Sustainability Critical to Future Business Growth
Leading companies increasingly recognize the importance of embedding sustainability into their business models. However, professionals seeking sustainability outcomes face certain barriers. Return-on-investment rules are a long-standing challenge, and overcoming them requires positive engagement with finance teams. Presenting a strong business case is another key challenge, requiring creative work across the organization and often with external […]
Partnering for Mutual Benefit not Dependency
In the early 2000’s I was seconded to a large multi-national company to work on an exciting inclusive business (IB) project that the company’s chief executive had recently announced to the world at a major conference. With a UN organization playing a convening role, the project was designed as a partnership that would transform small […]
5 Reasons Social Enterprises are Applying a Gender Lens
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Acumen There is article after article about why businesses and investors should seek new ways to be more inclusive of women in their business models. But what we’ve learned at Acumen, where we invest in business that solve problems of poverty, is that leaders of social-purpose businesses are already doing this, […]
Three Ways Your Business Can Use the SDGs
Following the launch of the UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development, there is general agreement that these targets can only be achieved if all areas of society, including governments, NGOs and the private sector, act together. Under the new framework, businesses now have a more explicit, central role in ‘ending extreme poverty, fighting inequality & […]
Co-creation Shaking Up the Health Sector
Imagine that you are the founder of a healthcare start-up. You have passion, experience, and a strong team of changemakers around you – but you lack the resources to take your organisation to the next level of growth. Now imagine that you are given the opportunity to work with one of the world’s leading healthcare […]
Beyond Dialogue: Corporation and Social Enterprise Partnerships
On April 12th, Acumen and the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship hosted a workshop in Oxford, England with representatives from large corporations and smaller social businesses from around the globe. At the workshop, entitled “Beyond Dialogue,” we asked: How can we build business models that truly serve the poor through collaboration among corporations and social […]
Investing in Social Enterprise to Fight Poverty
Rupert Scofield will be speaking at a dinner hosted by Women Advancing Microfinance UK on Tuesday 10th May in London. He will talk to us about the work FINCA does and the impact it’s having, in particular in the social enterprise and innovation space. Tickets to the event are available here. Ahead of the event, […]
Putting Water at the Top of the Agenda
When COP21 concluded in Paris, I was particularly struck by the lack of any mention of water in the agreement. Here we had the leaders of the world meeting to solve one of the greatest problems facing mankind and there was no evident acknowledgement of the impact that climate change is having on water. This, […]
Transcending Boundaries through Contextual Intelligence
Disruption, innovation, inclusion. These days, there is a multitude of business school jargon used to discuss development, both in the realm of the public and private sector. But here is another one for you: contextual intelligence, achieved through innovation and inclusion. Contextual intelligence is the ability to understand the limits of our knowledge and to […]
Activating the Power of the Market for Humanitarian Aid
Activating the power and reach of the market for a sustainable future What does it mean to transcend boundaries? The definition of “transcend” is to rise above, or go beyond normal limits. For the purpose of this discussion, consider these boundaries: physical – defined by political/geographical regions; institutional – reflecting rules, written or unwritten, by […]
Transcending Boundaries to Fight Climate Change
Climate change is now at the forefront of the policy agenda. The Paris climate talks have ushered a new wave of urgency; the goal is to decarbonise the world by the second half of the century and try to remain below the 1.5-degree threshold. But in order to ensure this happens, we need everyone’s input. […]
Helping People Lead Healthy Lives
Last year saw the release of the much referenced Lancet report Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health. Published prior to COP 21 in Paris, the report considered the impacts of climate change on public health and estimates that cutting carbon emissions could reduce 500,000 premature deaths a year from air pollution […]
Refugee Crisis, Business and Partnerships
When a natural disaster happens we look to the government, public services, NGOs and charitable organisations to come to our rescue. But as the current European refugee crisis has shown, governments can be slow to react. While bodies of drowned refugees wash up on the shores of Greece and Turkey, the EU country representatives are […]
Empowering Local Communities to Fight Corruption
When a faulty water pump was removed from Lunga Lunga in Kwale County in Kenya, the local community of 6,000 people, which included four schools, lost an important source of water. As a result, women and girls had to walk three kilometres every day to the nearest functioning reservoir to collect water. Community empowerment organisation […]
Inclusive Innovation – Context Matters
Image: How can wearable technologies become relevant for the BoP context? Check UNICEF’s Wearable for Good Challenge for some inspiration. In this second post of our blog series on Inclusive Innovation we focus on the challenges that lie in the adaptation of global (technological) innovations to specific markets and users in emerging economies. In the […]
5 Ways for Smart Businesses to Invest in Sustainability
The global economy is under pressure from the planet. This year, falling oil prices and stagnant growth, especially in emerging markets, is coinciding with extreme droughts and floods triggered by one of the most powerful El Niño events in the past 50 years. The severity of this naturally occurring shock is amplified by global warming, […]
Bringing Your Company’s Values to Life
I have been farming organically at Riverford since 1987. The concept of combining good food, good farming and good business was inherited from my father and is at the heart of everything we do. In the 1990s, as my skills improved at home, I wanted to disprove the naysayers who claimed organic farming was a […]
More Space Technology Can Be a Key to Poverty Reduction
In 2004, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the robot probe Philae, with great ambition and hope, to learn about the origins of our Solar System. Human genius overcame the challenges of gravity, space and budget constraints in the name of scientific discovery. For 10 years, Philae travelled through space, to eventually reach its destination […]
Connecting Corporations and Social Enterprises
By Sheena Raikundalia, Senior Consultant, Intellecap Kenya-focused entrepreneur Moka Lantum, Founder and Managing Director of Microclinics, is preparing for pitch to a large pharmaceutical company. The Nairobi-based healthcare management company provides patient and clinic management systems to peri-urban and rural clinics. The software developed by his company, tracks commodities in clinics and enhances, availability, accessibility, […]
US State Department Celebrates Collaboration
By Andrew O’Brien, Special Representative, Global Partnerships The word “partnership” seems to be everywhere these days — and the U.S. Department of State is proud to be at the center of it. While public-private partnerships (P3s) have been around for years, they are increasingly becoming a primary way to achieve our objectives in diplomacy and […]