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Three Social Business Lessons from Detroit’s ‘Grassroots Entrepreneurs’
The self-determination that characterizes many Detroit entrepreneurs is a powerful paradigm for emerging markets, say authors Amy Gillett and Nathan Rauh-Bieri, and would-be providers of social entrepreneurship interventions should note a lesson learned: Make sure what you are offering is requested by the community, customized for the community and implemented with the community.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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Two-Sided Mobile Platform Creates ‘Network Effect’ to Help Patients, Health Clinics
The private health sector, where a large percentage of people in developing countries seek care, is fragmented and marked by poor quality and high prices. Two interlinked programs conceived by a group in the Netherlands – M-TIBA and the Medical Credit Fund – are attempting to address this problem at large scale. Both have achieved remarkable growth within a short period.
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- Health Care, Technology
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Power, Individualism and Indulgence: How to Leverage Cultural Factors in Entrepreneurship Training
Cultural factors can influence just about every aspect of an entrepreneur’s journey. Using a cultural dimensions tool, the authors compared how cultural background influences entrepreneurs in the USA and the Philippines. After finding large differences across three dimensions of culture, they explored how these differences might affect entrepreneurs in the Philippines and how entrepreneurship training can be tailored accordingly.
- Categories
- Education
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Rethinking the ‘Youth Are Not Interested in Agriculture’ Narrative
Agriculture is the backbone of many sub-Saharan countries and, anecdotal evidence aside, it's not necessarily true that youth are not interested in it. But the sector won't reach its huge potential, and "agripreneurs" won't get the support they need, until certain government and private sector structures and processes are transformed.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise
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Equipping a New Era of Global Development
Sometimes it can feel like NGOs, social businesses and big development aid institutions are in competition with one another to improve the world. But in an increasingly complex world, we should view violent extremist organizations, such as ISIS, as development competitors. This perspective was a running theme – but one of several facing social entrepreneurs and global development leaders at all levels – discussed at Devex World.
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- Health Care, Impact Assessment
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With Few Resources, Cuba’s Resourceful Entrepreneurs Find a Way
There are some 500,000 entrepreneurs today in Cuba, up from 150,000 in 2010. President Raúl Castro has called the huge state sector “bloated” and has declared private business a key part of Cuba’s new economic model. In May, the communist government passed legislation allowing small businesses to become legal entities, thus making the private sector official. Previously, entrepreneurs were classified as “self-employed.” But when we visited there in May we found that, despite resource constraints, entrepreneurship is booming in Cuba.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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NexThought Monday – Seeking Scale: The Unexplored Power of Standardized Tools and Customized Implementation
Ted London has been working in the base of the pyramid domain since 1989. During that time, he's engaged with many hundreds of entrepreneurs and business leaders seeking to develop and launch enterprises in BoP markets. He's seen several success and many failures. It lead him to develop the Partnership Ecosystem Framework, a tool that helps prepare the enterprise for building the cross-organizational collaborations needed for sustainability at scale.
- Categories
- Education, Impact Assessment
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Fruitful Entrepreneurship Training Helps Women in Tanzania’s Ag Sector Flourish
Over half of the agricultural workers in Tanzania are women. Not only do women carry out some of the most labor-intensive work, but they also have insufficient access to financial credit and face discrimination in land ownership. The Innovations in Gender Equality to Promote Household Food Security program, a joint venture between USAID and Land O’Lakes International Development launched in 2012, aims to identify, test and then scale innovations that enable female farmers to more efficiently produce agricultural products and bring them to market. The big goal: Help women spend less time in the field and more time in higher-value added activities.
- Categories
- Education
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