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The Hard Reality of Sanitation: Why Public Sector Support is Key to Entrepreneurial Success in Emerging Markets
Roughly 2.3 billion people lack basic sanitation, and over half the global population lack a safely managed service. This spells opportunity for social entrepreneurs – but as Sam Drabble at Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor points out, these businesses face huge systemic challenges and cannot succeed without support. He highlights some solutions that could boost these companies' chances of success.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, WASH
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Overcoming a Roadblock to Scale: How Can We Attract Top Talent to Inclusive Businesses?
Inclusive business is a key way to create sustainable livelihoods for the global poor, but the sector is hitting a roadblock: finding employees. The growing number of inclusive businesses has meant that the demand for talent is outstripping supply. And as existing inclusive businesses scale up, the talent they require has become more specialized. So it's no surprise that in a recent survey of over 100 prominent social enterprises, talent was flagged as a top challenge. Christian Jahn and Susann Tischendorf at the Inclusive Business Action Network discusses the problem – and some emerging solutions.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
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Taking the ‘Green Leap’: How Linking BoP Business and Clean Tech Can Build an Inclusive Economy
In this era of environmental degradation and climate change, aiming to eradicate poverty before addressing the environment will simply not work. The challenge of our time, say Stuart Hart and Fernando Casado Cañeque, is to figure out how to commercialize new clean technologies, while extending the economic benefits to vulnerable communities – what they term a global “green leap.” They discuss this challenge in their new book, and share some key takeaways here. (NextBillion will be giving away a free chapter of the book in our e-newsletter, NextBillion Notes, all month.)
- Categories
- Energy, Entrepreneurship, Environment
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PAYGo Solar at a Crossroads: Why the Industry Must Choose Between Protecting Customers and Satisfying Investors
Over $500 million in investor financing has poured into off-grid solar in the past year. But while that's an exciting development for the sector, there is a downside. As BrightLife CEO Stefan Grundmann explains, PAYGo solar operators are facing heightened investor pressure to expand their reach and aggressively deliver greater sales. In response, many companies have taken new measures to boost business – some of which have led to troubling new risks for customers. Grundmann explores this issue, and how the industry and its investors should respond to it.
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A Closer Look at The World’s Largest Unaddressed Disability: Leveraging Inclusive Business to Eradicate Poor Vision
Uncorrected poor vision affects some 2.5 billion people, costing the global economy $227 billion a year in lost productivity. Yet though 90% of these people live in developing countries, the problem ranks low on the global development agenda – even though it can often be fixed by a simple pair of glasses. Jayanth Bhuvaraghan at Essilor explores the issue, and discusses an innovative solution: the Eye Mitra program, which trains youth in emerging countries to become micro-entrepreneurs, providing primary vision care and selling low-cost eyeglasses in their communities.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Health Care
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Adapt or Die: Accelerating Growth Amid a Rapidly Changing Energy Landscape
The clean cooking sector has made incredible strides in the past decade, with bilateral organizations and the development community working together to create standardized environmental impact goals. Now the industry is facing a new set of scaling challenges, say Jessica Alderman and Ron Bills of Envirofit International. The two share advice for enterprises seeking to level up, including how to avoid mission creep.
- Categories
- Energy
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Stupid Stoves: Why Rebranding Won’t Solve the Clean Cooking Alliance’s Problems
In her recent interview with NextBillion, Clean Cooking Alliance CEO Dymphna van der Lans described the organization's ambitious new vision. But her words didn't sit well with Warm Heart Worldwide founder Michael Shafer, who raises a pointed question: After nearly 10 years of massive investment, hype and exposure, he asks, "Where is the Clean Cooking Alliance now? Getting rebranded and starting over!" Shafer argues that the Alliance's current efforts fail to address the major issues that have hampered it from the start – and proposes a different way forward – in this provocative post.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Technology
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The New Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Because of this overall reduction in extreme poverty, the conversation about the bottom of the pyramid has shifted from how to alleviate poverty to how to address deep inequality — and not just in developing countries. A comparison of the world economic pyramid from my father’s original paper with 2017’s numbers tells an interesting story.
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