Innovation, Scale, Returns, Failure… If BIF Is A Pilot, What Are We Learning From It?
So what have we learnt about inclusive business in the last three years, running the Business Innovation Facility? Quite a lot, as it turns out. As Country Managers and theme leaders met in London last week, we worked through some of the ‘big questions’ together. Where in our portfolio do we see the greatest innovation […]
The Volunteer Travel Industry: Business Exploits Poverty?
Innovation, Scale, Returns, Failure… Lessons from the Business Innovation Facility
Not All Entrepreneurs: The Microfranchise Accelerator
When I started my career, one of the first books I read about Development was the Professor Yunus famous’ book Banker to the Poor on Micro-credit and how it could play a role in eradicating Poverty. The message that I could not get out of my head is that every Human Being is an entrepreneur. […]
What your BOP strategy is Missing: A Gender Lens
Debate on the possibilities at the base of the pyramid (BOP) is ubiquitous; nonetheless, too often regulated to a post-script is that frequently when we refer to the BOP what we actually mean is women at the BOP. It’s time to stop discussing the BOP as a single, homogenous entity and start looking more specifically […]
What Your BOP Strategy is Missing – A Gender Lens
Debate on the possibilities at the base of the pyramid (BOP) is ubiquitous; nonetheless, too often regulated to a post-script is that frequently when we refer to the BOP what we actually mean is women at the BOP. It’s time to stop discussing the BOP as a single, homogenous entity and start looking more specifically […]
VELECO – the World’s First Fair Trade and Eco‐Friendly Cyclewear Company
VELECO the world’s first Fair Trade and eco‐friendly cyclewear company, based in Brighton, UK have launched an exciting new Kickstarter project to raise £20,000 in just 30 days (up till 4 July). We join a growing trend of eco start‐ups and entrepreneurs who are using crowd funding to reach new customers and generate sales. Kickstarter […]
Nairobi, Thriving Entrepreneurship Hub of East Africa
the A Factor and Curator, Innovation Tours In her TED Talk, The danger of a single story, my favourite Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains how dangerous it is to reduce a person, a culture, a continent to a unique and biased perception. The viral Youtube video “Africa for Norway” with African actually raising funds […]
Inclusive Agribusiness: Linking Smallholder Farmers to Markets
Whilst working in agricultural development in Malawi I find that the same two questions keep on coming up again and again: ‘I want to source commodity directly from smallholder, how can I do this?’ ‘Smallholders are getting a raw deal, how can they sell directly to companies and get better market prices?’ This objective is […]
Launching Branson's B TeamLaunching Branson's B Team
Today sees the launch of the B Team – a collective of some of the world’s leading figures in business, including Sir Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz. The B Team believes that global business is at a crossroads – with the need for a new way of doing business – motivated by people, planet and […]
Launching Branson’s B TeamLaunching Branson’s B Team
Today sees the launch of the B Team – a collective of some of the world’s leading figures in business, including Sir Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz. The B Team believes that global business is at a crossroads – with the need for a new way of doing business – motivated by people, planet and […]
Social Impact Investing And The G8
Adviser, Department for International Development (DFID) Last week the UK Prime Minister hosted a G8 event on social impact investment at the Bloomberg Auditorium in London. Social impact investments are investments that have both a social and a financial return and in the case of international development are targeted at enterprises which benefit the poor […]
The Tipping Point: How Japanese Firms Can Shape the Inclusive Business Landscape
It was an honor to represent the Business Call to Action (BCtA) at a high-level side event last week in Japan—at the 5th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD V). The Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) hosted the event and supported Japan’s commitment and preparation for last week’s conference. JICA organized seminars on inclusive […]
SMEs: The Next Frontier in Financial Inclusion
How can we contribute to meaningful increases in emerging market GDP and jobs without getting in the way? By investing in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The Microfinance Information Exchange reports that SMEs make up over 60% of national GDP and account for over 70% of total employment in emerging market nations. SMEs are major […]
Empowering Women through Business
How does any institution, private or public, achieve scale when targeting an emerging area of business interest such as supporting women entrepreneurs? This was the key question during the conversation I participated in, hosted by Coca-Cola and Business Fights Poverty, on the margins of the Africa World Economic Forum in Cape Town last month. The […]
Developing BoP Partnerships
At the BoP Innovation Center (BoPInc), we just finished a new publication on BoP partnerships. It is the third publication of a series of five. The series is based on experiences and insights from the implementation of three seperate innovation pilots. These pilots form the Three Pilots for Pro-Poor Innovation (3P4PPI) program. Together with our […]
Beyond income: Understanding the BoP from an access to development perspective
No matter how much practitioners agree on quantifying the Base Of the Pyramid (BOP) based on their access to development and basic needs, we still seem to be loosing the battle against income threshold fundamentalists. Beyond the traditional controversies calculating purchasing power parity (PPP) income measurements, due in part to the lack of comparable basket […]
Exploring Opportunities for Collaboration Between Social Enterprises and Global Corporations
On May 14-16, Acumen held its first summit of social enterprises and global corporations to explore opportunities for collaboration aimed at expanding access to critical goods and services for poor communities in East and West Africa. The event was the formal kick-off of the Technical Assistance (TA) Initiative, a partnership between Acumen and Dow launched […]
How to Build Successful BoP Business Models
Private companies that want to succeed in doing business with markets at the base of the pyramid (BoP) need to know their customers and their spending habits. They demand quality goods and services even though their cash flow is limited and it fluctuates. Figuring out what BoP consumers will pay for, evaluating their ability to […]
Mining for Development: Shift emphasis from CSR budgets to local procurement to have greater impact on poverty reduction
The development opportunity offered by mining lies in the potential for an increase in local procurement. Local spending is how companies can maximize benefits to local communities. Increased local spending helps small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) create and sustain jobs, invest in their businesses, and establish performance records that make them more competitive and […]