-
Making Impact Core to Education Companies’ Business Strategy
India's education sector faces many daunting challenges, including proving economic and social value. With so many hurdles to cross, education companies must still make quantifying their impact – and communicating those findings to the masses – a priority.
- Categories
- Education
- Tags
- impact investing
-
Harnessing Mobile Technologies to Make Matatus, and Kenya, Safer
Kenya's roads are deadly due in no small part to accidents involving "matatus," the ubiquitous minibuses. A key problem: The more passengers they pick up, the more matatu drivers get paid. So Echo Mobile and a team from the University of California at Berkeley recently launched the SmartMatatu project to study driver behavior and how they might be incentivized differently.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
-
Swine Flu Adds to Brazil’s Zika Worries
Brazil, which will host the Olympics beginning Aug. 5, was already beset by economic problems, a political crisis and the Zika outbreak. Now it's experiencing its worst swine flu outbreak since 2009. Dr. Melvin Sanicas, a program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, wonders if this will be the crisis that forces a change to the Olympic schedule.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Beyond the Lending Club Scandal – Why Marketplace Lending is Still Needed in Emerging Markets
Renaud Laplanche, the CEO of industry pioneer Lending Club, resigned in May amidst rumours of fraud and malpractice. Since then, critics have been trying to write off marketplace lending as a flawed business model. But it's too early to discount the value of the entire industry – especially as it emerges in markets like India and China to address the critical needs of SMEs.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
Last Mile in Style
Zipline, a Silicon Valley drone manufacturing firm, has contracted with the government of Rwanda to make last-mile blood deliveries. Starting this month, the drones will make between 50-150 deliveries per day to 21 transfusing facilities located in the western half of the country.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Partnering to Provide Safe Surgery
There are vast, unmet gaps in access to safe surgical care around the world, with devastating health and economic repercussions. That's why Smile Train and Lifebox are working to equip local health care facilities with the resources, training and technology necessary to make surgery safer.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Post-conflict Colombia: A Crucial Time to Re-evaluate the Role of Inclusive Business
After over 50 years of internal armed conflict between the national government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country is starting to lay the foundations for a stable and lasting peace. The business sector has been called on to contribute to the post-conflict process, and inclusive businesses offer a clear way to do so. However, though Colombia's traditional approach to inclusive business has produced significant results for enterprises and communities, the impending post-conflict era demands a re-evaluation of how the sector operates.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
-
Beyond RCTs: How Rapid-Fire Testing Can Build Better Financial Products
Rapid-fire tests are nimble randomized controlled trials specifically aimed at improving product design. They are already common practice among technology-based companies as a way to iterate and rapidly improve their product and expand their user-base, but they can also be used to answer questions about the demand for financial products and improve other interventions that help the world’s poor. Innovations for Poverty Action explores what these trials can and cannot do.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
