My piano teacher growing up had a great saying whenever I was missing the simple beauty of a piece: “Don’t be a complicated cookie,” he’d say.
I think this has imbued me with a lifelong appreciation of simple but brilliant ideas. I stumbled upon a GREAT one earlier this month.
For people who need a bone marrow transplant, the chances of finding a donor that’s a match are frighteningly small. The trick to solving this problem, of course, is increasing the pool in the donor registry. Getting millions of people to march into a hospital somewhere to give a blood sample – that’s not easy.
The brilliant but simple solution: Graham Douglas, whose twin brother needed a blood transplant, thought of a way to skip the hard part of a blood donation. He approached a company selling adhesive bandages and asked them to include bone marrow donation registry kits in their packages. So if you’ve unfortunately cut yourself being clumsy in the kitchen, you have a ready-made blood sample! You send it off to the lab using the kit, and then take your adhesive bandage and patch yourself up!
The company Douglas approached was Help. And it’s a brilliant CR move for them – an elegant way to use their existing assets to create societal value.
It’s an inspiring example about the potential for companies to think about their resources differently, and what role they might play in a societal challenge they might not have previously thought about.
What unlikely but simple role could your company’s product play?
Leela StakeLeela is a director who helps businesses innovate, collaborate and communicate to be more successful. She’s based in San Francisco, has worked in six Asian countries and is interested in the relationship between long-term business success and community prosperity.
Laura PalantoneLaura is a member of our corporate communications team and is based in New York.
James RobinsonJames is a director who brings ten years of experience working on CR strategy and communications in New York, Beijing, and Jakarta. He looks at how CR is employed as part of broader business strategy and has a particular interest in the evolving role of technology and innovation in managing social and environmental issues.
Julie JackA director in APCO's New York office, Julie works on corporate responsibility with a focus on business strategy and emerging issues and trends. Her currents interests and work focus on sustainable agriculture and supply chain management, the integration of CR and financial communications, and CR in the consumer goods space.
Ellen MignoniEllen is a senior director and helped build APCO’s global corporate responsibility practice. She works primarily with APCO’s corporate clients on business alignment and corporate responsibility, stakeholder engagement and partnership development, and communication and outreach.
The Untapped Healing Power of Bandages
I think this has imbued me with a lifelong appreciation of simple but brilliant ideas. I stumbled upon a GREAT one earlier this month.
For people who need a bone marrow transplant, the chances of finding a donor that’s a match are frighteningly small. The trick to solving this problem, of course, is increasing the pool in the donor registry. Getting millions of people to march into a hospital somewhere to give a blood sample – that’s not easy.
The brilliant but simple solution: Graham Douglas, whose twin brother needed a blood transplant, thought of a way to skip the hard part of a blood donation. He approached a company selling adhesive bandages and asked them to include bone marrow donation registry kits in their packages. So if you’ve unfortunately cut yourself being clumsy in the kitchen, you have a ready-made blood sample! You send it off to the lab using the kit, and then take your adhesive bandage and patch yourself up!
The company Douglas approached was Help. And it’s a brilliant CR move for them – an elegant way to use their existing assets to create societal value.
It’s an inspiring example about the potential for companies to think about their resources differently, and what role they might play in a societal challenge they might not have previously thought about.
What unlikely but simple role could your company’s product play?
Catogories Business Alignment/Integration, Cause Marketing, Health and tagged bandage, bone marrow, bone marrow matching, donor, Help
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