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November’s Most-Read, Most-Shared Posts on NB
In November, transparency in impact investing – on both the investment fund side and the investee company side – was something worth pondering. As investing with social and environmental purpose continues to grow and bleed into the mainstream, so do the calls for clear standards and open access to what constitutes impact – e.g. who’s really profiting?
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Four Barriers – and Four Solutions – to Financial Inclusion Through Payment Innovations
Enabled by the exponential expansion of mobile phones, social media, “big data” and internet access, financial players throughout the world are inventing new ways to transact. These innovations are especially pronounced in emerging markets, where many new entrants have chosen to dive directly into digital financial services. But in spite of this momentum, some challenges remain.
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Scaling Corporate Social Enterprise Conference: Why innovation is not enough
At the Scaling Corporate Social Enterprise Conference in Santiago, Chile Ron Adner, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, invited us to think always about the extra mile that our innovation requires. Here’s why: Because innovation on its own, loose, is not enough.
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Bringing Mobile Money up to Code: GSMA Code of Conduct for providers puts customer experience at the center
Only 17 percent of respondents in CGAP’s recent global survey on consumer risks in digital finance felt that service providers are doing an adequate job of protecting customers. The GSMA’s Code of Conduct for Mobile Money Providers is part of a growing movement to try to change that, with a number of the Code’s eight principles directly addressing key customer concerns.
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‘One Foot on a Glacier and the Other on a Bullet Train’: Forum participants discuss moving mHealth toward national health system integration
With so many apps and intervention techniques available in the private and public sectors, there is now more than ever a greater focus on these applications’ abilities to integrate and work as a system. When multiple structures are integrated into a single comprehensive design, governments can plan health systems that connect electronic and mobile interventions.
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- Health Care, Technology
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- public health, scale
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Three BoP Business Portfolios: Progress across three portfolios supporting 160 companies
Caroline Ashley evaluates three base of the pyramid investment portfolios: The Business Innovation Facility pilot (2010-2013), Innovations Against Poverty pilot (2011-2013) and Business Call to Action (five years old and ongoing). The data is based on years of rich engagement with three contrasting portfolios, each with an exciting - but different - array of innovative businesses.
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Three Key Steps for Boosting Mobile Money in Nigeria: Grameen Foundation explores ways the struggling sector could reach its potential
As the largest of Africa’s fast-growing economies, Nigeria is a promising market for mobile finance. Yet though almost 57 percent of Nigerian adults have no access to formal financial services, only 0.1 percent actively use mobile money. Grameen Foundation explores the reasons for the stunted growth of mobile services, and outlines some key steps that could increase their adoption and continued use.
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Cash Versus Cows (Part 2): What’s more scalable – cash transfers or in-kind transfers?
Successfully catapulting ultra-poor households over the extreme poverty line is incredibly hard work, and requires philanthropic capital and grant-based approaches. In this second part of a two-part series, BRAC’s Rod Dubitsky and Sadna Samaranayake pose a seemingly simple question: Is it better to give a cow or cash to seed sustainable livelihoods for the poorest-of-the-poor?
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- Agriculture
