Innovation Leaders: 3 Questions for Non-profit & For-profit Innovation Leaders
I returned home to Boston after a 10 day conference “intensive” – the Council on Foundations in Chicago, the World Healthcare Congress in Washington, D.C. and the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford – looking forward to a Patriot’s Day holiday to recover and enjoy a beloved Boston tradition, the Marathon. Of course, […]
The Future of the BoP Domain: Where is Our Missing Community?
The BoP domain is at a crossroads. We have seen that successful enterprise development can play an important role in alleviating poverty. These are clearly exciting times for the BoP domain. But we also lack sufficient humility. Indeed, we still have a long way to go, and few are openly discussing the lessons learned and […]
Large Companies and Collaboration for Inclusive Business
Time for Training: After a decade of learning, an executive BoP course comes online
11 years ago, CK Prahalad and Stu Hart published “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.” The article and consecutive book have sparked enormous interest among companies, followed by experimentation, trials, and sometimes, success. However, it quickly became clear that developing inclusive business was far from trivial. The usual management tools did not always […]
Mixing Business and Social: What Really is a Social Enterprise?
Of course we all know what a ‘social enterprise’ (SE) is in a developing country. It’s obvious, surely? It’s, um, a business that does good things for people, and also makes money. Don’t nit-pick! This is all about dynamism, creativity and innovation. Well, OK, point taken. But nagging doubts remain. What sorts of good things? […]
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 […]
The Latest Tool for Women Entrepreneurs in Tanzania
Mama Muze, a widow in Dar es Salaam, has always had an interest in producing her own food products. After retiring as a banker, she set up her own food processing business, making chilli sauce and packaging it in jars with her own personalised labels. The primary challenge she faces is getting more customers. She […]
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 […]
Understanding What Makes Impact Accelerators … Accelerate
Last year, a widely-publicized report from Monitor-Deloitte and Acumen highlighted the “Pioneer Gap” in impact investing — explaining how, despite the tremendous attention and capital dedicated to impact investing (as the GIIN estimates, $17 billion in 2012 and 2013), “pioneering” early-stage firms face a serious dearth of critical resources, support, and financing. In the past […]
SABMiller Entrepreneurship World Map
Every year SABMiller commits millions of dollars to supporting entrepreneurship projects in many of its markets. This year alone, SABMiller – including our Foundations – invested over US$6 million in competition programmes to foster entrepreneurial activity worldwide. Through our projects, we aim to create the support networks that micro and small enterprises need to survive […]
Functional Impact Investing Ecosystems Reduce Risk
Impact investors are typically seen as part of the supportive ecosystem inclusive businesses require to start, succeed and go to scale. The second Frankfurt Round Table on Social Finance on June 4, 2013, in Frankfurt, made it clear that impact investors themselves need a supportive ecosystem to reduce costs and risks of investments. The round […]
The Niger Delta Partnership Initiative: Corporate Social Enterprise in Action
All too often corporate social responsibility has, over the years, meant occasional grants and handouts to people in need, with little regard to achieving sustainable development in the long run. Things are changing. As governments struggle with tight budgets, and business leaders discover the dangers of operating in volatile regions of the world where residents […]
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 […]
Land rights, not land grabs, can help Africa feed itself
Nothing better sums up Africa’s extraordinary mixture of challenges and opportunities than agriculture. On the one hand, Africa is home to one in four of the world’s hungry and is the only continent which fails to grow enough food to meet its own needs. Yet it has also half of the world’s unused land suitable […]
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 […]