The Power of Purpose
Over 300 people converged on Saïd Business School last week to explore how to embed purpose authentically into business. Supported by GSK, Unilever and Visa, our annual event, Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2019, was our most ambitious to date: 85 expert speakers, 10 practical workshops, 6 deep-dive Knowledge Zones, 5 delegate-led Connection Lunches, 4 Keynote […]
Why the Truth of a Brand’s Story is in the Doing
For over 40,000 years we’ve been telling each other stories to make sense of the world –with ancient cave walls frequently offering a more captivating canvas than our slide equivalent today. Character-driven stories, particularly when there is a tension in the narrative, produce oxytocin in our brains, which enhances our empathy and connection to others. […]
Can Profit and Purpose Really Go Hand in Hand?
It’s fair to say I believe that, despite all its considerable limitations, capitalism is the least bad economic system around. But I also agree strongly with Martin Wolf, who wrote a piece in the Financial Times on 11th December 2018 with the view that businesses which only pursue profits lead to dire outcomes. The global […]
Joyeux Noel: In The Midst of War
It’s a piece of history that bubbles up from time to time: The Christmas Eve Truce of World War I. In December of 1914, German soldiers faced Allied troops in the early stages of the brutal trench warfare that characterized much of that global conflict. According to a BBC documentary, there were many “live and […]
We Finally Have an Official Climate Emergency. But is that the full picture?
We are just midway through the year and yet 2019 has already seen several unprecedented weather events from Cyclone Fani, which evacuated more than a million people in India, to the two storms that devastated the Mozambican coast. These disasters have thrown into sharp focus just how much climate change is compounding our already complex […]
SURVEY: Advancing Gender Equality by Engaging Men as Allies Survey
How Can Business Advance Gender Equality Across the Value Chain by Engaging Men as Allies?
Men have a critical role to play in achieving gender equality. What is less clear is what this might mean in practice for organisations in their approach to advance gender equality. A new Business Fights Poverty Challenge will explore how businesses and organisations are advancing gender equality within their organizations and across the value chain […]
Not Just a Women’s Issue
What are some of the causes and consequences of violence against women? What role do men play? How can men unite to ensure the world is safer for everyone: women and girls, men and boys? In the inaugural presentation of the Clayman Institute’s 18-month symposium on breaking the culture of sexual assault, noted educator, author […]
Managing Human Rights Risks: Embracing a More Robust Approach to Human Rights Risks in Supply Chains
Oxfam will lead a panel at Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2019 on its supermarket campaign, Behind the Barcodes, giving a platform to two influential supermarkets as well as perspectives from consumers, investors and a multi-stakeholder initiative on ethical trade. The top six UK supermarkets have already responded to the campaign. As more consumers and investors […]
How Can Consumer Goods Companies Harness Technology to Most Effectively Tackle Modern Slavery in their Global Supply Chains?
According to the Global Slavery Index, 40.3 million people are in some form of modern slavery, including 24.9 million in forced labour. The ILO reports that US$150 billion of illegal profits are generated by forced labour each year. The issue has rapidly gained public and political attention in recent years. Legislation has strengthened companies’ formal […]
Welcome to Business Fights Poverty Magazine Issue 2 on Purposeful Collaboration
How Harnessing Technology is Modernising Informal Retail in Emerging Markets to Deliver Social Impact
More than 61% of the world’s employed population – two billion people – earn their livelihoods in the informal sector, with 93% of the world’s informal employment occurring in emerging and developing countries. 86% of employment in sub-Saharan Africa is informal and 80% of household retail is delivered via informal retailers. Yet informal retailers face […]
PREVIEW #BFPOXFORD Connection Lunch: Oxford Researchers Look to Tackle Multidimensional Poverty with Social Enterprise sOPHIa Oxford
OPHI is a research and policy center at the Oxford Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. It created the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which is a way of measuring poverty in all its dimensions. Poverty everywhere in the world is measured by income. But income is not a good proxy for poverty. […]
Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2019 Connection Zone Lunch: Transcending Conflict to Fight Poverty
“Seventy-three percent of people in the societies of the bottom billion have recently been through a civil war or are still in one,” said Professor Collier in The Bottom Billion. Conflict is “pretty distinctive,” he says, to the poorest countries on the planet. In these countries conflict tends to be a pattern, often prolonged. In […]
Five Pillars for Embedding Purpose Authentically into Business
There is much talk about purpose, sustainability and business as “a force for good”, but is it for real or just rhetoric? The common ground between those who believe in the impact of purposeful business and those who question it is a desire for authentic action; the recognition that we need to move beyond words […]
PREVIEW #BFPOXFORD: Capitalism Needs You – As a Smart Influencer
I am sceptical of capitalism as it stands; anyone who had to blow the whistle on a boss for fraud will be, but I still believe that it’s the best system available to make the world work. Why? Because I believe it’s an effective system that’s being hijacked by a few really badly chosen incentives […]
The Improv Intrapreneur: How Learning to Let Go Could Offer Important Lessons for the Intrapreneurship Movement
It was only on leaving Accenture in 2016 that I realised how defined I’d become by my role. It’s an issue that affects many of us in business. I had to discover who I was, as opposed to what I did for a living. Since then, I’ve gone to task on the promises I made […]
PREVIEW #BFPOXFORD Keynote Profile: Monique Ntumngia, Winner of the Visa Everywhere Initiative
“But Madam, we do not have lights; how are we going to be able to study at night? “When we go into the bushes to search for firewood for cooking, we usually get raped. Madam, we need this to stop.” Aminata, the leader of a group of Muslim girls, presented these questions to my team […]
Purpose Goes Hungry Without Culture
Business Fights Poverty is currently asking: “How can we embed Purpose authentically into business.” But what can this look like in practice, and where do we go from here? First, the Purpose has to be worth embedding! In other words, it has to be inspiring and convincingly explain how the business creates value for itself […]
Business Fights Poverty Oxford 2019 Purpose Zone: Why Should We Decide 31 Years Ahead of Time What Will Happen in 2050?
Last week the UK government rejected all 18 of the recommendations put to it by a committee established to investigate, amongst other concerns, the negative impacts of the world’s second largest polluter – fast fashion. Meanwhile in Brussels the European Unionwas incapable of uniting to set a net-zero carbon emissions target by 2050 and over in Canada the […]