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When Vaccines Can’t Help: How Supply Chain Failures Undermine Vaccine Advancements – And What’s Being Done About It
Breakthroughs in vaccine technology are revolutionizing disease prevention. But complex new vaccines can require over twice the refrigeration and transport capacity of traditional vaccines, and can cost up to 50 times more. BoP countries can’t afford to waste these new vaccines, but their supply and logistic systems make waste inevitable. Solutions exist, but only if we bring new thinking to supply chain management.
- Categories
- Health Care
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The Best of 2012: Making the Most of Missteps: At Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, SKS’s Akula Opens up on Failure
Conferences usually are not the venue for owning up to failure. But on first day of the 2012 Social Enterprise Conference, Vikram Akula, the founder of SKS Microfinance who left the organization in November 2011, made just such an confession.
- Categories
- Finance
- Tags
- failure, microfinance
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The $450 Billion Opportunity: Catalyzing Smallholder Agricultural Finance
As population growth and rising incomes create unprecedented demand for food, multinational companies increasingly rely on smallholders to secure their supply of agricultural commodities. As a result, smallholders present a compelling opportunity for buyers, lenders, and other actors in the agricultural value chain. However, smallholder production is often characterized by low yields, low quality, poor linkages, and little access to finance. A Dalberg report released Wednesday called “Catalyzing Smallholder Agricultural Finance” suggests that with increased financing, farmers can improve their yields and products and in some cases double their income.
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- Agriculture
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Impact Bonds: Boon or Boondoggle? Before We Hop on the Bandwagon, Let’s Scan the Road Ahead
Although there are many benefits to impact bonds – make no mistake – they are complicated to implement. Because they are new tools and because it is in the interests of all parties involved to reduce risk, only strong programs with proven statistical success are likely to be supported by a social or development impact bond.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Overcoming the Challenges in Mobile: Living Goods hopes to follow in the footsteps of Amway, Avon, and Tupperware
With a core business in health care sales, Living Goods is no stranger to behavior change. Despite the challenges to rolling out a new mobile system to a sales force of 250 women, most over 40 years old, 60 percent of who had never used SMS before, the organization is seeing some early successes.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Moving Beyond Access for Meaningful Financial Inclusion: Targeting investments to improve financial capability
Who are the relevant stakeholders to help bridge this financial capability gap? We are looking to explore these and related questions through 10 or more new research projects that we initiate at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) over the next two years, with support from the Citi Foundation.
- Categories
- Education
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PopTech: On Failure, Jedi Knights and the Edge of Social Change
I recently sat down with Executive Director and Curator Andrew Zolli, and PopTech President Leetha Filderman for a candid conversation on a broad spectrum of topics, from impact investing to the importance of failure, to the pace of social innovation and how PopTech sees its role as an accelerant. While best known for its leave-your-head-spinning conferences, it appears that what’s actually popping at PopTech is a lot quieter, slower and more fundamental than may initially meet the eye.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
- Tags
- failure, incubators
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NexThought Monday: In Failure, a Marketing Lesson for Social Entrepreneurs: What we can learn from the closing of The Hoop Fund
The Hoop Fund was built on a truly innovative premise: Allow consumers to purchase premium goods from small businesses in the developing world, while simultaneously supporting those businesses with microloans. Unfortunately, the model suffered from critical gaps in marketing strategy, which made it almost impossible to achieve scale.
- Categories
- Education
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@NextBillion (link opens in a new window)
"Resolving Legal Disputes in #EmergingMarkets (link opens in a new window): What Social Entrepreneurs Should Know About… https://t.co/6mD40yw0mO (link opens in a new window) -
@NextBillion (link opens in a new window)
Analysis via @WorldBank (link opens in a new window): Closing the Access Gap for #Water (link opens in a new window) and #Sanitation (link opens in a new window) in Eastern and Southern Africa:… https://t.co/XCvel8WWMt (link opens in a new window) -
@NextBillion (link opens in a new window)
News via @techbuildafrica (link opens in a new window): Logistics #Startup (link opens in a new window) Fez Delivery Secures $1 Million: https://t.co/oQ7c7x9dYY (link opens in a new window)… https://t.co/17TiQLjOfO (link opens in a new window)
