To qualify as a venture strategy, a project must have reasonable odds of achieving helpful systemic change in one or more developing countries on a significant scale in the near term, using opportunities offered by existing market structures. In doing this, a venture strategy is creating, implementing or expediting a selected lever on change.

Some problems in the developing world are more tractable on a large scale than others. We are particularly interested in the rate-limiting factors that prevent success where there is an opportunity to make a significant difference under budgets available now, or to be available in the near future, and this is where we find levers on change, which are central to our work.

What are "levers on change"?

These are needed, low cost technologies or changes in systems that, when made available, can help very large numbers of people. An example of technologies is the off-patent, low cost drug misoprostol, which has the potential of reducing a vast number of maternal deaths. A second example is an improvement in domestic stove design that reduces by 75% the amount of fuel needed while also reducing respiratory disease.

A third technology example would be letting women around the world know that her sister's or friend's existing birth control pills can be used effectively as emergency contraception. An example of a system change would be empowering existing mid-level health providers with their own private practices in rural areas remote from government services to help people more effectively at affordable prices.