To Change A Company, You Need Intrapreneurs
It can be hard to get a big, slow company to change its ways. It’s the efforts of courageous intrapreneurs that can change their trajectory. The key is to make your company a place where intrapreneurs can thrive. Multinational corporations aren’t always known for their agility. Organizational change, product evolution, or rebranding–just some of the […]
Why Intrapreneurship is More Than Just Another Buzzword
If there’s one word with a big chance of topping the list of most-used words in 2013, it is definitely innovation. While widely used by corporations, consultants, politicians and even presidents, many of them can’t tell you what it is or what they expect from it. Along with this broad attention for innovation comes a […]
Fighting Poverty: What’s in it for Business?
It’s time to discuss the business opportunities in serving poor consumers. The Case for Ending Poverty You may feel, as I do, that poverty is humankind’s greatest shame. But there are numerous practical considerations, too: the horrendous waste of human talent; the prospect that the end of wide-scale poverty might lower the level of conflict […]
Typhoon Haiyan – How Business Can Help
Business in the Community is urging businesses to go beyond money and to use their resources, skills, products, services and networks to support people in the aftermath of the typhoon in the Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan is reported to be the strongest storm ever recorded that has hit land. It has caused shocking devastation and destruction […]
Why Saving is Not a Luxury
When World Savings Day was first launched in 1924 the aim was to encourage people to put their savings in a formal bank account rather than ‘under the mattress’ so that they could manage and save their money efficiently. Today, as we celebrate the 79th World Savings Day, half the world’s population, some 2.5 billion […]
Creating a Runway for Multinationals with Impact
Five years ago, Steve Bachar and I decided to create a venture capital fund that would only invest in companies capable of achieving three goals: Transforming the livelihoods of at least 100 million customers living on $2 a day or less; Generating at least $10 billion in annual revenues; and Earning sufficient profits to attract […]
FoodTrade – Delivering the Goods
The last 60 years have been good to you. You’ve probably never run out of affordable food or cheap energy and you’ll likely live longer than your grandparents. What’s more, you can travel anywhere in the world in less than a day, and access virtual omniscience from the palm of your hand. Life is very, […]
A Story About Sumitomo Chemical and the Market for Bednets
When I first learnt about the partnership of Sumitomo Chemical and A to Z Textile Mills Ltd. in Tanzania it seemed like pure success. In 2007, I was working on the UNDP report “Creating Value for All”, and the story about local manufacturing of mosquito nets was one of my favourite case studies. Sumitomo Chemical, […]
Market & Social Impact Research: A Dual Approach
Having worked in the local sustainable energy sector for the last seven years, I cannot stress enough how important it is to conduct both market and social impact research. Yet most organisations tend to focus on one or the other. Enterprises and charities founded in countries where they operate, especially when they are led by […]
Market & Social Impact Research: A Dual Approach
Having worked in the local sustainable energy sector for the last seven years, I cannot stress enough how important it is to conduct both market and social impact research. Yet most organisations tend to focus on one or the other. Enterprises and charities founded in countries where they operate, especially when they are led by […]
Does Scaling Up Compromise our Social Mission?
When charities concentrate on measuring the impact of their work it is easy to justify certain inefficiencies or not reaching scale, but a business wouldn’t have that attitude. That’s why SolarAid have chosen a business based approach; our mission to eradicate the kerosene lamp from Africa requires that we get solar lights to people at […]
Benchmarking Agriculture: Lessons from Doing Business
The proposed Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture (BBA) is a joint effort of the Doing Business and agricultural development teams of the World Bank and is partly based on the (in)famous Doing Business project. Doing Business is arguably the Bank’s highest profile publication and ranks countries’ business regulations and laws across ten key indicators, but […]
8 Insights from the Mind of an Intrapreneur
The inaugural 3-day Intrapreneur Lab offered a unique and intimate insight into the minds of today’s leading ‘social intrapreneurs;’ the enterprising individuals working on the inside of large corporations to create innovative business solutions that drive social change. Of course, entrepreneurial employees with noble motives have been part of large companies for years, but increasingly, […]
Intrapreneurship – A View from the Bridge
You’re on the Titanic. You see the iceberg. What do you do? You could just enjoy the party. After all, it’s probably too late to do anything so one might as well have fun. Alternatively, you could quickly make for the lifeboats and plan an escape while you still can. Or you could climb up […]
Combatting Modern-Day Slavery
How many slaves work for you? Paradoxically – in 2013 – the question is still very relevant, and you might be surprised by the answer. Depending on where you live, what you buy, what your lifestyle is, you have almost certainly been touched by slavery. Almost nobody is clean. Modern-day slavery takes many forms: human […]
We Must Make Farming Profitable
A farmer tells his child, “study well and get a job or you will suffer like me.” This is not an isolated caution from a hapless father, but a reality that plays out time and again across villages in the emerging world. Parents don’t want their children to farm. As governments across the world clamour […]
How to Change the Way the World is Fed?
As we mark World Food Day this week, we are greeted by the news that 842 million people – about one in eight – are still chronically hungry. Although this represents an improvement on the figures from previous years, it is not enough, and it looks like we are at risk of missing the Millennium […]
Social Intrapreneurism – A Dialogue
When a researcher in corporate responsibility meets a management consultant, it rarely begins with improvising a jazz piano duet at a conference. This is, however, what happened when Melody McLaren, an Associate of the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility, first met Lionel Bodin, a Senior Manager at Accenture Development Partnerships, during the inaugural award ceremony […]
Sustainable Development for Artisanal Diamond Miners
What is happening today in the diamond business? A few years ago the appalling human tragedy in Sierra Leone – fuelled by ‘blood’ diamonds – was front of mind. The international diamond industry, concerned that consumers would turn against its luxury product, joined governments and civil society in the Kimberley Process to eradicate the trade […]
Why Conventional Methods to End Poverty Have Not Worked
Rather than approach the problem directly, most large-scale, rich-nation efforts to end global poverty have employed indirect methods to eradicate poverty. This is the second in a six-part series on the fight against global poverty adapted from The Business Solution to Poverty: Designing Products and Services f…, by Paul Polak and Mal Warwick. It’s difficult […]