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The Implications of Scarcity for Microfinance: Grameen Foundation’s Alex Counts, on how understanding scarcity’s impact can improve microfinance practices
Behavioral economics could transform international development, says Grameen Foundation CEO Alex Counts. In some cases, it may reaffirm current practice. In others, it could suggest that these “best practices” are counter-productive. In this thought-provoking post, Counts explores the implications of scarcity for microfinance, when looked at through a behavioral economics lens.
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- Education
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Matching Your (Potential) Impact with Employers: Building a CV and cover letter on the edge
If you are interested in building a career in the field of Impact Business gaining work experience is key. Imagine you have found the perfect job for you in this space: Now, what will you do to ensure you put forward the best application possible? We have gathered some tips that will add the ‘edge’ to your application.
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- Education, Social Enterprise
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The Power of Heuristics: New white paper from ideas42
In a new paper by ideas42, Antoinette Schoar and Saugato Datta argue that using heuristics (effective rules of thumb) can “enable people to make ‘reasonably good’ decisions without needing to understand all the complex nuances of the situation.” ideas42 is building on their findings to develop financial heuristics programs for microentrepreneurs around the globe.
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- Education
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Respect Quality, Build Trust, Be Patient: These and other tips on shaping a solar market at the BoP
How do you influence what choices low-income people or those living at the base of the pyramid make? And how can you give them the information to make informed decisions?
SolarAid faced the same challenges that many organisations do when bringing a new technology to a low-income market. Here’s how we dealt with them.- Categories
- Energy
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Ask the Right Question: ideas42 on using behavioral economics for MFI product design
CARD Bank seemed to have a problem increasing uptake on new savings accounts. But when ideas42 dug into the data, they saw that people were opening plenty of new accounts - they just weren’t using them. The lesson: it’s important to ask the right question when solving design problems. Louis Potok uses this case to illustrate how behavioral economics insights can improve product design.
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- Uncategorized
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How to Build a Market for Eyeglasses: More than 600 million people have serious vision problems and they — and society — pay a steep price
It would take $5 million to $10 million in venture capital to start an international company that would buy a million eyeglasses in mainland China at around 50 cents apiece, design robust, visually appealing mobile display stands ... (and develop) an effective global distribution and marketing strategy.
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- Health Care
- Tags
- poverty alleviation, scale
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Weekly Roundup (1/18/14): Market Building is Cool
The development agenda spotlight is widening to include not just those who design cool products, but those who truly understand BoP market dynamics. Or those who do both, like the nonprofit D-Rev.
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- Health Care
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Contemplating Scarcity: Grameen Foundation’s Alex Counts on how the phenomenon of scarcity impacts microfinance and poverty alleviation
Alex Counts, president and CEO of Grameen Foundation, discusses new research on the phenomenon of scarcity – how having too little of anything important to the human experience can impact policy and practice in microfinance and poverty alleviation.
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- Education
