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NexThought Monday: On the Eve of Rio+20, Creating a Lasting Cookstove Market
The Global Village Energy Partnership works with a group of 400 entrepreneurs to promote clean cookstoves in East Africa. Last year, these entrepreneurs sold more than 275,000 improved cookstoves, indicating that people have accepted the value of more efficient cookstoves, and that they provide a market opportunity for creating a sustainable business model.
- Categories
- Environment
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Weekly Roundup: Taking the Long View on Capitalism
The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) bills itself as an “open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century. The premise: while "modern" management is one of humankind’s most important inventions, it is now a mature technology that must be reinvented for a new age.” That’s evident from the winning submissions to the Long-Term Capitalism Challenge.
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- Uncategorized
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VOZ: From Chile, Bringing ‘Triple E’ Fashion and Connecting BoP Artisans With Luxury Markets
I am grateful that this young product designer, who graduated from Stanford, trained in innovation, cultural anthropology and art, has chosen the Araucanía Region of Chile to launch VOZ (Voice), a start-up that seeks to promote fair trade in luxury ethnic fashion, based on collaborative, environmentally-friendly design and production methods.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Charting the Change from BPO to BoP: Training the Next Generation of Skilled Labor in India
I’m typical of many of the entrepreneurs and professionals to benefit from the BPO boom who are thankful for the opportunities it has provided, but who also hope to drive India’s nascent Base of the Pyramid sector. The Indian government is spending a huge amount of money in training BoP candidates to skill them in their chosen field and set an aggressive goal to train more than 500 million people by 2022. Dealing with that challenge will require a scalable training solution to bridge the skills gap.
- Categories
- Education
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Entering NB’s Case Competition? Join the WDI Webinar June 21 for Tips and Tools to Build the Perfect Case Study
The hour-long webinar on June 21, which will start with a brief overview of case method teaching and learning, followed by guidelines for the first steps of writing a case study. Specifically, participants will learn how to develop solid, measureable teaching objectives, choose a case topic, determine an organization or company to feature, gather credible background information, and create a case outline.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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Guest Post: A Letter to Rio+20 – Sustainable Development Isn’t Possible Without Land Rights
Approximately 3 billion people in the developing world live without secure legal rights to their lands, forests, and pastures. Community land rights should be a key priority in our pursuit of environmentally sustainable development. But these rights are not mentioned in the Zero Draft resolution for the upcoming Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro. This is a mistake.
- Categories
- Environment
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(With Video) Mi Tienda’s Big Expansion to Supply Network of Mom & Pop Stores Across Mexico
In 1999, social enterprise Mi Tienda was founded to serve these shop owners, many of whom are women, with durable goods as well as operational training and credit to expand. Mi Tienda Chairman and CEO Luis Velasco said the operation had been in pilot phase for about nine years. But today, the network of 6,000 shops is preparing to ambitiously expand to 20,000 in the next five years.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Tags
- supply chains
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Is Brazil Truly a Latin American Social Housing Leader?
Extreme poverty levels have decreased by over 50 percent since 2003 as a result of several initiatives across Brazil. In the housing sector, the most notable effort was the 2009 launch of Minha Casa, Minha Vida (My House, My Life) – aimed at constructing new homes while simultaneously creating objectives to cease the presence of insalubrious living conditions that have long characterized the country. The program has subsequently become a template for progress in global BoP housing sector, but a closer look at the facts reveals another story…
- Categories
- Finance, Uncategorized
- Tags
- housing, infrastructure
