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		"Pumping Water = Serious Business," the Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise Program, College of Business
			Small Engines for Economic Development (SEED) chose as their project the challenge of developing and selling a fuel efficient micro-diesel engine pump-set that could eventually be run on bio-fuel.  The challenge presented itself when IDE approached GSSE and CSU's Engines and Energy Conversion Lab with a request to work on an old bicycle motor design, making it more efficient and applicable to small scale irrigation. Never short on imagination and zeal, Professor Bryan Willson, the lab’s Director, put a senior design team of 10 mechanical engineering students on the job.  While the engineers got busy designing an engine, SEED went to work to further define the need for it in developing countries.  If IDE could sell millions of treadle pumps in India and Bangladesh, the team hypothesized, then surely there must be a business opportunity for their imagined small engine.
			Having gained the attention and favor of a small crowd in the United States, the team prepared to meet the most important players along their entrepreneurial path – their customers.  Four graduate students set out for a full summer in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and India to test the micro-diesel concept and find out exactly what their customers needed, wanted and could realistically afford.  SEED split up, two of them covering Ethiopia and the other two Bangladesh, later convening in India to compare notes and make decisions on their most viable market. Scores of meetings with farmers, extension agents, retailers, wholesalers, importers and other key actors in the irrigation chain, provided valuable, firsthand information on the differing needs for efficient irrigation.
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