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Report: 93% of Execs Say Blockchain Helps Achieve Social Impact Goals
Ken Weber, Ripple’s head of social impact, said: “While still early in its development, blockchain is an undeniably promising new technology with far reaching consequences across a wide variety of sectors and use cases.”
- Categories
- Technology
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Inside-Out: The Good and the Bad of insight2impact
Does this situation sound familiar? A development program generates lots of intriguing insights – but once it's over, these learnings end up languishing in a sparsely read report in the back pages of a website. That’s the scenario insight2impact (i2i) aims to avoid. As the program wraps up, i2i lead Hennie Bester describes how it's bringing the insights it has generated, from both successes and failures, to the organizations that can use them – including through a new partnership with NextBillion.
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- Finance, NextBillion Originals
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Revisiting our Assumptions About Digital Financial Inclusion: Three Unexpected Findings from BFA’s FIBR Project
When BFA launched its FIBR (Financial Inclusion on Business Runways) R&D project four years ago, it outlined a set of assumptions about how smartphones, increased connectivity and digitization would help to accelerate financial inclusion for small businesses in Africa. As the project wraps up, BFA Founder and Chair David Porteous explores which of those assumptions still hold – and which need to be reassessed as unanticipated developments have reshaped the market.
- Categories
- Finance
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Building Financial Stability: Can Liquid Savings Help Recession-Proof the Economy?
Though the U.S. economy is experiencing a historic expansion, stock market jitters and other recent developments have some economists predicting a recession. And according to Mariel Beasley at Common Cents Lab and Timothy Flacke at Commonwealth, cracks have been forming beneath the surface of the economy for a long time. They explore the surprising financial insecurity facing American households, and explain why short-term, liquid savings could help mitigate the effects of a future recession before it begins.
- Categories
- Finance
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‘You Hired me as a Ballerina and Now Want Me to be a Basketball Player’: Hard Truths About Evolving Talent at Scale
Does your talent strategy look the same as it did a year ago? If it does, you're probably doing it wrong – especially if your organization is scaling. According to Kimberly Langsam at CASE at Duke University, a growing organization's talent strategies and support infrastructure must constantly evolve. She explores why talent is one of the key challenges of scale, and shares insights from social entrepreneurs and others featured in a new report from the Scaling Pathways series.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
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The Missing Piece of the Fintech Puzzle: How Local, Informal Networks Play a Crucial Role in Remittances
The spread of fintech is bringing millions of emerging markets customers – and their relations – into the realm of formal finance. But though they're powered by futuristic technologies, fintech initiatives are often built on complex community networks and informal methods of transacting that have existed for centuries. Researchers Daivi Rodima Taylor and Bill Maurer explore the implications of these roles, relationships and social intermediaries for financial service design.
- Categories
- Finance
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Universities Must Teach Their Budding Scientists Entrepreneurship
As Africa continues to develop, there will be growing demand for experts who can address its social and economic needs. According to professors Karl Kunert and Christopher Cullis, the region's budding scientists can help meet that demand by acquiring business-oriented skills - but these skills aren’t usually part of their training. They explore the benefits of teaching students to turn scientific innovations into business opportunities, and the key role universities can play.
- Categories
- Education, Entrepreneurship
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Low Energy Consumption = Unprofitable Mini-Grids. Is Appliance Financing the Answer?
Over 600 million Africans live without electricity, and mini-grids are a cheap solution to bring power to at least 100 million of them. But the mini-grid business model is not yet sustainable. This is due in part to low levels of energy consumption by rural customers, who often can't afford the high upfront costs of appliances that would increase their energy usage. Analysts at CrossBoundary explore new research on whether offering financing for household appliances can help overcome this barrier.
- Categories
- Energy
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