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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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What Motivates an Impact Angel?: Clearly Social Angels, the UK’s first impact-focused angel investing group, discusses what these investors are looking for
Why does someone become an impact angel investor – and is this a source of capital your company might tap? Though impact angel investing is still relatively new, the experience of pioneer investors can provide a better idea of what they’re looking for. Clare Jones of ClearlySo discusses lessons learned through Clearly Social Angels, the UK’s first impact-focused angel investing group.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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- impact investing
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The Best-Kept Secret in Impact Investing: A little-known legal tool lets businesses tap mainstream investor capital – so why don’t more social enterprises use it?
A common complaint in impact investing is the lack of options for non-wealthy investors. Many feel that this hamstrings both mainstream investors and the social enterprises that could use their capital. But as Jenny Kassan, CEO of Cutting Edge Capital, describes it in part 4 of our Impact Investing Insights series, a solution to this problem already exists.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- impact investing
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Social Entrepreneurship and Global Warming
The consequences of a temperature rise greater than 2°C would be catastrophic for all of humanity, but the greatest impact would be on the planet’s poorest people, who face profound loss from flooding, displacement and food scarcity. Social entrepreneurs are among those best positioned to improve the lives of the poor and mitigate global warming, says Thane Kreiner.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- renewable energy
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India’s Startup Focus Needs to Include Social Enterprises: How the 2014 budget can improve the ecosystem
The initial Indian budget, recently tabled by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, has focused on startups and entrepreneurs by setting aside INR 10,000 Crores (USD $1.6 billion) in various initiatives. But it’s also essential that social enterprises and their specific funding requirements are considered.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Healthy Foods and New Jobs, Part 2: Infrastructure matters
On the way to introducing a food cart vendor business in Benin, West Africa, MamaCarts has encountered all sorts of problems with sanitation, incorporation and the government. But there’s a positive spin on these infrastructure gaps: Alternative solutions do exist and people circumnavigate these difficulties on a daily basis.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Healthy Foods and New Jobs, Part 1: MamaCarts learns valuable lessons while launching food cart delivery service from scratch
MamaCarts began by pitching an idea at a business plan competition and culminated with receiving a 2013 Rockefeller Foundation Centennial Innovation Challenge Award. That’s all there is to starting a food cart delivery service in Benin, West Africa, right? Wrong.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Nigeria, From Pure Growth to Harnessed Opportunity: A new report on the 3D role of business in the unfolding transformation
It is easy to pretend that there are two separate Nigerias: one a thrusting consumer powerhouse, and one socially divided and pocked by violence and poverty. For business, which relies on the success of the former, acknowledging the latter can be difficult, but they are two sides of the same coin. This week we are in Abuja to launch a new report by Business Action for Africa and the Initiative for Global Development: “The New Africa – Nigeria: From Growth to Opportunity”.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise