Articles by Martin Herrndorf
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Wednesday
May 29
2013Inside the Toolboxes : oikos UNDP Young Scholars Development Academy 2013
lot of toolboxes, guidebooks, and protocols have been written about how BoP business models should look and how to best implement them. But as two scholars who have led many of those efforts recently summarized: “corporate interest ... has dropped precipitously or migrated to the CSR (i.e., philanthropic) side of the business.” The new oikos UNDP Young Scholars Development Academy, in Istanbul this September, seeks to uncover some of the underlying dynamics with which managers overcome these challenges.
- Categories
- Education
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Guest Articles
Wednesday
July 18
2012Gender Roles in Green and Inclusive Business – Replicating Old Patterns or Breaking New Ground?
The green economy has the potential to empower women – but risks replicating old gender patterns of the ‘brown’ economy, says a new DCED / GIZ study. How does the case look for social entrepreneurship and impact investing?
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- Agriculture, Education, Environment, Social Enterprise
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Monday
July 9
2012How ‘farmerbook’ Brings Transparency and Networking to the BoP
The new ‘farmerbook’, an initiative from Digital Green aims to bring transparency and networking to rural India, by allowing users to see how best practices in farming promoted by Digital Green are shared and adapted.
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- Agriculture, Technology
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Tuesday
June 26
2012What the SOCCKET is (And What it is Not)
It looks like the prototype do-gooder-gimmick – a football (soccer ball) that produces and stores electricity, which can power a solar lantern at night. Each ball financed by Western backers, they are donated in developing countries. I had the chance to kick it at the Rio Summit – it’s a fun concept, but does it hold up to its promise?
- Categories
- Energy, Technology
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Thursday
April 26
2012From Potential to Market – the Microinsurance Explosion
The new microinsurance compendium, published six years after the initial volume, is an impressive effort of the microinsurance sector to reflect its progress and lessons learned over time. The total number of “risks covered” has increased from just 78 in 2006 to 500 million in 2011, but the story behind that growth is nuanced.
- Categories
- Education
- Tags
- research
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Guest Articles
Thursday
January 5
2012Best Ideas of 2011: Improvising at the BoP
Planning works (reasonably) well in established, stable markets. But classical "planning" is unlikely to help when innovating in the surprising complexity of BoP markets as mapped in ’Poor Economics.’ Certainly, "chaos" and "anarchy" are not the answers either. Improvisation could provide a metaphor allowing us to understand this fragile balance.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Friday
December 23
2011From the ’Last Mile’ to the ’Last Centimeter’
Calls that pharmaceutical companies should make the pills and powders available at low prices are abundant. But that’s where the challenges start - and the solutions, something examined by a soon-to-be-launched Endeva report, "Bringing Medicines to Low-income Markets."
- Categories
- Health Care
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Wednesday
November 30
2011Challenging a Meme: When ’Africans’ Are ’No One’
You may have seen the image online: A bus station photo-shot featuring two posters in simple style, with the captions "one dies, million cry" under the Apple brand mark, and "millions die, no one cries" under a map of Africa. The poster implies that the world would be a better place if only people (Westerners) mourned African deaths more. Really?
- Categories
- Impact Assessment