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Inexpensive Impact: The Case for Frugal Innovations
Over 4 billion people around the world lack necessities like food, water, energy, health care and housing. This represents not only a major social challenge but a major market, as low-income consumers have an annual purchasing capacity of US $5 trillion. Rajat Chabba and Sheena Raikundalia at Intellecap explore how entrepreneurs are developing innovative, frugal products to meet these customers’ needs – and why an ecosystem approach is needed to help them scale their solutions.
- Categories
- Technology
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Accelerating Energy Access in India: New Research Highlights Keys to Developing a Nascent Industry
India’s clean energy industry is growing fast. But the challenges facing enterprises there – and the lessons they are learning – are neither unique to the clean energy industry nor to India. In fact, says Colm Fay at the William Davidson Institute, recent research suggests that India’s clean energy sector is following patterns that can be observed in any nascent industry. He explores how existing knowledge about how industries develop can help guide investment, and provide some clues about what the sector’s future may hold.
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- Energy
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Three Ways Inclusive Businesses Can Become More Customer-Centric
In any successful business, the customer always comes first. However, impact-focused enterprises often paint customers at the base of the pyramid with wide brush strokes, overlooking nuances in culture, location and literacy. Christian Jahn, Executive Director of the Inclusive Business Action Network, understands the desire to "help" poor people – but notes well-intended social entrepreneurs risk ignoring what their customers really want. Instead, Jahn recommends businesses develop a holistic view of customer needs, viewing them through a realistic lens for more meaningful impact.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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The Definition of Insanity: Why Repeating the Same Approach to Enterprise Support is Failing Africa’s SMEs
It’s often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So in a region where 84 percent of SMEs struggle to access capital, why do investors keep recycling the same failed approaches when financing African enterprises? Mercy Mangeni and Joshua Murima at Intellecap discuss what investors and entrepreneurs have done wrong – and explore some innovative ways their organization is working to make it right.
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The Least Sexy Approach to Development: Why We Need to Focus on Systems Change
Even within the systems-change sector, people joke that it is one of the least “sexy” facets of development work. Focused on addressing the faults in social, economic and political systems that lead to problems like poverty, the approach can be overwhelmingly complex, which has limited its widespread implementation. But as Lexi Doolittle at S3IDF explains, a market-based approach that nudges these systems towards greater inclusivity and productivity is a vital tool to catalyze social change – one that we cannot afford to overlook.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise, Uncategorized
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What’s the Best Way to Teach Entrepreneurship? Assessing the Impact of Different Business Training Approaches
With countless low-income people running small-scale enterprises, many see entrepreneurship as a viable pathway out of poverty. But what are the most effective methods for teaching business skills to these entrepreneurs? MIT D-Lab's Libby McDonald disseminates research from D-Lab's Practical Impact Alliance working group, highlighting key approaches for transferring entrepreneurial knowledge to BoP business owners, and discussing skillsets that can serve as the primary building blocks for a business-training curriculum.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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India’s Impact Capital Vacuum – And What to Do About It
Impact investments in India grew by double digits between 2010 and 2016, and are expected to reach US $8 billion by 2025. But the on-the-ground reality is not so rosy. Investors are flocking to financial services and larger-scale companies, while early-stage enterprises and impact sectors such as agriculture, health care and clean energy face a funding gap. While there is no secret sauce for changing this dynamic, Gagandeep Bakshi and Sameer Gaud at Intellecap offer five guiding principles to help social enterprises with successful fundraising.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Building Markets, Building Cohesion: Lessons from Last-Mile Deliveries
In 2016, Myanmar was a nation emerging from decades of conflict and isolation. Kopernik, the UNDP and Mercy Corps responded with a pilot program that utilized technology distribution as an avenue to strengthen social cohesion in the country's remote rural communities. Tomohiro Hamakawa and Vanesha Manuturi of Kopernik share development lessons learned from the program — lessons with the potential to benefit other emerging market communities making a comeback from histories of conflict.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
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