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Financial innovation the next big thing in clean energy and efficiency
A new wave of innovation is sweeping the energy transition sector, promising to accelerate deployment and cut the costs of energy-efficiency measures, as well as wind and solar generation. It isn’t a technological improvement, like cutting hardware and labor costs. It isn’t a policy mechanism like feed-in tariffs. It isn’t even a new business model, like selling storage services. It’s financial innovation.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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Social Enterprise in Haiti: An oxymoron or a reality?
More than two dozen development-minded thinkers and doers convened in Cambridge, Mass., for a competition-based workshop designed to find a market-based solution to cholera in Haiti. The winning idea, which includes recruiting and training “community chlorinators,” is expected to be up and running by this time next year.
- Categories
- Education, Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Just How Healthy Are Impact Investments in Health?: Building a new set of metrics to evaluate health firms, and how you can shape them
A new partnership aims to help investors by determining which health care companies are having the biggest impact. They’re setting up ways to measure success, and they need your help.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care, Investing
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NexThought Monday – Making Social, Environment Standards – Standard: The days of pure financial reporting for public companies are numbered
As it turns out, environmental and social reporting doesn’t even require a change in legislation. Since 1982 public companies have been required to disclose “material” information in their 10-k filing requirements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under a legal framework called the S-K. The problem is, no one has defined what that means, until now.
- Categories
- Environment, Impact Assessment
- Tags
- impact investing
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Humans Trump Gadgets: How our focus on quick technology wins in global health is distracting us from the fundamental business of health care delivery
Devices, technology platforms and reformulated medications have captured the imagination of some of the top funders in the social impact and social innovation space. Somehow the business of health care delivery has fallen by the wayside.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care, Technology
- Tags
- public health, scale
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Health Franchising: World Health Partners’ strategy to strengthen India’s village-level private providers
How low-cost communication technologies and remote diagnostics are turning private health workers into lifesaving connectors between the high-quality care available in India’s urban areas and the 70 percent still residing in rural communities where no care is available.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care
- Tags
- public health
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NextDrop Uses Big Data, Texting To Improve Water Distribution
The proliferation of mobile-supported business models in India is substantial. Given its ubiquity amongst lower-income groups, mobile technology is recognized as a maximum impact tool, particularly for grassroots data collection. This “tech” model of social entrepreneurship has become the norm not only in India, but also in other emerging markets throughout Asia, Africa and South America.Case in point: NextDrop, a social enterprise launched in 2011, is simplifying urban water collection in India. With its “Smart Grid ‘Lite’” solution, the enterprise collects and shares water delivery information with city residents and water utilities. In this way, efficiency and transparency are improved upon.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- public health
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Incubating Aquaculture Businesses at the Base of the Pyramid
Successful projects, dwindling funds. What’s an innovative NGO to do?One answer: Build a deal pipeline for impact investors looking for investable ventures.WorldFish, a Malaysia-based spinoff of the the “green revolution” pioneer CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), reached this crossroads in 2010.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
- Tags
- impact investing
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