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A Small Drop in a Large Bucket: The World Economic Forum’s Abigail Noble, on why impact investing needs to go mainstream
In 2012, less than $40 billion of capital had been committed to impact investments - out of tens of trillions in global capital. The World Economic Forum’s Mainstreaming Impact Investing initiative wants to help change that. In part 1 of our Impact Investing Insights series, we spoke with the initiative’s leader, Abigail Noble, about how to bring “$40 billion” a bit closer to “tens of trillions.”
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment, Investing
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More Questions than Answers: Impact investors struggle to present their sector to the general public
What qualifies as “impact” investing – and how exactly should non-financial impacts be measured? Those may seem like pretty basic questions. Yet at the recent Sustainatopia Impact Conference, clear answers were in short supply, as a young sector works toward a consensus on the best way to present itself to mainstream investors.
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment
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Impact Investing at a Crossroads: Sustainatopia Impact Conference highlights excitement and concerns about the future of the sector
Despite the excitement surrounding impact investing, it’s clear that the sector is nowhere near big enough to make a dent in the problems the world is facing. As the industry strives to get to the next level, participants in Sustainatopia’s 2014 Impact Conference shared their hopes and insights (and aired a few frustrations).
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment, Investing
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‘Maybe It’s Time We Start Behaving Like a Business’: The struggle of one microfinance institution to balance its social impact with its bottom line
La Ceiba designed its microfinance programs and policies around the needs and capabilities of its clients - even when this conflicted with the best interest of the institution. But now, its interest income isn’t covering its loan loss, putting its survival in doubt. La Ceiba’s loan program leader offers a frank assessment of its struggle to balance social impact with business needs.
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment
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Know Thy Hospital: Engineers and entrepreneurs are rethinking medical device design, and the world could be healthier as a result
Well-meaning individuals and organizations from high-income countries often donate medical equipment – mostly used – to hospitals in low-resource settings. But it often fails because it isn’t designed for the "predictable unpredictability" of these settings. Mike Miesen argues that we need innovative devices designed for the needs of the customer, not the donor.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- product design
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‘Vanity is Not Monopolized By the Rich’: VisionSpring’s innovative way to sell eyeglasses proving to be sustainable; a Q&A with COO Peter Eliassen
Through a hub-and-spoke business model, middle-income customers are subsidizing company’s work with BoP consumers. And it’s proving to be sustainable.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- supply chains
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Social Enterprise in Haiti: An oxymoron or a reality?
More than two dozen development-minded thinkers and doers convened in Cambridge, Mass., for a competition-based workshop designed to find a market-based solution to cholera in Haiti. The winning idea, which includes recruiting and training “community chlorinators,” is expected to be up and running by this time next year.
- Categories
- Education, Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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No Fortune at the BoP?: Globe-trotting economist Paul Clyde on the promise (and limitations) of health care delivery models that serve the poor – Part 1
Paul Clyde is an itinerant economic adviser and faculty member at the University of Michigan. He has advised or run over 40 projects in 10 emerging markets, helping develop financially sustainable health care delivery models. In part 1 of this Q&A, he talks about the BoP health care sector’s evolution, and gives a frank assessment of existing business models.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- public health
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