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Why Do Low-income Women Entrepreneurs Fail? New Research Provides Some Answers
Everybody loves a business success story, so research on entrepreneurship tends to focus on the Facebooks and Ubers of the world. But in reality, new ventures are more likely to fail than to succeed, and there's a dearth of research on the reasons why – particularly when the entrepreneurs are women in emerging markets. The Failure Institute joined with Pro Mujer to study the failures of hundreds of small businesses run by low-income women in Mexico. Leticia Gasca of the Failure Institute explores the four main causes of failure these women faced.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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‘Eye-opening’ Impact Assessment: How Benchmarks Can Boost Social and Business Outcomes
For the last ten years, Acumen has been investing in off-grid energy companies in the developing world. In its new Energy Impact Report, the impact investing nonprofit talked directly to thousands of customers about their experiences - good and bad - with these companies’ energy products. Acumen's Kat Harrison discusses the survey's revealing results.
- Categories
- Energy, Impact Assessment, Investing
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London Stock Exchange Responds To ‘Investor Demand’ Launching ESG Reporting Guidance
The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has issued guidance, through its Global Sustainable Investment Centre, which sets out recommendations for "good practice" in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting. The global guide brought calls today from a member of the World Bank Group for other stock exchanges around the world to follow the bourse’s example and lead.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
- Tags
- ESG, impact measurement
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Viewpoint: The Next Frontier in Social Impact Measurement Isn’t Measurement at All
If we want social capital markets to fund the social sector effectively, we need to use social impact data effectively when making investment decisions. And investment decision-making almost always requires that we compare social impact data across locations, programs, or organizations. This is difficult, because contexts, missions, definitions, measurement approaches, and values differ. It’s always apples to oranges, and this “comparison problem” not only affects good decision-making, but also our ability to report on impact at the investment portfolio level.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Building a Collaborative Social Impact Measurement Operating System
If social sector organizations truly want to compete against the large corporations, they must build an efficient performance management system where even the small organization can derive value and understand their limitations.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment
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Announcing Our New Partnership with ImpactSpace
We have long been on the lookout for a media partner that's creating deep and useful market data for the companies we cover on NextBillion. That's why today we're thrilled to announce a media partnership with our friends at ImpactSpace, a new open data platform created to fill the information gap in impact investing.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Investing
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NexThought Monday: Impact Investing ‘Skeptics Have Been Defeated’ – Our Q&A With LeapFrog CEO
LeapFrog Investments' portfolio of companies make insurance and financial services their business, and their clientele are those who earn $10 or less a day. With a recent investment from development organization OPIC, LeapFrog has raised more than $1 billion. In an interview with NextBillion, CEO Andrew Kuper details LeapFrog's trajectory, the shakiness of emerging markets, and the challenges of reaching consumers for whom insurance can provide both a safety net and an economic springboard.
- Categories
- Health Care, Impact Assessment, Investing
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Building Efficient Social Sector Initiatives Through New Generation Impact Measurement
The social sector is going through a massive change never seen before. Thanks to the advocacy of innovative foundations, impact investments are now becoming mainstream, along with collective impact programs and other initiatives like social impact bonds and Pay for Success programs. As these trends spread, we are witnessing the rise of thousands of collective impact ecosystems accompanied by improved impact investment models. These ecosystems incorporate different catalysts to impact measurement, when what we really need is a unified strategy of metrics.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Technology