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Ripe for Innovation: CGAP CEO Tilman Ehrbeck, On How New Approaches to Financial Services for the Poor Are Overcoming a Massive Market Failure
As part of NextBillion Financial Innovation’s launch, we invited a number of top innovators and leaders to contribute their views on financial innovation – what’s driving it, where momentum is heading, and what obstacles remain. Today Tilman Ehrbeck, CEO of CGAP, explores why financial exclusion has persisted at the BoP, and how innovation is turning this around.
- Categories
- Finance
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5 Ways To Avoid Failure, From Social Enterprises That Didn’t
We've all been to an endless procession of conferences where shiny, successful people share their triumphs and "best practices" to rounds of applause. There's plenty of such puffery in the private sector, but if anything, the pressure to please donors and stakeholders by making it seem like everything's going great is even higher in the social entrepreneurship space--even when it's not.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- failure, social enterprise
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When Vaccines Can’t Help: How Supply Chain Failures Undermine Vaccine Advancements – And What’s Being Done About It
Breakthroughs in vaccine technology are revolutionizing disease prevention. But complex new vaccines can require over twice the refrigeration and transport capacity of traditional vaccines, and can cost up to 50 times more. BoP countries can’t afford to waste these new vaccines, but their supply and logistic systems make waste inevitable. Solutions exist, but only if we bring new thinking to supply chain management.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Why we must talk more about failure in social enterprise
Last year, in a live Q&A on planning for success and failure, some of the experts talked about using business failure as a valuable learning experience. One expert even said that in the US you're more likely to get finance if you have the knowledge of failure under your belt.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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The Best of 2012: Making the Most of Missteps: At Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, SKS’s Akula Opens up on Failure
Conferences usually are not the venue for owning up to failure. But on first day of the 2012 Social Enterprise Conference, Vikram Akula, the founder of SKS Microfinance who left the organization in November 2011, made just such an confession.
- Categories
- Finance
- Tags
- failure, microfinance
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PopTech: On Failure, Jedi Knights and the Edge of Social Change
I recently sat down with Executive Director and Curator Andrew Zolli, and PopTech President Leetha Filderman for a candid conversation on a broad spectrum of topics, from impact investing to the importance of failure, to the pace of social innovation and how PopTech sees its role as an accelerant. While best known for its leave-your-head-spinning conferences, it appears that what’s actually popping at PopTech is a lot quieter, slower and more fundamental than may initially meet the eye.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
- Tags
- failure, incubators
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NexThought Monday: In Failure, a Marketing Lesson for Social Entrepreneurs: What we can learn from the closing of The Hoop Fund
The Hoop Fund was built on a truly innovative premise: Allow consumers to purchase premium goods from small businesses in the developing world, while simultaneously supporting those businesses with microloans. Unfortunately, the model suffered from critical gaps in marketing strategy, which made it almost impossible to achieve scale.
- Categories
- Education
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Why the Failure of the Nano Has Been a Success
The Tata Nano’s launch failed by nearly every measure, including highly publicized flame outs of just purchased cars. Yet the $2,000 Nano gave companies thinking about emerging segments in emerging markets something to talk about. The hype caused firms of many sizes and industries to plan or imagine how their products might someday reach the poor.
- Categories
- Finance
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