Finding the Way: Organisations building market positions where money and mandates failed

Relatively uncontested gaps that remain open in 2026.

For a number of organisations, it is now structurally cheaper to solve problems affecting millions or billions of people than to leave them unsolved. The old aid architecture has exited; they are building the replacement. And yet the most significant gaps remain open – in twelve hard problem domains that, unlike much of the global economy, are still relatively uncontested.

The economics of hard problems captures this shift. In domain after domain, the cost of a structural solution has fallen below the rising cost of the status quo because three things changed: we can now price a single verified “unit” of change; delivery costs have collapsed via digital rails, AI, and low‑cost infrastructure; and capital can increasingly pay for results rather than inputs. That turns problems that once depended on money and mandates into investable market positions - learning poverty, land rights, child survival, and neglected tropical diseases - and leaves a very specific set of open work for this decade: building the financing, governance, government‑adoption, geographic, and political‑economy structures that let those economics actually run at scale.

The Soft Power Index calls the threshold where this becomes true the Crossover Point: the moment the unit economics of a solution beat the compounded cost of not acting. Beyond it, persisting with the old model is fiscally irrational. Organisations that have crossed share three features: a verified outcome unit, a model that holds without exceptional conditions, and assets the system cannot easily replicate – datasets, trust architectures, and operating systems that compound over time. The Pathfinder Track maps those crossing now: 27 organisations across twelve domains that pass most, but not all, of the Index’s filters.

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DNDi: From R&D Scarcity to Structural Independence

DNDi has built what commercial pharma will not: a full R&D pipeline for neglected tropical diseases that affect over a billion people and generate no commercial return. Its outcome unit is a new or repurposed treatment, brought through a WHO‑endorsed pipeline, for a disease that otherwise would not attract R&D.

AI‑assisted drug repurposing has slashed the time and cost of early discovery, so the marginal cost of developing NTD treatments is now converging with commercial pharma economics for patients who were previously excluded. The gap is no longer science; it is financial architecture. DNDi remains grant‑funded and exposed to shocks like the USAID cuts, which makes “as much as needed, for as long as needed” commitments impossible.

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Our World in Data: Endowing the Global Evidence Commons

Our World in Data is a global evidence commons: a place where policymakers, journalists, scientists, and students in 190+ countries see the same numbers on health, climate, poverty, and more. Its outcome unit is a high‑integrity, openly accessible indicator that decision‑makers can rely on.

The cost of running that commons is tiny compared to the cost of misinformation, policy whiplash, and duplicated data infrastructure. When USAID cut funding for the Demographic and Health Surveys, OWID’s dependence on fragile inputs was exposed at the exact moment GiveWell and others leaned on its SDG Tracker for verification. The gap is not usefulness or demand; it is the absence of a dedicated endowment to secure long‑term independence.

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One Acre Fund: The Cost of Donor Dependency

One Acre Fund has built the most documented operating system for smallholder finance and productivity in the world, serving millions of farmers. Its outcome unit is a farmer completing a full bundle cycle – inputs, credit, training, and market access – with documented yield and income gains in the first season.

A bundled contract that aligns inputs, credit, and training produces food at lower total cost than fragmented subsidy programmes, with yield gains of 40–50% and repayment rates above 95% across multiple countries and climate shocks. Yet after USAID’s collapse, in May 2026, One Acre Fund announced proposed redundancies for 1,752 staff – 47% of its Kenya workforce – even as it reached 5.9 million households and delivered roughly US$600m in annual impact. The economics work; the architecture does not.

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SOIL: Pricing a Public Good in a Fragile State

In Haiti, SOIL has priced something the sector long treated as unpriceable: safely managed sanitation in a fragile state. Its container‑based model delivers toilets, waste collection, and composting at a verified cost per connected household, backed first by an outcomes contract with IDB Lab and then by the world’s first government results‑based contract for container‑based sanitation with Haiti’s DINEPA. The programme has survived political collapse, gang‑controlled supply routes, and the USAID shock while meeting or exceeding its outcome targets.

The economics have crossed; the gap is financial architecture and government adoption depth. A dedicated budget line in Haiti’s WASH plan and a second government commissioning the model from a local partner would convert a fragile proof into a replicable template.

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Building the Market in the Mission

Across the 27 Pathfinders, the pattern repeats. Solving is now cheaper than not solving; the remaining work is architecture. The structural shifts of 2026 show hard problems affecting millions or billions of people worsening, even as the economics of solving them improve. For capital allocators, builders, and strategic partners, the question is who will close those gaps. As a result, they will claim durable positions in the hardest problems and largest global market opportunities of this decade. And, in doing so, they will build the market in the mission.

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