Why Intrapreneurship is Gaining Momentum
As part of the series of short insights from faculty members of the Intrapreneur Lab, we spoke last October to Adrian Ristow, Special Projects Director at Coca-Cola and lead on Project Last Mile. The Intrapreneur Lab: Why is intrapreneurship gaining momentum? Adrian: An intrapreneur is someone who is trying to drive some type of change […]
The Power of Intrapreneurship
As part of the series of short insights from faculty members of the Intrapreneur Lab, we spoke to Anuradha Bajaj, who at the time was acting head of the Private Sector Department at the Department for International Development and mentor at The Intrapreneur Lab. The Intrapreneur Lab: What’s your view of intrapreneurship? Anuradha: I think […]
The Qualities of a Successful Intrapreneur
As part of the series of short insights from faculty members of the Intrapreneur Lab, we spoke to Professor David Grayson CBE, Director of Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility, Cranfield School of Management. The Intrapreneur Lab: ‘What is an Intrapreneur’? David: Well I think social intrapreneurs are people working inside large businesses who develop ideas, […]
Lessons for Aspiring Intrapreneurs
The past 12–months have been a whirlwind of growth for The Intrapreneur Lab – the accelerator programme for social innovations inside large companies conceived by Leadership Laboratories, Accenture and Business Fight Poverty and now held in business schools across the world. The pace of growth is to us a clear indicator that intrapreneurship is a […]
Emerge 2014 – Living with Purpose, and Other Highlights
Great minds from all reaches of the social entrepreneurship realm came together at Said Business School this weekend for an intensive, 2-day conference to discuss some of the arena’s most pressing insights, developments and issues. Lead by Oxford’s Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, in conjunction with Student Hubs, this year’s Emerge Conference saw several major […]
A Call for Smarter Giving and a Harmony Among Donors
It was Albert Einstein who once said that insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” He could well have been talking about today’s technology-for-development (ICT4D) community, which has a habit of trying the same things over and over again in the hope that someone might eventually get it […]
How to Strengthen the Link Between Development and Trade
EU trade policy lacks development and EU development policy lacks trade. The new EU Trade Commissioner must recognise that trade policy is not just about promoting the EU’s direct commercial interests: it is also a key tool to stimulate economic growth in the developing world. It is both hypocritical and self-defeating for the EU to […]
Dangerous Ideas Wanted: 20 years of Fairtrade in the UK
The ever-quotable Oscar Wilde said: ‘An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all’. Twenty years ago, Fairtrade burst onto Britain’s shop shelves with just such a dangerous idea: that farmers and workers in developing countries should be paid a fair price, that they needed a better deal – […]
How Do We Achieve Scale in Markets for Nutritious Food?
There is unprecedented interest in building value chains and market-based solutions to make nutritious foods more accessible to the people who need the most, and drive better nutrition. Efforts are spanning conventional sectorial divisions: agricultural development programs are introducing nutrition targets, national-level fortification programs are being scaled up and enterprises are developing specially-formulated supplementary foods […]
Agriculture and Nutrition: Feeding a Growing Population
It’s estimated that by 2050 the world’s population will reach nine billion people; all will need nutritious diets in order to live healthy and productive lives. Yet, despite the intrinsic relationship between the food we eat and the food we grow, the nutrition and agriculture sectors are still not working together closely enough. Indeed, since […]
Partnerships for Nutrition and Agricultural Development
Every night, 842 million women, children and men go to bed hungry. Every day 8,000 children die needlessly from conditions linked to under-nutrition. Globally, 2 billion people suffer from micronutrient malnutrition. These statistics are well known, but they bear repeating. The burden of under-nutrition is incalculable, and the ramifications for children are particularly severe. When […]
Closing the SME Finance Gap
Over 90 percent of all jobs are created by the private sector. In emerging economies, small and medium enterprises provide the vast majority of those jobs. Yet every second small and medium sized business remains credit constrained in emerging markets, and is struggling to raise the financing necessary to invest and create new jobs. Some […]
African SMEs are Starved of Finance
Of Africa’s 50 million SMEs, over 70% suffer from insufficient financing, leaving a funding gap of USD 140 billion. Less than a quarter of these firms have access to bank loans or lines of credit, compared to 43% in other developing regions. To address this challenge, the African Development Bank launched the Africa SME Program […]
Unleashing Women-led Enterprise
Photo: CDC Back in 2005, Kofi Annan argued that gender equality is the bedrock for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. A decade later, the case for women’s economic empowerment is even more compelling. Equality of employment opportunities means reduced poverty and higher GDP levels; more women in the workforce leads to productivity gains; women are […]
Implementing a Transformative Development Agenda
In September 2015, the international community is expected to agree an ambitious post-2015 development agenda (the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs) to succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), aiming to combine economic, social and environmental objectives in a balanced manner. At the same time there will be a financing for development conference in Addis Ababa in […]
The BoP: Are Some Sectors Doing Better than Others?
In which sectors is inclusive business flourishing? Which are showing strongest performance in terms of revenue or reach to the Base of the Pyramid? Why are Health and Energy initiatives reporting slow progress, yet demonstrating high reach? Is Financial Inclusion the easiest success story? It is early days to come up with any conclusive answers, […]
Going Beyond Multinationals to Scale up Nutrition
When you think of companies getting involved in the worldwide struggle against undernutrition, which ones come to mind? Probably big. Probably multinational. Probably based in Europe or the United States. But there are companies breaking this mold, showing leadership in the fight against malnutrition. Indofood is a $5 billion-a-year Indonesian food manufacturing and distribution firm […]
Women’s and Children’s Health and the SDGs
By Next year, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) will be replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) — a set of even more ambitious targets for global development. In a bold attempt to create the healthiest generation of young women and children in the world, the new SDGs will require the near elimination of preventable […]
Barclays, Intrapreneurship and The Intrapreneur Lab
On 16 September, Milan Samani, Director of the Intrapreneur Lab, interviewed Mark Thain, Vice President, Social Innovation, Barclays, and Damian Payiatakis, Director of Strategic Development, Barclays Wealth and Investment Management. The conversation covered Barclay’s approach to supporting intrapreneurship and innovation, and their experience with The Intrapreneur Lab – a collaboration between Business Fights Poverty, Accenture […]
Integrating Trade in the Post-2015 Development Agenda
Trade must be a prominent part of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, given its importance in structural economic transformation. The SDGs could help tackle some of the trade challenges facing African LDCs by moving beyond the agenda of market access. This would imply a focus on addressing behind-the-border measures, such as rules of origin, enforcement […]