-
You Probably Don’t Know Your Customers: Harnessing mobile to connect for product development
Customer feedback provides information and insight for developing new products and refines innovation and clarifies routes to social impact. But too often connecting with customers, particularly low-income customers, is daunting. P.R. Ganapathy of Villgro and Jessica Seddon of Okapi detail new ways around this dilemma using mobile technology, including one they teamed up with the Lemelson Foundation to build.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- product design
-
Moving the Sanitation Needle: On World Toilet Day, it’s time to talk about some creative, unlikely collaborations
There is perhaps no time like right now to “celebrate” World Toilet Day in India, where the new government’s efforts to crack the open defecation problem have generated a lot of incredibly promising initial commitments.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
-
Blurring the Boundaries: How impact investing is shifting paradigms in the public, philanthropic and nonprofit sectors
As impact investing has grown, it has begun to reshape traditional approaches to financing socially focused initiatives – sometimes to the point where paradigms start to shift. In part two of his series on new frontiers in impact investing, William Burckart discusses the implications of these changes for the public, philanthropic and nonprofit sectors.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
-
A Solution is Born: Student’s inflatable incubator design wins James Dyson Award, offers answers for developing world
A university class assignment results in a portable incubator that can be manufactured and delivered for about $400 U.S., doesn’t require electricity and includes a phototherapy light to help treat jaundice.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Rational Exuberance: The momentum in impact investing is real – but so is the need for clarity about the changes (and challenges) underway
In spite of considerable progress in impact investing— and the staggering exuberance that’s been associated with it since it burst onto the stage— closer inspection reveals cause for serious concern in the sector. Bill Burckart details these challenges in the first post in a three-part series on the current state of impact investing, as it struggles to take the next step.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
-
Gates Goes in on Impact Investing: What the philanthropist’s investment in Unitus Seed Fund could mean for BoP investors
Acting as a private investor, Bill Gates has made a contribution to the Unitus Seed Fund, which provides venture capital to base of the pyramid businesses in India. Beyond the immediate benefit, the personal investment from Gates could be a shot in the arm for impact investing.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
-
The India Sterilization Tragedy: Highlighting the need for better choices, safer procedures
There is very little attention being paid to a clear, immediate reason for the danger of these sterilization procedures in India – use of un-sterilized surgical equipment.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
NexThought Monday – Mobile Money Interoperability is Not a Silver Bullet for Financial Inclusion
Interoperability between mobile money operators is a hot topic right now. Various stakeholders have placed it at the top of their agenda, hoping it will prove to be a key to increasing mobile money adoption and advancing financial inclusion. But though interoperability can undoubtedly help extend the reach of mobile money, Selma Ribica of Vodafone Group argues that it can also pose significant risks.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
