[MARSEILLE] The example of a “fruitful” collaboration between a company and the Research Institute for Development (IRD) to combat malnutrition among children in Laos will undoubtedly have been one of the main lessons of the 80 years of the ‘IRD celebrated on October 7, 2024 in Marseille (France).
This model was presented during the debate on the theme “ Science and entrepreneurship: collaborating for innovative solutions » organized during the international forum “ Science 4 Action » which was held that day at the Palais du Pharo.
Speakers have in fact shown how the relationship between Mai Savanh Lao (MSL), a local company in Laos, and Eric Deharo, research director at IRD, have provided an “innovative” solution to an endemic problem: undernutrition in this Asian country where it is considered that there are 30% of undernourished children.
“We brought our scientific expertise, and MSL complemented it with technical skills that allowed us to bring scientific research results to the field”
Eric Deharo, IRD
It all started with MSL, a social enterprise founded in 2005 and based in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. By devoting itself to agriculture and the fight against child malnutrition, this company says it has experienced many difficulties in carrying out its activities.
“But through these failures, we have always progressed, and today, we have reached a production line of around 25,000 units of nutritional bars per day,” explains, with pride, Philippe Schmidt, its president and director. general.
In doing so, according to the latter’s statements to SciDev.Net, the company found itself, at one point, confronted with a question: “is this product effective against malnutrition?” » Indeed, supporting children with nutritional deficiencies requires specific knowledge…
The connection with the scientist Eric Deharo then marked a real turning point in the activity of this company. The latter explained to SciDev.Net how “the collaboration with MSL has made it possible to develop formulations of nutritional bars enriched with vitamins and micronutrients which are distributed free of charge in schools to reach the maximum number of children”.
The research institute thus provided its expertise for the formulation of the product and for the scientific studies supporting the marketing of these vitamin cereal bars. “This is where the partnership with the IRD was extremely useful and profitable, because the IRD provided the methodology, the scientific knowledge, as well as the acceptability and effectiveness studies of cereal bars,” underlines Philippe Schmidt who is also a co-founder of MSL.
“We brought our scientific expertise, and MSL supplemented it with technical skills which allowed us to bring scientific research results to the field,” explains Eric Deharo.
Human factor
The various studies made it possible to direct the company towards new formulations. And for Philippe Schmidt, “it is necessary to continue this collaboration since we once again want the intervention of the IRD to carry out studies on the long-term impact on the schooling of children or on their health”.
According to the two partners, the current study, in the finalization phase, involves 300 women, with blood samples taken before and after consumption of the product. The results are “strongly awaited” because, beyond the acceptability of the product, believes the business manager, it is its effectiveness which makes it a solution to malnutrition.
The entrepreneur and the researcher are unanimous on the fact that the key to the success of this collaboration is the meeting of two people who have the same vision and a common desire to achieve a well-defined objective.
“It’s the story of a beautiful meeting, that of two people who have a common vision and who were able to build a common project together,” corroborates Eric Deharo. “The human factor is preponderant. For it to work, people have to get along,” he says.
To reproduce such an operation, the researcher then recommends relying on a company or person that has already proven itself, rather than initiating a project with a structure “created from scratch”. The advantage of this choice is twofold: the organization acquires better adaptability to its market while showing, over the years, the stability of its commitment to the benefit of society.
The other interest of this collaboration is the complementarity between researchers and entrepreneurs. Indeed, the scientist, subject to the constraints of research and publication in the name of the famous “ publish or perish » (publish or perish), does not always have time to devote himself to the concrete and general public application of the results of his research.
This is why collaboration with an entrepreneur who is not solely motivated by financial gain is of great importance: making the benefits of scientific research accessible to as many people as possible.
In the present case, “we combined both research and an application of this research. We are complementary,” concludes Eric Deharo.
Financing
This association also allowed MSL to open the doors to certain financing that was difficult for it to access; in this case the help of Innovation Fund for Development (FID), a fund led by Esther Duflo, 2019 Nobel Prize winner in economics.
Thanks to a new mechanism, “we are trying to provide those with solutions that meet development challenges with financing that can provide leverage, in order to allow these innovations to be deployed on a very large scale,” explains Johanna Niedzialkowski, project team manager at FID.
According to his explanations, teams of researchers therefore deploy rigorous evaluation and impact measurement methodologies so that “best practices are listed and made available to the scientific community”.
In return, the interest of the fund is to “collect the impact indicators of the projects, and to understand how the grant financing has improved the conditions of the populations concerned”, adds Johanna Niedzialkowski.
Following this method, the FID says it currently has 102 funded projects, including 86 in Africa. These 86 projects represent nearly 46 million euros of funding in the form of non-repayable grants.
Overall, it is therefore this new paradigm which consists of sharing a common vision between entrepreneurs and scientists, in order to achieve innovative responses to societal problems, which has been defended. This collaboration with the world of research also facilitates access to funding.
However, Philippe Schmidt emphasizes that the success of his partnership with the IRD researcher was also facilitated by a fourth actor: “the Laotian institutional framework”.
