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A Cure for Baldness – But Not Malaria?: Attracting Businesses to Global Health R&D
The business of global health R&D isn’t working. Companies are seeking profitable treatments for relatively minor health problems, while largely ignoring major global diseases. But innovative new funding models are combining profit motives with an integrated social cause. Can they change the face of global health R&D?
- Categories
- Education, Health Care, Technology
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The Next Million: Grameen Shakti – an innovative model for rural energy business
A small group of people began experimenting how to bring solar electricity to rural Bangladesh and in 1996 started its first rural renewable energy service company – Grameen Shakti – which literally translates to rural energy. The company installed 20 solar systems by the end of 1996, 2,800 systems after a decade of growth, and on Nov. 30, 2012 – 16 years after its launch – installed a total of 1 million solar systems in village homes, schools, clinics and businesses.
- Categories
- Energy
- Tags
- renewable energy, scale, solar
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Weekly Roundup : 6 Billion Mobile Users – Billions of Business Possibilities
This week a group of telecommunications and nonprofit leaders got together at the Brookings Institution to talk mobile technology, poverty, and business. The meeting was framed with commentary on how mobile devices and phones – growing ever smarter – are penetrating every corner of the world. With 5 billion of the 6 billion mobile users living the the developing nations, the infrastructure and the applications to go with it are expanding exponentially.
- Categories
- Technology
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Impact Career Series : Why Community Development Financial Institutions are a good place to start
Millennials are playing an important role in the growth of the impact investing industry, and increasingly more 20- and 30-year olds are looking for careers in the field. However, many young professionals looking to start their careers or transition into the impact investing field are discouraged by the limited number of opportunities. Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), which have a long history of investing in hard to reach, are a good place to start.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- impact investing
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A Light Bulb Goes On: A Major Innovation in Asset Finance: M-KOPA’s model could illuminate other sectors
The creators of M-KOPA , which sells solar base stations that can charge phones, power lights, and other limited applications, has come up with one of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in the mobile money space in some time.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
- Tags
- solar
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Coke is Everywhere: Why Aren’t Medicines?
Why does Coca-Cola find its way to the remotest parts of the world, but essential medicines remain out of reach for many? With colleagues at INSEAD, we set out to decipher this question, hoping to find answers that could help make this debate more constructive. We met several people, interviewed both medicine and Coca-Cola supply chain experts, and talked to some social entrepreneurs.
- Categories
- Health Care
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From Blueprint to Scale: Turning Research into Action
The Mumbai launch of Monitor’s sharply insightful From Blueprint to Scale: The Case for Philanthropy in Impact Investing marked the last stop on its world tour. India – the home of Monitor Inclusive Markets and several of the case studies explored in the report – was an apt landing point for the panelists to reflect on the insights garnered from across the globe that will help them to further develop and put into action the ideas from the report.
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- Uncategorized
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Waiting for the Mangoes to Ripen : Access to credit frees Haitian farmers to sell and invest on their own terms
The Haiti Hope Project is a partnership to help 25,000 farmers double their fruit income by ensuring greater value for their high-quality native mangoes. Haiti Hope brings together public and private partners, including USAID, The Coca-Cola Company; the Multilateral Investment Fund, a member of the Inter-American Development Bank Group; and TechnoServe.
- Categories
- Agriculture
