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Thoroughly Modern Do-Gooders
Fashions in goodness change, just like fashions in anything else, and these days some of the very noblest people have assumed the manners of the business world - even though they don’t aim for profit. They call themselves social entrepreneurs, and you can find them in the neediest places on earth. The people who fit into this category tend to have plenty of r?sum? bling. Bill Drayton, the godfather of this movement, went to Harvard, Yale, Oxford and McKinsey before found...
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China’s First SRI Fund Close to Launch
The first Chinese mutual fund to invest in socially responsible companies in the country is expected to launch by the end of the month. Industrial Fund Management last week received government approval for the fund, but was forced to scale back its expected size and delayed its launch to the end of the month because investors were wary of committing their money into an equity fund while stock prices are falling, the Shanghai-based company said. The fund will ...
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Classmate PC Coming to U.S., European Retailers
More low-cost laptops are headed to a retailer near you. Intel plans on expanding the distribution of its inexpensive, school children-friendly Classmate PC to U.S. and European retail outlets, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday. The Classmate will sell for $250 to $350, Lila Ibrahim, general manager of Intel’s emerging market platform group, told Reuters. Apparently Intel has already been conducting pilot programs using the devices in classrooms in ...
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Poor are Sidelined on Climate
The mantra from businesses and politicians in the developed world is that technology will provide a solution to rising global emissions. Indeed, they say, fighting global warming can be good for business. General Electric has rightly staked a claim to be an environmental leader by selling wind turbines. Wal-Mart is going green by asking its suppliers to evaluate their emissions as they manufacture Wal-Mart products. Trading in carbon emissions can certainly be profitable: In a month o...
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Missions that Matter
The Hyderabad round of the Global Social Venture Competition was, writes Kamalika Bhattacharya, all about using expertise to innovative for the greater social good. The Global Social Venture Competition is an unprecedented partnership that brings together the academic and financial worlds to support the creation of sustainable social ventures. The GSVC awards go to business plans or models that represent the highest, most integrated financial and social returns. Each year, ...
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Engineers Without Borders Bring Tech to Villages Without Power
A group of volunteer engineers are finishing the design for a home-brewed wind turbine that will bring electricity to off-the-grid Guatemalan villages by this summer. After the U.S. engineers finish the design, local workers in the town of Quetzaltenango will manufacture the small-scale turbine. It will produce 10-15 watts of electricity, enough to charge a 12-volt battery that can power simple devices like LED lights. They’re replacing kerosene lamps, if anything at a...
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Challenging Systems: Partnerships between Business and Social Entrepreneurs
Businesses and social entrepreneurs could form successful partnerships as long as their engagement is based on solid partnering principles At a three day conference in Denver, Colorado, Muhammad Yunus (Nobel prize winner, Founder of the Grameen Bank and father of the Micro-credit movement) spoke of A World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism to a packed audience. In his speech he gave the view that poverty was not inevitable but it was the...
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Company Lessons in Reaching the World?s Poorest
Christian Seelos, director of the platform for strategy and and sustainability at IESE business school, is winner of an essay competition sponsored by the Financial Times and the International Finance Corporation on the private sector’s role in development. This is his essay: Abstract Recent research on business models that target the ?Bottom of the Pyramid’ (BOP), the vast untapped potential market made up of the world’s poorest peo...
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