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Engineering Social Impact: Being a Hardware Entrepreneur is Hard … But Worth It
There's nothing fast or easy about hardware innovation. Hardware is, well, hard. But a growing number of stakeholders in the development space see the importance of hardware-led social ventures and the impact they make in emerging markets, and they'll be especially interested in ASME's upcoming Innovation Showcase, a competition with events in in India, Kenya and the United States.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, Technology
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Creative Climbing: How Impact Enterprises are Overcoming Obstacles in East Africa
In 2016, Intellecap undertook a study to better understand how East African impact entrepreneurs manage to design viable business models despite the various market challenges. The insights from the study can inform inclusive development in the region and across the global south. The study classified impact enterprises across three levers based on their interaction with the BoP: access, ability and knowledge.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Leveraging India’s Digital Transformation: Three Lessons for MFIs
As India continues its digital transformation, Grameen Foundation India has helped several MFIs transition to a digital financial services platform, and along the way developed some key lessons MFIs should keep in mind: conduct a thorough analysis of your business requirements before you select a digital financial services provider; don't discount the value of effective change management; and pay close attention to client education.
- Categories
- Technology
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Learning From Failure: Lessons From Nigeria About Integrating Technology Into Rural Health Systems
A study showed that most people living in a Nigerian territory lacked access to health care, leading to a radical eHealth pilot project. That pilot failed, but lessons learned ultimately led to a stronger and more sustainable eHealth framework in Nigeria and can help others who hope to integrate technology into health systems, especially in limited-resource settings.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Tags
- data, failure, rural development
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Social Business Roundup: Building Our Immunity to Anti-Vaxxers, Solar Loans With a Side of Health, and SRI Goes Robo
There’s a crisis of trust in the world, some of it well earned – and some, like skepticism about vaccines, completely unwarranted. We cover an alarming uptick in the anti-vax movement's profile, an effort to pair solar loans with health care in Ghana, and the emergence of "robo-SRI" in this news roundup.
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- Energy, Health Care, Investing, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Tags
- ESG, impact investing, solar, vaccines
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Digital Tools for Impact and Scale to Reduce Extreme Poverty
Ana Pantelic writes that Fundación Capital is using tablet-based applications and e-learning platforms to change the way that families living in extreme poverty – and the program mentors who work with them – access information and build local capacity. By integrating digital solutions into its work, the organization has improved and standardized the quality of training, and as a result, scaled national responses to eliminating poverty.
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- Education, Technology
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Beyond Imagination: GE, Miller Center Helping Keep Moms, Children Healthy
A pilot called healthymagination Mother and Child – a unique partnership between Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, based in Silicon Valley, and GE, which is investing $20 million in the joint venture – accelerates much-needed medical innovations in nine countries across sub-Saharan Africa.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
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It’s the Ecosystem, Stupid: Exploring the “digital poverty stack” – Part 2
In the first post in this series, we proposed that donors and governments advance digital and financial inclusion by focusing more on creating public goods that enable the broader ecosystem, rather than on peripheral innovation in service delivery. In this second post, we discuss the implications of this shift and highlight some new efforts to move the fields in the right direction.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise, Technology
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