17 Apr Small Businesses Collaborate to Make an Impact during COVID-19 Crisis
One of the benefits of working exclusively with small businesses in a variety of industries is being able to help small businesses solve problems. The coolest part of my job and the work I do with small business clients is making connections to bring success. Last week, I had just that opportunity when I was able to connect two clients in completely disparate lines of work to collaborate on an effort to provide relief to those needing medical help.
Last week, I learned that Countertop Solutions, a client I had helped with a landlord issue last year, had taken some excess manufacturing capacity in the current economic downturn, and built a medical ventilator using open source design specifications (itself a fantastic by-product of the pandemic is the sharing of what would otherwise be proprietary information). I thought that was very cool but I also learned that he was having problems being able to donate the ventilators to his local hospital in Martinsburg, WV because he needed to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration to even donate let alone sell the ventilators.
Well, it turns out that another client of mine is M Squared Associates, Inc. is a company that specializes in helping medical device manufacturers navigate the regulatory approval process at the FDA to bring medical devices to the market. M Squared is helping companies just like Countertop Solutions and others to get emergency authorization to sell or donate equipment like ventilators.
While I am precluded from discussing the details of the interaction between these two clients, I wanted to share that kind of good news. With so many people doing something very different than they used to in their business, the chance to make something like this happen is fantastic.
If you happen to be working on trying to bring medical devices to market in this emergency, let me know. I am happy to make an introduction to the great people at M Squared. And if you want to know how Countertop Solutions did what they did, I am also happy to introduce you to those great people as well.
So, the moral of the story for small business owners, share what you are doing with the world. You never know who among your circle of contacts might be able to make a valuable connection.