Latest
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How Do Consumers React to Psychometric-Based Credit Scoring?
Nearly 50 million Americans and literally billions more around the world have limited access to affordable credit – primarily due to a lack of credit histories. What's worse, many of these underbanked individuals are actually in decent financial standing – they simply do not have sufficiently mature credit scores. Psychometric (ie: personality-based) credit scores can address this issue – but how do customers feel about it? Saul Fine at Innovative Assessments shares results from recent surveys that aim to answer that question.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Smallholders as Customers, Not Pupils: Making the Case for Good Agricultural Practices
Good agricultural practices offer smallholders the promise of improved food safety, food quality and environmental stewardship. But they also bring the risks of implementing costly new methods and standards. To overcome farmers' reluctance to adopt these practices, Ben Fowler of MarketShare Associates and Clara Yoon at MEDA write that agricultural organizations should adopt a customer-centric approach – treating smallholders as customers rather than beneficiaries of know-how.
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- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship
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What Nigeria Can Teach the U.S. About a Green New Deal
Tackling a host of huge challenges – from climate change to economic inequality – the Green New Deal has provoked passion and resistance in equal measure. But as Damilola Ogunbiyi at Sustainable Energy for All asks, what if the solution is not to think big, but to think small? Instead of a vast new energy grid, what if the U.S. created efficient, resilient and job-creating decentralized grids – along the lines of what's currently happening in countries like Nigeria?
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- Energy, Environment
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Five Ways the Private Sector Can Align with the Sustainable Development Goals
How can the private sector advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and what’s the best way to measure the success of these efforts? Those questions were among the topics explored at the recent Sustainability and Development Conference at the University of Michigan. Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi and Dana Gorodetsky at the William Davidson Institute attended the event, and they share some essential insights on the private sector’s role in supporting the SDGs.
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- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Impact Assessment
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Creating Jobs While Fighting Poverty: An Innovative Social Micro-Franchise Model Gains Traction in Haiti
All too many global development efforts fail to appreciate the value of a steady paycheck – or the role of small businesses as job creators in poor communities, says Marc Blumenthal at Social Ventures Foundation (SVF). This has stagnated poverty reduction campaigns, leaving vulnerable populations in need after government and NGO funds dry up. He shares SVF's efforts to reverse this dynamic, through social micro-franchise business models that address poverty-related issues, while also creating sustainable jobs in low-income communities.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Investing
