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> Posted by Susy Cheston, Senior Advisor, CFI

In a challenge to luminaries gathered at the Clinton Global Initiative, President Clinton asked the following question: in a world where nearly everything has been solved by someone somewhere, why can’t we bring more solutions to scale?

Jim Yong Kim, the new President of the World Bank, had a great answer. We need to design for scale from the start. For example, one of the biggest breakthroughs in addressing HIV/AIDS on a global level has been the success in negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to bring drug prices down. Thanks to work spearheaded by the Clinton Health Access Initiative alongside UNITAID and the U.K.’s Department for International Development, companies were persuaded to dramatically change their business model from one of low volume/high cost to high volume/low cost. The cost of life-saving medication dropped from thousands of dollars to, in some cases, $50 to $75 per person per year. The number of people with access to the medication rose from 200,000 to millions over a decade. A radical change in the business model meant the providers remained profitable while millions more have been served with treatment that not only prolongs their lives but also has an impact on prevention.

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