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An Interview With Muhammad Yunus: The Godfather of Microcredit Shares His Views – And Concerns – About the Sector
Though he’s a tireless promoter of microcredit’s potential to help the poor, Muhammad Yunus hasn’t been shy in voicing his criticisms of its embrace of commercialism. In a video Q&A with NextBillion Financial Innovation – the first in a series of conversations with microfinance thought leaders – Yunus discusses his concerns about the industry’s direction, and points to ways it could improve.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Ideas to Practice, Pilots to Strategy: World Economic Forum report shares best practices and lessons learned from impact investing innovators
Impact investing is a rapidly growing sector that’s generating a lot of knowledge, yet this expertise is spread among dozens if not hundreds of practitioners and academics. Last week, the World Economic Forum released the second edition in its series “Ideas to Practice, Pilots to Strategy” with the goal of democratizing and disseminating this expertise.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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Nexthought Monday – Fertilizer as Both Friend AND Foe: How to use them more responsibly, effectively and for farmers – profitably
More than 100 million tons of fertilizers are applied worldwide each year, supplying our planet with plentiful harvests. But that’s only part of the story. At Semilla Nueva, we have a lot of interest in how fertilizers can be used responsibly and sustainably to feed our growing planet and boost farmers’ incomes in the process.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise
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Seen and Heard at SOCAP14, Day 1
“The brain is just about the same ... (but) the heart seems to be a lot bigger in social entrepreneurs,” said William Draper, famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist turned venture philanthropist. His comments helped kick off SOCAP14.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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A Shift in Focus: Impact investing needs to concentrate less on problems, more on solutions, says Burckart
Impact investing has generated plenty of discussion and some fairly unbridled enthusiasm - though earlier predictions of $1 trillion in new capital by 2020 now seem overly optimistic. Bill Burckart, managing director of Impact Economy North America, discusses the sector’s growth and challenges in this video interview, part 6 of our Impact Investing Insights series.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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NexThought Monday – The Affordable Housing Puzzle: Three pilot projects in India aim to assemble the pieces –customers, financing and scale
Can the low-cost or affordable housing segment business in fact be profitable, and more importantly, scalable? asks housing developer and researcher Dhaval Monani. He points to new pilot projects that show promise in delivering safe, very low-cost homes that come with a profit for developers.
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The Companies Act has Promise, but Will India Inc. Cash In?: Business value and social good can converge if companies shift focus from compliance to results
There is much excitement in India around the social Companies Act, which stipulates that 2 percent of corporations’ profits must be spent on CSR. But the surge in CSR spending stemming from the new law will only be successful if execution looks markedly different from how CSR and philanthropic money has been spent in the past, says Dalberg’s Gaurav Gupta.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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It’s About Time, It’s Also About Culture: How do varying cultural perspectives about time and productivity impact social enterprises?
Andrea Trice is researching how “soft” factors such as mutual understanding and trust influence the success of a social enterprise. While it’s too early to draw conclusions, Trice notes that it’s difficult to overestimate the role of culture in shaping how each of us thinks and acts, and therefore how businesses succeed or fail.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- research
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