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In Search of Innovation: Prize Incentives for International Development
As competitions like the Automotive X-Prize to the NetFlix Prize show, incentive-based mechanisms also can be effective catalysts for international development. Yet as Vicky Hausman, Associate Partner at Dalberg Global Development Advisors tells us, ?announcing a cash reward and a set of rules is often not enough to achieve the desired result."
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- Impact Assessment
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Guest Post: Seeking High-impact Individuals to be Acumen Fund Summer Associates
Do you want to spend your summer changing the way the world tackles poverty? Do you have what it takes to join the Acumen Fund team? Acumen Fund is seeking high-impact individuals as Summer Associates.
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- Impact Assessment
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Small is Beautiful, Small is Cheap, But Do the Poor Care?
Sachet marketing ? selling products in small amounts ? provoked much attention in the early days of BoP. While the poor cannot afford products in large containers that would last weeks, marketers found they would buy them in small, single-serve sizes. But does sachet marketing really work for the poor? Do they care? And should companies?
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- Impact Assessment
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Participative Innovation: The Transition to a New Model of Social Capitalism
Today, we have a much more complex inter-sector reality. It isn’t unusual to find businesses that act as NGOs, private banks that give donations, development banks that set interest rates above market prices and NGOs implementing profitable projects. One wonders if the sectors are overlapping one another or if they have simply become obsolete.
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- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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In Haiti, the Fonkoze Model of Constant Evolution
At the time of the earthquake, during which 19,000 of its clients saw homes or businesses completely wiped away, Fonkoze had been developing a micro-insurance product as a long-term solution for disaster protection. In the immediate aftermath, the firm began collecting feedback to refine the micro-insurance product before brining it to market.
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- Impact Assessment
- Tags
- microfinance
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33Needs Turning Ideas into Action
Securities law prevents investment in companies not listed with the SEC, creating a barrier for small and medium-sized businesses from funding. Josh Tetrick decided to literally redefine that negative and turn it into a positive by forming 33Needs, a startup crowd-funding website focused on social entrepreneurs.
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- Environment, Impact Assessment, Technology
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NextThought (Tuesday): Meeting Customers in the Middle and Other HBR Insights
This month’s Harvard Business Review ambitiously re-calibrates the dialogue on corporate social responsibility and the true meaning of shared value in rebuilding capitalism?s sullied reputation following the financial crisis. The HBR authors also implore established companies to "take a page from startups" by treating each emerging market as new.
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MIT Global Challenge, Connecting Ideas and Innovators
In 2008, the MIT Public Service Center asked: ’What would it look like if we applied that level of problem-solving to the challenges faced by under-served communities, places where markets are failing to provide basic necessities like clean water, health care, or reliable energy?’ The result is the MIT Global Challenge.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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