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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
The Benefits of Asset Versus Cash Transfer Programmes
Is it better to give a cow or cash? Are such approaches hand-outs or a hand up for the extreme poor? In the development sector, we often pose simple either/or questions. Yet these simple questions are more complex than may meet the eye, and the answers vary greatly based on beneficiaries’ background, local contexts, the […]
Local Investments for Local Farmers
Tanzania is a country of farmers. Most farmers own less than one hectare of land to grow produce to feed their families, whatever surplus they generate is used to fund their children’s education, healthcare and family emergencies. Small holder farmers are already vulnerable to crop failure, drought and poverty and this will be confounded by […]
Delivering Care to Last Mile Communities
Traditional hospital-based services are not able to reach some of the world’s poorest and most remote villages. Over one billion people globally, including 400 million Africans, lack access to health services because they live too far from a health facility. Rural communities know that if a child becomes ill, the long walk for treatment could […]
Lessons on Inclusive Supply Chains and Achieving Scale
How does one measure the success of a business today? Is it commercial viability or the ecosystem it creates to promote sustainable development through stronger market linkages and supporting the most marginalised? Or can it be both? In a world when double and triple bottom lines are increasingly de rigueur, we now look at inclusive […]
Extending Financial Access to Young People
Violet is 21 years old, married and a mother of two. She is also the owner of a steelworks business where her husband is one of her employees. When she speaks of expanding her business, her voice is full of confidence and hope, undeterred when others make jokes about how she manages her husband. Violet […]
Financial Inclusion: Hybrid Models for a Complex World
Fashion, fish and financial inclusion. What connects all three? In Bangladesh these are all part of an evolved structure put in place by BRAC that combines community empowerment with sustainability and shared values. BRAC is synonymous with business and market-based solutions in Bangladesh, where the breadth and scope of our work is felt at a […]
Championing Responsible Sugar Production & Procurement
Our world is faced with dire global water challenges. A major contributing factor to these challenges is agriculture, which accounts for 70 percent of the world’s water withdrawals. Sugar, a critical ingredient in many food and beverage products, including ours, is a highly thirsty crop and one of the most complex. While the sugarcane sector […]
Championing Responsible Sugar Production & Procurement
Our world is faced with dire global water challenges. A major contributing factor to these challenges is agriculture, which accounts for 70 percent of the world’s water withdrawals. Sugar, a critical ingredient in many food and beverage products, including ours, is a highly thirsty crop and one of the most complex. While the sugarcane sector […]
Engage Your Supply Chain to Find the Mutual Benefits
Given that sugar is such a ubiquitous food ingredient and accounts for significant land use, it is heartening to see leading companies and development organizations prioritizing the sustainability of this ingredient. Global demand is projected to require an estimated 49% increase in land under cane production alone by 2050. The sector is facing serious and […]
An IFC Perspective on Sustainable Sugar Production
As mentioned in Business Fights Poverty and the CSR Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School’s recent report on building blocks for sustainable sugar production at scale, IFC has been engaged in sustainable sugar activities since the early 2000s, when we collaborated with WWF to develop better management practices for tropical commodities such as sugar. In […]
Building Blocks for Sustainable Sugar Production
Business Fights Poverty is full of examples of companies taking action to grow their businesses in ways that expand economic opportunity, enhance access to “social” services like healthcare, energy, education, water and sanitation, and nutrition, and conserve shared natural resources. The key question is how to move these examples from the cutting edge to the […]
Embracing Emerging Market Entrepreneurship
Twice a year, the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE)convenes our Executive Committee—a group of fifteen international development leaders that guide ANDE’s strategy and provide operational oversight. At the most recent meeting, we opened with a “pop quiz” — What are the three biggest challenges facing small and growing businesses in emerging markets over the […]
Promoting Sustainable Agriculture Intensification
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Global food supply needs to increase 70 percent by 2050 to keep up with population growth and diet changes. How do we generate enough food without cutting down every last tree, and using every last drop of water? And how can we do it while preserving farmer livelihoods and keeping food affordable? […]
Own-label Tea Changing Lives in Malawi
In the UK we drink about 165m cups of tea every single day, yet the millions of farmers and workers who rely on the tea industry for their livelihood face numerous challenges. Their work can be physically demanding, prices are unsustainably low, and the sector is notorious for poor wages and working conditions. The issues […]