Walking the Path of Expansion: MiracleFeet's Journey toward a Global Footprint

MiracleFeet, a US-based non-profit, improves access to high-quality treatment of clubfoot in low-income countries, typically in partnership with public hospitals and local NGOs, by providing low-cost foot braces, training, advocacy, awareness-raising and financial and operational support. It aims to treat 100,000 children by 2024 across 70 countries – half of them middle-income countries. Having succeeded in low-income settings, it now plans to target middle-income countries, starting with the Philippines, convinced it can make an impact by taking a different strategic approach. However, the middle-income segment proves less straightforward than anticipated, even if healthcare infrastructure is more developed and families can cover some of the costs. The narrative follows the non-profit across a decade of development, culminating with the question: what can MiracleFeet do differently to ensure its service offering succeeds in the Philippines, and then rolled out to other middle-income countries?

The richness of the study allows discussion from multiple angles, including strategy, organizational behavior and service operations. The teaching note looks through the lenses of service operations strategy, service experience design/innovation, and the quality of the customer interface, in the context of a multi-national service organization. Students will come to understand how - - the ‘service triangle’ supports the design of a sustainable service experience in the healthcare context; - value is derived for each stakeholder as a function of operational choices for the patient journey and back-office design; - service quality can be measured and improved in a base-of-pyramid setting; - to apply these concepts to assess MiracleFeet’s plans to expand/improve its offering. The case incorporates an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience that allows students to experience MiracleFeet’s - services in one of its markets in Africa. While the VR dimension is recommended, other ways are made available to deepen students’ understanding of the ‘service journey’ portrayed in the case.