-
Electrifying Transportation: Can This Innovative Financing Model Make Electric Buses a Global Reality?
Electrifying transportation at scale is critical to fighting climate change and urban pollution. And with their affordable battery costs and lower fuel and maintenance expenses, transit buses present an excellent business case for electrification. So what is preventing the rapid deployment of electric buses worldwide? Clean Energy Works founder Holmes Hummel discusses the main barrier to adoption – and an innovative financing solution that could turn things around.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing, Transportation
-
NB Quick Takes: Polman’s Out at Unilever – Let the Legacy Debate Begin!
In case you hadn't heard: Paul Polman is retiring as CEO of Unilever at the end of the year. Perhaps no other executive has been as closely associated with corporate social responsibility as Polman, who put social impact at the forefront of his agenda. That's not to say all of his initiatives were successful, nor were they without detractors – his retirement is sparking lots of discussion about his approach and its effectiveness at Unilever, not to mention its influence across the business world. We've gathered some early Twitter reactions in this post.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, Uncategorized
-
The Donor-Funded Dilemma: What’s Stopping Emerging Countries from Developing Private Markets for Contraceptives?
In sub-Saharan Africa, the private sector provides family planning solutions to almost 40 percent of women. But that isn’t the case in Malawi, a country that’s long been dominated by donor-funded commodities. Erika Beidelman and Andrea Bare at the William Davidson Institute explore Malawi's family planning landscape, highlighting five factors that may be limiting the private sector’s involvement – issues that may apply to other countries with histories of donor-funded healthcare.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Authentic Storytelling Can Boost a Social Enterprise’s Development – This Tool Can Help
When promoting their businesses, most social entrepreneurs naturally focus on talking about their successes. But though their instinct is often to minimize or ignore their enterprise's setbacks, this can actually be a mistake, says Barbara Börner, a consultant for social entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations. She explores how telling the stories behind these challenges can raise awareness of a social business among potential investors, customers and other stakeholders – and she shares a free tool that can help entrepreneurs develop more effective storytelling skills.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
-
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
-
The New Face of Poverty: Why Unemployment isn’t the Issue – And How Financial Inclusion Can Help
When you think about poverty, what does it look like? Many people might picture an undernourished African child, or an elderly beggar sitting in the street. But as Oakam CEO Frederic Nze explains, the reality can be far different. Poverty today often involves the struggles of the working poor, and it’s defined less by extreme deprivation and more by lack of access – to clean water, to power, to basic education, and increasingly to the internet. Nze explores the implications of this shift for the financial inclusion and development sectors.
- Categories
- Finance, Telecommunications
-
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.
- Categories
- Energy
-
Affordable, Scalable, Overlooked: Evaporative Cooling Can Fight Food Loss – Why isn’t the Development Sector Embracing It?
Food loss due to lack of effective storage is a global problem: In sub-Saharan Africa alone, approximately 23 percent of available food is lost or wasted. There’s increasing interest in an innovative yet old-school solution to the problem: evaporative cooling. But though the technology can be adopted with minimal training, low up-front costs and no electricity, it is not widely used. MIT D-Lab research engineer Eric Verploegen explores five ways to increase the effective production, dissemination and usage of this technology.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Technology
Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter, "NextBillion Notes"
Published each Wednesday, our e-newsletter features NextBillion's latest original articles, along with a selection of news, jobs, bizdev opportunities and events from our recent coverage — and regular conference ticket giveaways.
We respect your privacy. Your information is safe and will never be shared.
Don't miss out. Subscribe today.