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Impact Investors (Should Be) Risk Takers: Does impact investing have a lower risk tolerance than venture capital?
While trying to solve the impact investing “do good while doing well” paradox we have landed in a risk adverse approach. Finding the solution to this paradox requires innovation and innovation implies risk taking. But can we call ourselves impact investors if we are not willing to take the necessary risks required to innovate?
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- Uncategorized
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- impact investing
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Measure for Measure: Is the phrase ‘Base of the Pyramid’ off base?
Today we’re launching a new series of posts, Measure for Measure, which focuses on trends, tools and viewpoints in impact measurement. In the series launch, Acumen’s Head of Impact Tom Adams thinks we need a new way to measure poverty, beyond the "BoP" catch-all.
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- Education, Impact Assessment
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“If you teach a man to fish…”: The NSDC’s efforts to provide job training to 150 million Indians – part 2
We’ve all heard the proverb about how teaching a man to fish will feed him for a lifetime. But how can a country provide modern job skills to hundreds of millions? India’s National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) may have found a way. In part 2 of this Q&A, Dipra Mukhopadhyay, a member of the NSDC’s core investment team, discusses its efforts to train 150 million Indians, including the country’s poorest communities.
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- Education
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NexThought Monday: What business can teach philanthropists
My company, Geneva Global, was founded by an international investment group looking for professional philanthropic advice that met investment banking standards. Given our DNA, I believe there are three business traits that would make philanthropists more effective.
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Body Parts on Demand: Will 3D printing spark the next revolution in BoP health care? (Bi-Weekly Checkup, 6/22/13)
They can make everything from guitars to custom-designed bikinis. Now 3D printers are being used to produce complex medical devices. Could 3D printing technology create a new manufacturing model at the BoP, with local products produced for local needs? We discuss the possibility in NextBillion Health Care’s Bi-Weekly Checkup.
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- Health Care
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Corporate Aid or Colonialism?: The G8’s New Alliance sparks debate over big businesses’ role in fighting poverty
The New Alliance, started by the G8 last year, has the ambitious goal of lifting 50 million people out of poverty. It has mobilized billions of dollars in private sector investment in African agriculture. But that investment comes with a few strings attached.
Is it a worthy effort to strengthen weak value chains, or a profit grab that marginalizes smallholder farmers?- Categories
- Agriculture
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Lights! Camera! Impact!: Social enterprise lessons from the Café Impact Studios
We balance the heady sense of tackling huge problems with the heartbreaking smallness of knowing our work matters, but never enough. We cannot know everything, but we know enough to realize that we are happiest in motion, not in contemplation.These are the big thematic lessons gleaned from 10 new social change videos from Café Impact, a de facto laboratory in social entrepreneurship formerly known as iOnPoverty.
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How to Train 150 Million: The National Skill Development Corporation’s ambitious plan to remake India’s workforce – part 1
The National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) is a unique public-private partnership in India. Its mission is to skill 150 million Indians by 2022, by catalyzing the creation of vocational training institutions through joint ventures with the private sector. In part 1 of this Q&A, Dipra Mukhopadhyay, a member of the NSDC’s core investment team, discusses the program’s challenges and potential.
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- Education
