this solver to build some prototype units for them to let them test. And he built four units at World Vision's instruction, and they're now testing those in Kenya at a World Vision site to see if they are equivalent in their performance to what the commercial units do. And that testing is going to be ongoing in the next, probably over 2025. Uh, if it Is as good or close to as good as the commercial solution. Then the next challenge would be, okay, let's figure out how to get this to be something world vision could buy more of, and now be something for another, another day, another, another, uh, podcasts,
Simon Hill:but a big step forward. And, uh, and there was a significant cost reduction, I think in that, in that design as well. Yeah.
Harry Sangree:I think his solution is as a bill of materials cost of around 500, maybe it's, it's higher than that now with inflation. But. But it's still much, much less than the cost of buying the news, uh, solutions from the commercial vendor. And if World Vision concludes that his design is equivalent in functionality, or close to equivalent. Then they could find a place to get it manufactured and it would definitely cost less than, a lot less than 5, 000. Who knows how much profit the manufacturer will put on top of it, but some, it won't be, hopefully not that much profit margin. Incredible. Yeah. The second example I want to talk about is one from Habitat for Humanity. They are a large organization that build houses and focus on housing around the world. And they had a project that they did in the Philippines and the project definition there was for under 300 figure out a way to retrofit a home with no foundation so that it is more resilient in typhoons and earthquakes. And they had a 25, 000 prize in the Philippines, 1. 6 million homes have no foundations because people just build them as they get some money. And then they put a few more blocks on the wall and they eventually have a. Uh, one wall and then two walls and three or four walls, a roof, and then they have a house, but they never had time or any focus on building a foundation. And now they have a house with no foundation, and then a typhoon or a hurricane comes and the home is at extreme risk for being totally knocked down. So this challenge, we had 267 people who registered for it. We got 43. Uh, good quality submissions from 49 countries, as the solvers all came, we had three finalists that we actually built, uh, temporary homes from one wall of a home with each of the three designs. And then we had a machine that would shake the wall to see if the wall would break to simulate an earthquake. And then one of the designs did best in that simulated testing, and then that became the winner, and that was from the Philippines, actually, it was a university in the Philippines was the winner there. Habitat then wanted to test this idea and see what would villagers think of this solution and how might it work. Improve the home in the next hurricane or typhoon or earthquake that came there. So they then implemented this in nine different homes in the Philippines, six in urban areas, and they did the six in urban areas first, and then they decided. That they were not doing the field test properly. They had a number of things that they discovered about the process that were not to their satisfaction. And so they stopped and regrouped and then decided to then do the last of the field testing in rural settings. In the urban setting, they had a problem with the quality of the work and that they learned that they didn't supervise it properly. And that people were not using the rebar that was specified by the design, for example, and also the land rights of the people who were doing the construction on their homes. They didn't own always the land where they were doing the retrofit into, and so it's causing problems, legal problems for Habitat and the homeowners. So one of the benefits of field testing is you learn things like that. You learn what not to do as well as what to do. And so the last three homes they did were in rural settings that didn't have land issues and they had supervision of the construction so that they didn't have the quality problems that they had in the first six. However, in all nine of them, they interviewed the people after they were done and they had a 89 percent satisfaction level with the Retrofit which is quite high. Yeah That means it is one person out of the nine Didn't like it but eight out of the nine did like it and they were so pleased with this Result that they then decided to try and get the government of the philippines to promote this to other uh parts of the philippines and to other Channels in the philippines to get it more Adopted and they recently presented to a government group called the regional development council who has the power to, to say, this is good and then to promote it to lots of places where it could then be adopted widely. And that would be the dream come true for habitat and for me. Because. To have some, an idea that was just a kernel of a idea a few years ago to now be something that the government in the Philippines says families should consider this to make their homes more typhoon and earthquake resilient would be a great outcome of the whole process.
Simon Hill:Yeah, it's just, it, as I said in my intro, you know, like from, from, uh, Humble beginnings of a pivot of an idea to something that can potentially impacts millions of life. But we're also learning that scaling journey, right? You know, we've gone through this experimentation into, you know, a reasonably high volume of different projects together, but there's no guarantee still, even if you get good ideas. And this is often the innovators challenge, right? Is how do you get from a idea to something that Good idea on a piece of paper or in the lab into scaled impact. And so what are some of your lessons learned around, you know, getting from that, you know, yes, the challenge is successful and all these hundreds of people came from around the world to lend their. expertise, their IP, their ideas to something, to starting to move that towards, uh, impacts, um, or, or, or if not impacts, at least sort of, you know, progress in some way, shape or form.
Harry Sangree:Well, it all goes back to the organization, humanitarian organization looking for The good problem meaning a problem potential for high impact So if the problem is a serious problem And its solution would deliver value to lots and lots of people The organization is going to want to get that problem fixed. It's not just some nice to have thing that it was, it was fun to do this and let's put it on the shelf, like the problem is still out there. There are people whose homes are being knocked down by typhoons and earthquakes. Every time a typhoon or earthquake comes if they have no foundation in their home and it's not going to get any better by not doing something. So the organization has a need to, to help make this problem go away if they want to pursue their mission and World Vision's case, the water, they want to deliver water that is not contaminated. Their whole mission is to improve the lives of the people that they're serving. And if they have contaminated water, they're not being, they're at medical risk every day. So we need to solve that problem. So if the organization needs to solve it to make their mission come true, then they have an impetuous to find a way to move the ball forward. And, and this idea. It's something they've said is a good idea, and then they have a strong interest in moving the idea from the idea stage to the stage where I can make the problem go away. And that's the, the reason why my definition of humanitarian crowdsolving looks for large organizations that have the resources to, to pursue, uh, potential solutions because, uh, they want to solve it for once and for all.
Simon Hill:You talk, you talk to me in our preparation for this about this being the ultimate win win win model. Can you talk a little bit more to that?
Harry Sangree:Yeah, the, I like to talk about, everybody likes to have win win win because it's, it's always a good six for everybody to, to win. And this is actually one of the cases where it's really true. Uh, there are three different groups of people Who win in this process? The first, of course, is the people who will eventually get the solution that helps them, and that's the most important, the set. The people that the humanitarian organizations solve, the less fortunate people in the world, and they are all over the world, and there are different kinds of people in different kinds of situations. If these ideas do solve these problems, Then they are the eventual and ultimate winners because their problem would go away. And so that's, that's where the, my first focus is, are we helping those people? And, and if the solution can be brought to them, the answer will be yes. And the, the solution has to be in humanitarian space that it always must be a low cost solution. So every. The humanitarian challenge always has a cost component to it that says the solution must be less than X dollars. So the solution, if you deliver somebody a gold plated solution, it's not really a solution. It's gotta be one that meets their economic constraints and that's what, what we are always looking for. The organization that's Sponsoring the problem is called a seeker. They get many, many benefits. They get a solution to help them with their mission. And that's, I guess, obvious, but they also get a number of other things. They get a great story to tell to potential donors about how they are. They're not just doing the same old, same old, but they're trying to bring new ways of doing things to their work. And in that way, they're, they're different from all the other organizations that somebody could give money to. And in that way, uh, they are worthy of, of someone's donation. So I've heard many of the organizations I've partnered with using that story as a way to help them raise money from other people. They've also developed partnerships with. Like-minded organizations who work in a similar space. So in, in habitat's case, they're partnered with a group group called Engineers for Change, a, a subsidiary of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers who focus on having engineers help, uh, deliver solutions to technical problems around the world. And there's another organization called MIT Solve that does the same thing they're working to solve, bring solutions to hard problems and. These partnerships were developed by working together on these challenges and wouldn't, were not in place beforehand. Uh, these organizations also have gotten large donations from corporations and foundations to support the development of the solution once the solution was discovered. So in Habitat's case, They got a greater than a million dollar gift from the Wellcome Foundation in the UK to help them with a malaria solution that came out of another challenge that we ran in Kenya. A million dollars is a lot of money that came because of this 25, 000 challenge that Habitat ran that gave a prize to somebody. from, uh, the global crowd that brought in the solution. Another benefit for that, another win, part of the win is, uh, employee engagement. Employees who work for these organizations love having the organization do something new and different and then invite them to help. What problems do you have? What problems, uh, would you like to have the crowd help you with? And we've gotten great engagement from employees around organizations when, once they've understood how this works and how the crowd could be useful to them. And lastly, the The Seeker organization got new volunteers that they hadn't had before and never would have met before by the process of the crowd solving whole initiative. Some of the winning solvers that are so committed to the cause that they gave a solution to that they're willing to work for either no money or very limited money. To help the organization with their work. And so that's lots of benefits that the humanitarian organization gets. The last one of the winners is the solver. The solver also gets a win because they win a prize. The whole basis of crowd solving is that the challenge is put out there with the promise that if a winning solution is found, a prize of some amount of money will be given to the solver to get access to their idea. And in this case, the, uh, solvers have won between 15 and, and 35, 000 for each prize. That they have one. And the second thing the solver gets is not just money, but they get a feeling of personal satisfaction to help on these problems that they care about. I was just talking to a solver this past week, and they were just so excited that their idea might help hundreds of thousands of people in a particular issue that they're passionate about. And they want to do whatever they can to make that become true. And so it's just so exciting for me to see the passion of solvers around the world who want to help make these problems go away that they are working on.
Simon Hill:Yeah, I was going to add that in actually. I think it's a very important piece that can sometimes not be seen from the outside, which is, yeah, you put a cash prize up and yes, people will benefit from that. But. A lot of the joy and the satisfaction that comes from this is from people working on these problems that they know. Are meaningful and really apply, you know, to real world problems, they're gonna make a real difference to some of the most needy. And so you, you see the joy in their faces, right? And, and really experience that when you, when you interact with them. Look, it's been a very amazing journey that we've had together. And as, as just as we start to wind this up and then lead nicely into the part, uh, part two with the IRC, can I just ask you just to share some of your final reflections, um, around this, you know, we started. Well, we started, we talked through that journey and we've had this amazing experience together and driven all this, you know, as I, as I said, the front set the foundations for, but actually really meaningfully started to impact the lives of many, many, many thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people already, but what are your, what are your personal reflections on this?
Harry Sangree:Well, from the big picture point of view, I think back the kinds of problems that we're dealing with. are the problems that affect millions of people. Housing, water, sanitation, health, lighting, logistics, disease prevention, and farming. Those are the categories that, that the challenges we've run have fallen into. And just think about any of those challenges, it's millions of people who have A problem, one or more problems in those categories of problems. So that's fast. They're humanitarian cross solving is tackling big, big topic areas, big domains. And that's what makes it so exciting is that the, the process can have an impact on problems in those kinds of spaces. But the impact can only happen because problem is being worked on by organizations with the scale. And with the expertise and with the commitment and passion to work on problems in that space. So if, if just some individual were trying to do this. It probably wouldn't have much impact. It's the, the secret sauce here is by having it be these large organizations that already have the scale and the expertise and the, and the track record of the history and having them be the one looking for the solutions and having them get the solution and then have the capability to work on getting it into the field. That's what I think makes the whole process so, so exciting. And so have such great potential. The, the way that I've been able to put myself into it through the pledge 1 percent movement is also what makes it personally satisfying to me. There's a, the concept of the pledge 1 percent is that we should all be giving back. To the greater community because the greater community is, is why we've been able to live the life we have. And I firmly believe that and the whole structure that I've been able to have in this process of giving my time to, to help coach each of these organizations on how to do this. And at the beginning, I didn't know so much myself how to do it, but, but now after having done 15 of them, I feel like I am. I can truthfully say I'm an expert in the process that makes it a lot more satisfying for me personally, that I'm, I'm doing it in a way that has impact for the organization and also lets me act out on my personal values, working with the organization as this project advisor role.
Simon Hill:Yeah, I think I think that this dual combination has, you know, we didn't know where it would go. Right. But I think it's been a been an incredible collaboration. And you were talking to me about that sort of success to significance mindset. I was looking at the book. I didn't know it, but definitely a book worth worth recommending, I think, to. to others around that sort of other part of life and the contributing and, and giving back. But I do get the feeling having gone through this journey together that, you know, and it's, you know, I know the power of the crowd. I see him witness it every day, but in this part of the, the problem space and in this very different. Context that we're working in. You never quite know. And as I said, like, I encourage people to to get into this with with part two as well, because the IRC will share some of that real life concern that that that they had of, you know, is this just another technology solution as you very articulately put it up front? It's it's not. So thank you from my side for it. for helping us and enabling us to go on this journey together and to impact so many different people. I'm going to ask you for your final thoughts and. Maybe message to others that may be sitting thinking about this, whether it's within the context of pledge 1 percent or, or this idea of success to significance and how, how they might consider embracing similar types of approaches for impacts going forward.
Harry Sangree:Well, first of all, I want to tell people that my website, seafreightlabs. com has, has a lot of information about humanitarian crowd solving and how it's worked for Habitat and World Vision. And IRC, if you have questions on any particular thing we've talked about, there's also a blog I have there where I talk about different things that happened along the way and insights that I've had. But when I think about the big picture, I think about it this way. We've done 15 challenges and 13 of them made awards. That's an 87 percent success rate. I personally have read 1, 080 submissions across these challenges and there were 687 quality submissions, so that's. A pretty good amount of quality submissions that came into these challenges. And so as an organization that is having a lot of problems that maybe you haven't solved yet, think about this. For a five figure out of pocket investment, that means the money that we award for prizes and whatever the Wazoku fees were, where else could you invite more than a million people from all over the world to help you receive between 50 and 100 different submissions. From between 50 and 80 countries to a problem that you ask for help on and the solutions and submitted are so good that 80 percent of the time you're going to give an award and you're going to do field tests over half the time with the things that come back. There aren't many ways to help you get problems off your table are better than that. And that's, that's what a nonprofit organization should think about as they're. If they're just making a strategic planning for what can we do to do better, faster, cheaper on our delivery of our, our mission.
Simon Hill:Yeah. Yeah. I think we leave it there. Harry. I don't think I could put it any better myself. And I know those are authentic words. As I said up front, you're, uh, True gentlemen, and I the world owes you a lot for the work that we've done here and more will come as we go forward. Thank you for giving your time today to share your experiences to talk about the incredible work that you've enabled and brought and done. And I look forward to doing more together. As you said, people can find you on. LinkedIn and on your website as well. We'll share a link with the, with the episode notes as this goes out. And as I said earlier as well, please do check out part two of this where we'll dig into a much deeper case study with the international rescue committee. One of the projects that, that, that we've done together as well for today though. Thank you very much, Harry. And, uh, here's to impacting many more millions of lives as we go forward.
Harry Sangree:Thank you, Simon.
