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Applying Behavioral Economics to the Developing World
Complex design requirements, non-existent supply chain routes, extreme poverty - these are all unique issues that entrepreneurs have to combat when developing or producing products/services for the BoP. But what happens when the your client base acts irrationally or doesn’t follow the ’model’ you’ve based your business on?
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- Social Enterprise
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Escaping the Survival Trap
The ’survival trap’ is a tendency for individuals, businesses and nations to focus on short-term crises at the expense of developing long-term strategies for prosperity. This vicious cycle keeps individuals poor, businesses struggling, and nations under-developed. The right skills and mindset are needed in order to escape the survival trap.
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- Uncategorized
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Making the Global Ad Market Work for the BoP, One Bike At a Time
Global advertising spending is forecast to surpass $500 billion in 2011. When Coca Cola paints a roadside kiosk in Kikuyu, they’re paying someone. Why doesn’t that someone include you? That’s the question social entrepreneur Magali Bongrand asked in founding INSTINCT - a social enterprise leveraging corporate ad money to finance social ventures.
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- Environment
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The BoP Project: Focusing on Quality, Not Quantity, in Rwanda Coffee
Over the past ten years, a unique program has been brewing in the Rwandan coffee industry, relying on the international demand for high-quality, specialty coffee (not always "fair trade" certified), and helping increase the income of small coffee farmers in this rapidly growing country.
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- Agriculture
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Walking in the Customers’ Shoes: Next Generation of BoP Marketing
eyond traditional research, ethnography implores us to get our hands dirty with first-hand observation and daily participation in the lives of our consumers. And while often thought to be the terrain of anthropologists studying far-off cultures, ethnography is increasingly taking center stage in seemingly unlikely places.
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- Education
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Essays Show Innovative Business Solutions for Low-Income Markets Continue to Evolve
The BoP Short Essay Competition organized by the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson School at Cornell University attracted more than 100 submissions from 27 countries. While India is still a hotbed for BoP ventures, this year’s contest drew a diverse array of ideas and opportunities from many other parts of the world.
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- Impact Assessment
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Playing Politics: Women (Truly) Empowering Women in Bangladesh
As with so many other causes, women’s empowerment, can always be trumped by politics. But in 2001, 24 women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh came together to change those politics. At the helm was Selima Ahmad, president of the Bangladesh Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BWCCI). By 2010, BWCCI counted 2,500 women-owned businesses as members.
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- Uncategorized
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MOTECH’s Mobile Apps Bridging Rural Gap for Pregnant Women
Started in 2009, MOTECH is a mobile health platform that offers two main applications: mobile midwives and nurse services. Pregnant women and their families register for the cell service through community health centers. MOTECH boosts efficiency for nurses, to be sure. But it also gets low-income patients to think consciously about their health.
- Categories
- Technology