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Small Change: Why Behavioral Science Needs to Go Beyond ‘Nudges’ to Make a Real Impact
Behavioral science – the practice of leveraging human tendencies to produce desired outcomes – has become popular in the social sector. In particular, "nudges" – small changes that subtly encourage better behaviors – are often seen as a solution for everything from weight loss to financial health. But Mariel Beasley, co-founder of the behavioral science group Common Cents Lab, shares an uncomfortable truth: Small tweaks usually mean marginal changes, and half-measures like nudges are leaving most of the potential of behavioral science untapped.
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- Finance
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Big Data, Big Opportunity: Is Data Science the Key to Universal Energy Access?
Rural dwellers at the base of the pyramid are living largely "data-less," un-digitalized lives – but that's changing quickly with the spread of pay-as-you-go energy and the financial access it enables. In spite of the dangers of wrongly screening out customers as potential credit risks, denying them both further electrification prospects and access to credit, Guilhem Dupuy of GAIA Impact Fund and Thibault Lesueur of Solaris Offgrid take an optimistic view. They discuss why new off-grid energy data is an opportunity for increased investment, industry growth and economic justice.
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- Energy, Technology
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Learning to Think Like a Social Entrepreneur: How Nordic Rebels’ ‘Cooking Slam’ Enhances Entrepreneurship Education
Entrepreneurship is characterized by uncertainty – especially when it's tackling some of society’s biggest challenges. So how can social entrepreneurs learn to navigate this unpredictability as they work to create successful ventures? Nordic Rebels prepares entrepreneurs for these challenges through a unique education program that features a cooking contest. Adithya Varadarajan and Katharina Schilli discuss this innovative approach.
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- Education, Social Enterprise
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Why Payment Fraud is a Critical Threat to Financial Inclusion – And How Mojaloop is Making it Worse
The next key step in financial inclusion is payment interoperability, in which digital finance providers’ networks are connected to enable transactions between users of different systems. But though interoperability has major potential for the sector, it also comes with huge risks, says Clear Purchase founder Nick Brown, an expert in payment infrastructure. He explains why a massive payment fraud attack could do substantial and long-lasting damage to the financial inclusion movement, and how an open-source platform like the Gates Foundation's Mojaloop increases the risk.
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- Finance, Technology
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Let’s Get Real: Energy Access is Leaving Everyone Behind
Despite popular energy industry catchphrases like “leaving no one behind,” John Keane, the CEO of SolarAid and SunnyMoney, doesn’t buy the hype. While he sees much progress in new businesses, products and services entering emerging markets, Keane sees a tough road ahead for “smart, well-funded, entrepreneurs selling solar in the world” who also want to reach the poorest customers. Keane’s call to action includes re-prioritizing and re-focusing on the low-income customers the industry says it's trying to serve.
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- Energy
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Chronic, Not Acute: The Refugee Crisis Needs Long-Term Solutions – And Social Enterprise Can Help
It’s time to stop addressing the global refugee crisis with short-term emergency measures, and to start seeking long-term solutions, says Thane Kreiner at Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship. One of those solutions is entrepreneurship, and Kreiner shares five lessons from the Center's Social Entrepreneurship at the Margins (SEM) accelerator program for businesses serving or led by refugees and other displaced people. The Center is selecting its second SEM accelerator cohort, and applications are open worldwide until August 23, 2019.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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How Artificial Intelligence Can Simplify International Development Research: An Intriguing Experiment (Involving NextBillion)
International development professionals must often spend a great deal of time trying to keep up with news, trends and research about their area of activity – and this requires a lot of manual labor. But much of this can now be automated and aided by artificial intelligence (AI). Jacob Rosen and Ashirul Amin at BFA explore how they used AI to sort and categorize a vast amount of development-focused content online, using NextBillion's 5,000+ article library as a test case. The results of their experiment show how AI can help people reduce time and labor and learn more efficiently.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Turning Impact Measurement on its Head: A Q&A with 60 Decibels Co-Founders Sasha Dichter and Tom Adams
How should a social business measure its impact? The sector has always struggled to answer that question, leaving many enterprises and investors without useful data about the impact of their work. Acumen is addressing this issue by spinning out a standalone social enterprise called 60 Decibels, which leverages mobile technology to quickly and easily acquire impact data from low-income customers and beneficiaries. Co-founders Sasha Dichter and Tom Adams discuss its innovative model, and the potential it offers to investors, enterprises and the people they serve.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing, Social Enterprise