The Challenges of Scaling a Technology for Social Good

In 2021, a breakthrough in sanitation technology – developed under the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet” challenge – stood ready for commercialization. The Single User Reinvented Toilet (SURT) offered an off-grid, self-contained system capable of processing waste, generating water, and reducing environmental impact. Turning this technical success into a viable product, however, meant confronting intertwined challenges around behavior change, infrastructure compatibility, financing models, and stakeholder incentives. Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Maria Roche and SURT engineer Dr. Shannon Yee join Brian Kenny to discuss the case “Toilets for the Underserved: The SURT Commercialization Challenge” and the central question of how to launch and then scale a technology particularly important for underserved markets, but not a lucrative short term investment opportunity.

You can listen to The Challenges of Scaling a Technology for Social Good online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Challenges of Scaling a Technology for Social Good is an episode from Cold Call by HBR Presents / Brian Kenny.

This episode is 29:44 long.

This episode was published on Apr 14, 2026.

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