Making the Care Economy Everyone’s Business
Take our survey to help us better understand business motivations for addressing the care economy and how entrepreneurs innovating in this space could support your business. Are you an FMCG company, concerned about the double day women in your supply chain are working – at the factory and then at home. What does this do […]
Sustainable Supply Chains: Future Proofing by Farmer-Focusing
Prices are the sharp end of a long stick. Gas prices. Food prices. Inflationary prices. Downward price pressure. Upward price pressure. Global supply chains. On and on it goes, with each new headline revealing a business environment stripped of its old rhythm. The environment feels particularly chaotic for any business dependent on functioning supply chains […]
On How Rules Become Bridges Rather than Road Blocks Or Dams
Rules can get a bad name. We often don’t like rules, but rules can actually create bridges for people in a couple of ways. First, without some rules, one cannot even have an activity. Unless one has rules, soccer or baseball or any other sport can’t exist. One has to know how to play the […]
Companies Need to Wake up to the Urgency of Ending Deforestation in Supply Chains. Here’s How
The announcement in June this year that parties to the COP15 biodiversity convention, billed the ‘Paris agreement’ for biodiversity, will meet in Montreal in December, ends uncertainty about the meeting taking place at all this year, after two years of delays. The urgent need to address the ongoing biodiversity crisis was highlighted at Davos earlier […]
The ‘Big How’ for Business: Putting Strategy into Practice in the Face of Urgency and Disruption
With the case for driving deep and urgent social and environmental change long since made, businesses are now focusing on how to actually deliver ambitious strategies for impact. But as expectations on them to step up build, it’s worth noting that it’s never been harder to deliver this in practice for wide-ranging reasons, from cascading […]
Addressing the Future of Work for Young Africans in a Post-Covid World
Covid-19 has undeniably changed the way in which we understand the world of work coupled with unemployment numbers that have increased globally. We have undoubtedly read horrifying statics about youth unemployment and the scarcity of traditional job opportunities. It is estimated that we will witness a global figure of 73 million unemployed youths by the […]
If We Want to Meet the SDGs, We Need to Ditch Empty Rhetoric and Invest in Young People
‘Youth is the future. The leaders of tomorrow. Youth will change the world’. This is all true. But the rhetoric banded around at leadership events is not being matched by actions that enable youth’s full and meaningful participation. Last month’s International Youth Day (12 August) serves as a powerful reminder that this needs to change. […]
On The Difference Between Us and Them as Opposed to Us vs Them
On The Difference Between Us and Them as Opposed to Us vs Them The words “us” and “them” typically are used to characterize problematic opposition. There is a good reason for that. But we all need an “us.” If you have an “us,” there is going to be a “them.” That’s not a bad thing. […]
The Importance of Nudges & Bridges in an Increasingly Conflicted World
A Kelley School of Business Center for International Business Education and Research Interview with Tim Fort As part of the series of Nudges & Bridges, it is worth taking a step back from time to time to remember the main themes of the idea. Or maybe one could think of it as remembering the forest […]
The Great Divergence: Academic research and Ground Realities
The Great Divergence: Academic research and Ground Realities In a rather disarming article titled ‘On Research and Action’ published in 2002 in the Economic and Political Weekly, the economist Jean Dreze expands on some of the limits of research and embarks on one of the foundational expositions of ‘barefoot research’. Reflecting on a campaign to […]
Advancing Gender Equality through Inclusive Distribution Networks
Advancing Gender Equality through Inclusive Distribution Networks Women play a vital role in fast-moving consumer goods, or FMCG, value chains. Much of the focus on accelerating gender equality in this space, however, has been limited to supporting women suppliers. Women can also play key roles in FMCG value chains, both as distributors and as retailers. […]
Nudges & Bridges: The Sporting Life
Certainly, when we play on a team or cheer for a team, we want our side to win. Yet, in the midst of that desire and any team’s (or fan’s) competitiveness, acts of sportsmanship can draw both sides together. Sportsmanship demonstrates the bonds that players and fans have that extend beyond the final score. In […]
Social inequality has become an investor priority
When the European Union embraced the concept of double materiality in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, mandating that investors consider risks corporations externalize onto people, the business and human rights movement notched a significant win. Now the notion of double materiality is also taking shape in a different guise beyond Europe: in rising investor concerns […]
The sobering reality of the UN’s Global Goals
The sobering reality of the UN’s Global Goals Remember the Sustainable Development Goals? It’s not a facetious question. Amid all the other corporate sustainability priorities of the past few years — net zero, ESG, the circular economy, social justice, resource constraints and all the rest — not to mention a seemingly never-ending drumbeat of political upheaval, […]
Join the Futuremakers Forum 2022
How can we, together, put young people into the driving seat and create the financial systems they need to achieve success? Nearly 1 in 4 young female entrepreneurs say they don’t control their own money; 75% of young people with business bank accounts say they assumed they weren’t eligible for any further financial products and […]
New research finds solutions to farmer resilience amid global crises
This year’s Business Fights Poverty Global Summit is warning of the tsunami of poverty created by COVID-19, climate change and conflict that our community is striving to resist. For the people working in global supply chains, in agriculture, fashion, extractive industries in low-income countries, and who often experience entrenched social inequality, crisis is all too […]
Are you integrating your brand purpose into tangible strategic action?
Your marketing team has, no doubt, done a stellar job of defining your brand purpose. It’s embodied in a bold, well thought out purpose statement, which illuminates the real societal need you’re going to address. It’s woven into your organisation’s marketing and CSR strategies, too. Now, however, is when the hard part starts. How do […]
Nudges & Bridges: The Sporting Life – How Sports Bring us Together
These early podcasts will focus mostly on sports as the cultural artifact that can bring people together. Simply put, sports are popular and a lot of people around the world follow sports and often participate in them. When I ask my students of how they have been able to find common ground with others with […]
COP15: Businesses Commit to Helping Grow a World Wonder
Business Fights Poverty joined with the UNCCD (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire this week to launch the Great Green Wall (GGW) Sourcing Challenge. The Challenge aims to bring together companies and other partners to help unlock the potential of the Sahel, the semi-arid region stretching across Africa just south of […]
Bridging the Supply Chain Gender Gap through Digital Training
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the lives of approximately 190 million women workers in global supply chains. Employees needed to access critical information on health, financial resilience, and tools for building harmonious relationships and handling stress. Since on-site training was no longer an option, HERproject kickstarted HERessentials, a tablet-based learning app for workers and managers, in Pakistan, India, […]