How Can NGOs Successfully Scale Business Ideas?
Changing Gender Roles and Nutrition in Bangladesh
Every morning, Lipi cycles down the dusty roads of Mitapukur, a small village in northern Bangladesh, balancing a bag filled with products on her shoulder. Lipi is one of the 160 Nutritional Sales Agents that was trained by the PROOFS (Profitable Opportunities for Food Security) project, an initiative of the three NGOs ICCO, iDE, BoP […]
Is There Really Only One Health SDG?
Many in the global health community were initially dismayed at the realization that there was only one goal devoted to health in the proposed Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “We had 3 out of 8 goals in the MDGs,” went the collective grumble, “health risks being marginalized in the SDGs.” The Business and Health Action […]
How Can Business Fight Ebola? Beyond “Gift-in-Kind”
Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia’s Assistant Minister of Health stated recently: “We must use this momentum not just to get back to where we were, but to build up health systems to last beyond this crisis and into the next.” (Devex, 3 Pitfalls Ebola Recovery must avoid, May 2015). While there is need to see opportunities for […]
UNICEF: Ebola and Technology
In our highly inter-connected world, nowhere seems very far away anymore. The scenes in West Africa where thousands of new cases of Ebola were being reported per week at its peak made very uncomfortable viewing and Unicef saw a huge surge in support from individuals and companies alike all keen to play their part in […]
Business Interests are Human Interests
The private sector had a lot to contribute to fight ebola and continues to play a role in the road to zero and future recovery. A lot of this was (and continues to be) outside the traditional framework of the private sector as donors. Some of these contributions are quantifiable, e.g. members of the Ebola […]
The Private Sector and Ebola, Working Towards Recovery
Stephen Seckor with one of his nieces, Monrovia, Liberia. Credit: Abbie TraylerSmith/Oxfam “Now I take care of 13 children. I lost four persons – my mother, my father, my two sisters. I was also very sick. Since I came back from the Ebola Treatment Unit I lost my job. I have nothing to do. I […]
The Role of the Private Sector in Post-Ebola Recovery
For more than one year Ebola has raged in West Africa. Thankfully, we are beginning to see the end of the epidemic with Liberia now having being declared ‘Ebola-free’ after 42 days with no new cases – and new infection rates at very low levels in Sierra Leone and Guinea. This is good news. But, […]
Getting to Zero and Beyond: Private Sector Contribution
The Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone has been an unprecedented development challenge and has prompted a huge international response, including from business who established the Ebola Private Sector Mobilisation Group (EPSMG). I recently joined the team in DFID leading the work in Sierra Leone, having spent the last 18 months developing DFID’s […]
Ebola – The View From Sierra Leone
A few weeks ago, I travelled to Sierra Leone, the country at the epicentre of the Ebola crisis. More than 20,000 people here have suffered from the disease, and more than 10,000 have died – this, in a country that has spent more than a decade recovering from a devastating civil war. Standard Chartered has […]
Investment in Mining, Opportunities for Farmers?
One sunny morning I’m talking to Mr Kimono Wendo, a Congolese refugee and farmer living in Meheba Refugee Settlement in the North-Western Province of Zambia. Mr Kimono tells me of his 17 year struggle to provide food for his family by growing maize in the rainy season and small patches of vegetables in the dry […]
Corporate-NGO Inclusive Business Partnerships
At our Inclusion Inc. conference at The Fletcher School, there was a fascinating conversation between Tim Cross, President of YouthBuild International, and two of YouthBuild’s corporate partners, Lata Reddy, President of The Prudential Foundation and Dina Silver Pokedoff, Senior Manager of Branding for the Saint-Gobain Corporation. What I particularly enjoyed about the discussion was that […]
Lost in Translation? Lessons for Business and NGOs
“I see the change we need to make. I’m ready to go for it!” said a corporate executive after a partnership design meeting with CARE. CARE staff said the same. These are the moments where we feel transformation happening in the room. We have worked through tough issues and we know we are co-creating something […]
The Right Language for Embedding Sustainability
At SABMiller, we understand that our profitability depends on healthy communities, growing economies and the responsible use of scarce natural resources. Last year we launched a new sustainable development ambition we call Prosper with five major goals and associated targets: accelerating growth and social development through our value chains; making beer the natural choice for […]
Using the Right Language for Each Stage of Growth
Counterfeit products cause huge social problems—estimates suggest that counterfeit tuberculosis and malaria drugs alone cause approximately 700,000 deaths each year—and Sproxil takes a business approach to solve them. Our Mobile Product AuthenticationTM solution can verify the authenticity of almost any product. A sticker with a unique code hidden under a scratch-off layer is applied to […]
Business Action on the Post-2015 Development Agenda
2015 is set to be a landmark year for sustainable development. By the end of 2015, we should have in place a new set of global development priorities: the Sustainable Development Goals, a new framework for financing and delivering them, and a legally binding climate change agreement. A key difference today compared to 2000, when […]
More than Semantics: Does Terminology Affect Scale and Impact?
Nearly 100 companies, development donors, and NGO partners had just finished listening to the opening panel in a two-day workshop we had organized to focus on ways companies could expand economic opportunity for people living at the base of the economic pyramid. The year was 2007, and the CSR Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School […]
What Is the Best Way to Measure Innovation?
Commenting on the state of innovativeness, Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and legendary Silicon Valley investor, remarked, “We asked for flying cars. Instead, we got a hundred and forty characters.” Really, Peter? Who asked for flying cars? Silicon Valley is, of course, obsessed with cars of many kinds – self-driven, electric, enabled by commands and […]
Defeating the Mythical Four-Eyed Monster in India
and private sector programmes at Sightsavers Wearing glasses and getting eye tests, in most developed countries, is now the norm. The stigma that used to be associated with wearing glasses has progressed to the point that they are now a fashion accessory, with some people owning several pairs to match their outfit or mood. Sadly, […]
A Conversation with Erik Simanis
Erik Simanis is Head of the Frontier Markets Initiative at Cornell University. His work is published in leading management journals, including the Harvard Business Review and The Wall Street Journal. He also writes for The Guardian’s sustainable business, and is a core faculty member of the Intrapreneurship Lab. His thinking is grounded in hands-on experience, […]