Surviving Sustainability – Working In CSR Without Burning Out
This month marks my 20th year of working in sustainability. Two decades of climate change, poverty, women’s rights, biodiversity, innovation, growing livelihoods and changing lifestyles I’m so privileged to have found this career early. But over the years I’ve also had friends and colleagues burn themselves out or just become bitter about the pace of change. […]
Two Powerful Lessons from Mandela for Today’s Precarious World
It was a beautiful moment when Caroline Modiba, South African soprano, sang Thula Babain front of images of Nelson Mandela in the Nelson Mandela Lecture Theatre of Saïd Business School, University of Oxford this past week; a moving celebration of his centenary on 18 July. Listening to Caroline sing, and seeing those images of Nelson Mandela, […]
Want More Intrapreneurs in Your Organisation? Create the Right Culture
The Intrapreneur Systems Challenge was launched in February this year with the objective of helping organisations unlock increased levels of social innovation and intrapreneurship. Co-hosted by Business Fights Poverty and The League of Intrapreneurs, and supported by DFID, CEMEX and the BMW Foundation, the objective of this Challenge is to deepen our understanding of the […]
Cultural Forces, Business and Peace: An Overview
It is true that governments sign treaties with one another or with groups within their jurisdiction to stop violence. A signal feature of government is control over weapons just as a responsibility of government is the security of its people. Determining when to use those weapons and when to stop and for what reasons is […]
Two Weeks to Go and Acumen Explore Investing in Impact
Acumen was founded in 2001 with the mission of changing the way the world tackles poverty. Our model: To raise philanthropy and invest it for up to a decade, sometimes more, in intrepid entrepreneurs building businesses to serve the poor; Early-stage companies at critical moments in their evolution, because that’s where capital is most scarce. […]
CARE Examine the Importance of Gender Equity in Business
Gender equality is high on the corporate agenda, from sales of feminist merchandise, to gender pay gap reporting, to celebrities and politicians forming coalitions; confronting institutional norms and behaviour. It feels like we are in a moment in history where putting gender equity firmly on the table and creating positive change could make lasting equality. […]
What is a Refugee-Inclusive Business?
We stand #WithRefugees today on World Refugee Day and every other day of the year. A few weeks ago, the International Finance Corporation published a study revealing that the Kakuma refugee camp and surrounding neighborhoods in northern Kenya, one of the largest and long-standing refugee settlements, represents a US$56 million market opportunity. This is eye-opening […]
Exploring Last-Mile Distribution and BoP Marketing
In the second article, introducing you to the experts and topics we’ll be exploring during our Business Fights Poverty, flagship conference in Oxford on 18th July, we introduce you to inclusive distribution, brought to you by BoPInc (& Every1Mobile), Hystra, and Practical Action. Founding members of the Global Distributors Collective (a partnership-based model that acts […]
Brand Purpose – How Social Impact & Shared Values Win Customer Love
2017 – The death of marketing In 2012 the US PR and marketing consultancy, Edelman predicted that ‘purpose’ would be the re-engineering of brand marketing. Looks like they were right: in 2017, the online marketing platform CMO proposed that it’s now time to admit that traditional marketing is dead. That brands with real purpose and meaning are already winning the […]
How Can We Engage SMEs Exporting to Frontier Markets With the Case for Doing Business With Integrity?
Bribery and corruption are major barriers to global trade and investment. 43% of compliance officers of UK firms indicated that they had decided not to do business in a country due to the perceived risk of corruption. And at the firm level, the evidence shows that the disadvantages of bribery outweigh the benefits over the […]
Music, Business and Peace: An Overview
Welcome to an ongoing discussion about topics specifically devoted to the relationship among music, business and peace, which will be featured in Business Fights Poverty for the months of June, July, and September. This conversation has been the aim of two conferences on “Music, Business, and Peace” at Indiana University led by scholars at the […]
Interview with Alexander Bernstein: Leonard Bernstein’s Revolution
“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein’s role as a larger-than–life figure is well-documented, especially in this year of celebration for the one hundred-year anniversary of his birth. Questions remain as to what one can learn from his music, […]
Interview with Jerry White, CEO of Global Impact Strategies, Professor of Practice at the University of Virginia
Jerry is the CEO of Global Impact Strategies, Professor of Practice at the University of Virginia, and co-chair of Global Covenant Partners. Jerry is known for leading high-impact campaigns including the historic International Campaign to Ban Landmines which was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1997. He also co-founded Survivor Corps, formerly […]
Connecting Music to Ethics
Many features of music contribute to its positive potential for promoting social harmony. But music’s influence on human interaction is not entirely benign. I consider features of music that enable it to serve such contrary projects. I begin by itemizing some of the mechanisms through which music creates feeling of solidarity among people. Among them […]
From Settler Colonialism to Standing Rock: Hearing Native Voices for Peace
The water protectors of the Standing Rock Sioux captured public attention with their opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Their actions are only the most recent in a long history of indigenous protests of resource extraction and treaty violations on Native American land. Often these struggles have involved indigenous music and Standing Rock was no exception. An […]
Empathy: A Global Imperative for Peace
This essay maintains that interplays between empathy, goodwill and other-regarding behaviors can make a huge difference in arguing one type of community into existence (one based on inclusivity, peace, respect, and universal human values) as opposed to arguing another kind of community into existence (one based on turmoil, meanness, wretchedness, genocide, and heaps of trouble). […]
How Music May Serve as a Nudge for More Ethical and Peaceful Business Behavior
Olivier Urbain’s presence in the special issue features as part of the Business Fights Poverty Challenge on Business, Music and Peace, and in the conferences that we held on topic is inspiring and validating. To have someone of Urbain’s stature willing to take time, not only for an appearance for a conference, but to engage […]
Working Together to Enhance the Effectiveness of Musicking in Peacebuilding Activities
Introduction Do you like music? What kind of music do you like? Have you ever wondered how much musical energy is produced on the planet at any given moment? Hundreds of millions of people are participating in musical events today, singing, playing, performing, dancing, clapping hands, stomping feet, listening with headphones while reading or walking […]
Entrepreneurs Are Changing The World
Entrepreneurship has proven to have a positive impact on today’s global challenges. Each one of us, by developing and using our strengths and skills, are agents of social change. As stated by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, over 43% of the global population pictures themselves starting a business in the next six months. Entrepreneurship is becoming […]
From Gender Lens to Inclusive Impact Investment
Defining impact by destination… A significant component of impact investment’s raisson d’etre is the promotion of economic development. But not just any investment qualifies as impact investment by contributing to economic development- an oil rig or a tobacco company can catalyze demonstrable GDP growth and job creation but are rarely classified as impact investments. […]