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Filling the Funding Gap: Two Innovative Ways to Improve Financing Opportunities for Social Impact Entrepreneurs
Social entrepreneurs often struggle to scale their enterprises because of difficulties accessing tailor-made capital. According to Carola Schwank at Siemens Stiftung's empowering people.Network, this is often due to a clear mismatch in pairing up social entrepreneurs and impact investors. She explores two key solutions to this crucial challenge, featured in Siemens Stiftung's “Innovative Financing for Social Entrepreneurs” report.
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- Entrepreneurship, Investing
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Employment, Entrepreneurship and Data: Announcing NextBillion’s 2020 Special Series
NextBillion is pleased to announce the topics of our 2020 special series. These three year-long series will cover innovations and challenges in employment, the "untold stories" of social entrepreneurs, and the risks and opportunities of Big Data. Each will be managed by a different member of our editorial team. Check out the descriptions here, and email the appropriate editor if you’d like to discuss a potential guest article. We’re looking forward to following the discussion!
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- Entrepreneurship, NextBillion Originals, Technology
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Insights, Analysis and Debate: Vote for the Top NextBillion Article of 2019
Another year has come and gone, and it's time for NextBillion to select our most influential articles of 2019. As usual, we’re turning to you, our readers, for help. We've selected our 12 most-read articles of the year, and we invite you to vote for the one that impacted your thinking the most. You can vote up to 12 times during the voting period, which runs from Dec. 20 to Jan. 2. The winner will be announced on Jan. 3. As always, thank you for reading, contributing content to, and engaging with NextBillion!
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- Education, Energy, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Finance, Investing, NextBillion Originals, Technology
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Q&A: Help Others or Go Bust, Migrant Billionaire Tells Big Business
Hamdi Ulukaya says the days of companies being run solely to maximise profit for shareholders are over.
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- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- North America
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Managing the Managers: Nine Tips to Help Social Enterprises Build Outstanding Management Teams
Startups can fail for many reasons, but research shows that having the wrong team is a leading cause of failure. And while finding talented managers is a critical challenge for entrepreneurs everywhere, it is especially difficult in emerging markets. Mark Horoszowski, the co-founder and CEO at MovingWorlds.org, shares nine essential lessons to help social enterprises build effective management teams that will take their great ideas to scale.
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- Entrepreneurship
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What’s Really Driving Africa’s ‘Investment Frenzy’?: An Entrepreneur Responds to Investor Concerns
In her much-discussed NextBillion article about avoiding “the Africa investment frenzy,” impact investor Lauren Cochran urged entrepreneurs to forego the “growth-at-all-costs” approach to scaling and “the ego-boost of big rounds and press releases.” But Zoona co-founder Mike Quinn argues that her advice ignores a reality that many investors don’t recognize. Quinn pushes back on Cochran's argument from an entrepreneur's perspective in this compelling counterpoint.
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- Entrepreneurship, Finance, Investing
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These Villages in Thailand Are Part of the Global Economy. Go to Ikea to Find Out.
At a time when international corporations look to project images of social responsibility, projects like Doi Tung are picking up clients seeking more than the usual matchup of quality and price. That is one reason major companies — including Ikea, Japan Airlines and the Japanese retailer Muji — are buying Doi Tung products and produce.
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- Entrepreneurship
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Perspective: Become Local Change Makers Through Social Entrepreneurship
Ikigai is a Japanese concept meaning ‘a reason for being’, which is roughly translated to ‘thing that you live for’ in English. Each individual’s Ikigai is personal and specific to their lives, values and beliefs. A social entrepreneur’s Ikigai is to bring systems change and/or mindset change with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social, cultural, and environmental challenges. From deep within, he/she is committed to the good of all. They are ambitious and persistent — tackling major issues and offering new ideas for systems-level change. Moreover, social entrepreneurs are not trying to ‘capture a market’. They make their ideas as simple and as safe as possible so that people in thousands of different communities will seize the idea and become local change makers.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship
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