Announcing the 2014 Design Expo Schedule
We are one week away from the start of the 2014 Design Expo! Running from 9 to 13 June, the Design Expo is an online celebration of products, services and business models transforming the lives of poor people. The Design Expo is a collaboration with iDE UK and is being supported by the UK’s Department […]
Hanging By A Thread: Workers’ Rights And Lives
Campaigning On Workers’ Rights In One Sector Can Bring Important Gains – But In Doing So, We Must Not Ignore The Needs Of Vulnerable Workers In Other Sectors I was working in my room on the fourth floor of a hotel in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s busy capital, when I saw a man hanging by a rope. […]
How Can We Strengthen Food Security In South-East Asia?
This week at the World Economic Forum on East Asia, held in the Philippines, the region’s governments and senior leaders will explore ways to accelerate sustainable agricultural growth and achieve food security through market-based multistakeholder initiatives Home to 600 million people, South-East Asia has enjoyed vibrant and fast-paced growth. The member states of the Association […]
Announcing the Business Fights Poverty Design Expo 2014
A creative revolution is underway around the design of products and services that transform the lives of poor people. But perhaps the most exciting activity is around combining design innovation with business model innovation, so that social impact can be achieved on a massive scale. With 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty, it is […]
Creating a Sustainable Brand
We’ve come a long way down this sustainability journey. We’ve moved from making ourselves feel good through our actions to finding ways to benefit society and help the business bottom line. No longer do we just pay farmers a better price help them increase yields but we get the return through a steady supply of […]
Coca-Cola Gets Everywhere. Medicines Don’t. Why?
I am hugely exciting about a new partnership between ColaLife and International Development Enterprises which aims to answer this question. Together we are investigating the best ways to take ColaLife’s award winning anti-diarrhoea kit – Kit Yamoyo, the ‘Kit of Life’ – to scale across Zambia and potentially across the world. We have set an […]
MNCs and Social Enterprises: Learning from Each Other?
As investors in businesses that are impacting lives, we at Acumen see the potential for business to make a difference, but we also know that taking this impact to scale will require creative new partnerships. At a Summit in Nairobi last May, we and our partner Dow Chemical launched the Technical Assistance (TA) Initiative – […]
Solving the World’s Water Issues
Silo Busting: 4 ways to do good business
Role of business in shaping a better tomorrow Solutions to the world’s most pressing problems and exciting opportunities are global, interconnected and interdependent. Business’ resources dwarf those of the philanthropic and public sectors combined. All require leaders with vision and capacity to build systems for change across industries and borders. Yet alone, now and in […]
A Networked Approach to International Development
The ever increasing – and much delayed – focus on impact measurement in international development is leading to some hard questions about how best the industry needs to be shaped. We all know that international development needs to become more responsive to local needs, less dependent on large head offices and in short, more effective. […]
Christine Bader’s The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil
An illuminating read, Christine Bader’s new book, The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil is particularly valuable to anyone who has wondered what it would be like to promote sustainability or respect for human rights from within a multinational corporation. By recounting her own experiences and weaving in stories from other Corporate […]
The Challenge of Scale – It’s about Markets
The SEEP Network is a global network of practitioner organizations dedicated to combating poverty through promoting inclusive markets and financial systems. Members are active in 170 countries and engage with nearly 100 million households worldwide. From September 22-25, practitioners and thought-leaders from around the world will gather outside Washington, DC to discuss the challenges and […]
Launching the 2014 Inclusive Business eLab
Successful inclusive businesses create real value for people living in poverty and companies. Think of BASF: the chemical company produces vitamin A and other micronutrients – ingredients urgently needed to eradicate malnutrition and enable healthier, fitter lives for billions of people.* But company and customers are only two parties in a dense ecosystem of players […]
Can One Village Make a Difference?
When we launched our handwashing programmes in March 2013 in Thesgora, a village in Madhya Pradesh, India, which has one of the highest diarrhoea rates in the country, some people questioned our approach: “What’s the point of helping just one small village? What does this achieve when the biggest issue in global development today is […]
1 Billion + 3 Reasons to Think about 2030
There is a lot to think about when you are in a room filled with social media pioneers, global thinkers, and experts from one of the world’s most populous countries: India. Everything you think about, in fact, starts with the reminder that 1 billion people are counting on the answers to how we tackle the […]
Innovation: Africa’s Great Leap Forward
In terms of innovation, Africa’s outlook is more positive than ever and the continent is leapfrogging its global counterparts in various sectors. The amplification of GDP growth in some parts of the continent (such as Nigeria) and the overall stability of African economies during the worrying economic downturn of recent years speak volumes for Africans’ […]
The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist
An illuminating read, Christine Bader’s new book, The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist: When Girl Meets Oil is particularly valuable to anyone who has wondered what it would be like to promote sustainability or respect for human rights from within a multinational corporation. By recounting her own experiences and weaving in stories from other Corporate […]
Building an Impact Investing Market
When the UK’s Department for International Development launched the Impact Programme, just over a year ago, we knew we were moving into new territory. Today, the Impact Programme launches two new reports: The Annual Report 2013 and The Impact Programme Market Baseline Study. The 13 Year Programme is at the vanguard of the UK Government’s […]
Why Are So Few Inclusive Businesses Getting To Scale?
We at Monitor Inclusive Markets believe that inclusive businesses – businesses that engage the global poor as either customers or suppliers – can vastly improve the lives of millions who are suffering the consequences of global poverty. That is why we were so disappointed when in 2011 we surveyed 439 such firms in Africa and […]
An Open Letter to Larry Page
Dear Larry, In your recent conversation with Charlie Rose at TED, you said you’d rather hand over your cash to Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City) instead of donating it to a philanthropic organization. I understand the sentiment. The nonprofit sphere has generally proved itself incapable of solving many of society’s most intractable problems. In […]