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Big Idea: Why Hands-On Regulation of Mobile Money Could Be Dangerous
There’s a very simple imperative driving the tariff structure and every other decision that determines access to mobile money: cost recovery. This is more than a cold-hearted calculation by mobile network operators’ accountants. If rural mobile money agents, who generally operate as independent contractors, cannot profit from this role, there will be no rural agents and no mobile money service.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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The Big Idea: Taking Mobile Money Forward
The excitement of mobile money has been dampened by an inability of deployments to take hold outside a handful of successful markets. Driving the enthusiasm forward is the opportunity to bridge the gap between one billion people in emerging markets who have mobile phones but no bank account. On Tuesday, McKinsey & Company released a report “Mobile money: Getting to scale in emerging markets” seeking to cut through this excitement and identify critical success factors for implementation.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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Learning From the Past, Looking Ahead: Highlights From Day 2 of the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference
“We really are at a crossroads,” The Economist’s Matt Bishop observed at the opening of the second day of Harvard’s Social Enterprise Conference. Bishop struck a theme for the day’s speakers: We’ve reached a point in time to rethink how markets work, and how more people can share in the benefits of the global economy.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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NexThought Monday, Guest Post: Facing the Challenges of BoP Housing in Brazil
Despite a commendable 50 percent reduction in extreme poverty levels since 2003, a cohesive low income housing strategy to eliminate an officially defined deficit of 6.7 million is severely lagging. We believe the Fez Tá Pronto Construction System presents a genuine and very necessary globally applicable paradigm shift.
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- Uncategorized
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How ‘Toil-o-preneurs’ Are Scaling Sanitation Solutions
Nearly 50 percent of India’s urban poor do not have access to clean toilets. With increasing migration to cities like Mumbai and Delhi, the pressure on public sanitation facilities has been immense. Shramik Sanitation Systems (3S), one of the early social enterprises that looked at sanitation in a holistic manner, provides community toilets in urban environments of India.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Unlocking Pakistan’s Enterprise Potential
The criticisms of Pakistan’s volatility are not without merit; the roses are more the thorny than plain variety. But I launched my company, Invest2Innovate (i2i) in fall 2011 because because I believe strongly in the potential of untapped markets like Pakistan, 66 percent of the population lives at the bottom of the pyramid, under $2 a day.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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National Social Entrepreneurship Forum: Creating a Network With Purpose
Recently I had a chance to interact with Yashveer Singh, Founder, National Social Entrepreneurship Forum (NSEF) about the organization and about their unique Authors of Change Program. (NSEF) is an organization working towards democratizing social innovation and Entrepreneurship amongst Indian youth.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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Bottom Line and Belt Line: Eating Healthy to Solve Malnutrition
Over 1 billion people in the world lack access to adequate food and nutrition while another 1 billion face health risks associated with obesity and overeating. These seemingly bifurcated problems are actually inter-related and reflect the global food imbalance. TFT’s solution aims to addresses these issues by encouraging behavioral changes related to portion size and prompts students, restaurant customers and company employees to think about the global hunger epidemic
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- nutrition
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