Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category



19
Jul

The University as a Center of Innovation

In this article, Villgro Fellow Jeanne Chen explores the role that universities play in social enterprise and innovation.

Innovators are everywhere – from slum dwellers who find new uses for waste materials to technology developers. However, not all innovations can be commercialized, and at the same time, many great innovations are left uncapitalized. It remains a difficult task for social investors and innovators to find each other.

One innovation ecosystem which has drawn a lot of attention is Silicon Valley’s university-driven model. Academic research centers are the perfect, fertile ground for incubating potential great ideas and turn them into viable innovations. The only question is how do we replicate the Silicon Valley model elsewhere. As the New York Times article “The Idea Incubator Goes to Campus” reports, a number of university campuses are establishing “proof-of-concept” centers to help test and develop great ideas. While certain top research-heavy universities (e.g., Harvard, MIT, Stanford) already have strong technology transfer support systems for their innovators, many other universities around the country are beginning to adopt the model. Most recently, the US government has allocated $12 million to funding this proof-of-concept model.

These proof-of-concept centers are a bottoms-up approach to funding innovations. Directly at the source of where many great ideas are born, the incubator centers in universities help innovators realize ideas that may not have been carried forward otherwise. The NY Times article provides a number of great examples of innovations which have flourished with the help of tech transfer and incubating experts. Lantos Technologies (www.lantostechnologies.com), which makes a 3-D scanner was the brainchild of an MIT professor, who might not have commercialized the idea if not for the support of MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation.   The Deshpande Center is just one of many across the US, which provides consulting advice for innovators on how to commercialize their idea from providing support for technology transfers to raising capital.

It seems to me that there are few key advantages to this university innovation model:

  1. Universities are the nature breeding ground for great ideas – the free flow of information between students, faculty, and visiting lecturers is more likely to spawn innovative thinking than anywhere else
  2. Academic centers offer a ready support network for development – academic centers tend to be a microcosm of expertise that exist in the real world, condensed onto a small parcel of land
  3. Participants of university life have more time to dedicate to innovations – one of the challenges of following through with an innovative idea is balancing that work with the quotidian job that is your sustainable livelihood

Therefore, the logical thing to do, as the US has begun to do is:

  1. 1. Establish support centers to help develop and test ideas – employ experts in technology transfer or venture fundraising to guide likely innovators and entrepreneurs
  2. 2. Create capacity building programs to encourage more innovative thinking – have classes on innovative design, entrepreneurship, and venture creation
  3. 3. Create an ecosystem of innovation exchange between universities allow for the collaboration between innovators at multiple universities, who have different realms of technological expertise

While the academic innovation hub concept is starting to grow in the US, this concept is still relatively foreign in India. Although social enterprise has bloomed within the last 5 years on college campuses, with many of the new innovations coming out of IITs and IIMs, there still remains a large gap between the innovators and social investors. Some campuses are luckier than others, like IIT Madras that has the support of Rural Technology & Business Incubator (RTBI), which has incubated a number of successful social enterprises. Yet, the majority of India’s campuses remain an untapped wealth of bright ideas.

Enter Villgro’s My Idea Program and capacity building program. I was immediately reminded of these more under the radar programs that Villgro operates when I read the article. The My Idea Program hosts capacity building workshops at regional technology universities, helping young entrepreneurs understand how to get started on their own ideas. Villgro is also piloting a social entrepreneurship minor with IIT Madras, which allows some of the brightest engineering minds in the country to think about their ideas within the context of social entrepreneurship. While, these initiatives are still nascent, an expansion of such programs across India would certainly help to diminish some of the gap between great ideas and commercially viable innovations.

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30
Jun

How Social Ventures can be Learning Laboratories

In a time of economic crisis, it is crucial that business entrepreneurs focus their innovations on the long-term effects.  Previously, capital market innovations have focused on short-term profit, resulting in permanent damage to the economy. In their article, “Social Ventures as Learning Labs,” J. Gregory Dees points to how social ventures can be useful “learning laboratories” in which innovative business ideas can be tested without distorting markets. Rachel Padmanabhan, provides an overview of his article.

A decrease in economic opportunities exacerbates other social problems and in turn reverses progress made by impoverished families.  This financial stress has proven to result in tension within communities, fewer children attending school, and inadequate health care.  In order to make any improvement on these super-sensitive social and environmental problems, the markets must turn to social entrepreneurship.

Innovation by social entrepreneurs can reverse the pattern of destructive markets by focusing on the social impact that innovations can offer.  Social entrepreneurship also allows experimentation of innovations that could potentially solve many issues on a small scale, while effectively working to achieve a larger goal.  Social entrepreneurs, Dees says, provide what has been called a “learning laboratory” for these innovative business methods to be tested without negatively impacting the market.  The resulting successful models can then be replicated and scaled to create a greater social impact.

The primary difference between these social entrepreneurs and others in the business world lies within their motives.  While profit-seeking business entrepreneurs and corporations measure financial success quantitatively, social entrepreneurs measure success by the opportunities they create for the future.  An example Dees points out to is 2006 Nobel Prize winner Muhammed Yunus and Grameen Bank that focused on micro-credit with the goal to alleviate poverty.  While Bangladeshi officials did not see this as a substantial business opportunity, microfinance is now growing in popularity among mainstream business entrepreneurs and financial entities.  Decades after the initial idea of microfinance, markets are beginning to acknowledge the viability of this method as an effective business opportunity.

Implementation of creative business models paired with resourcefulness is necessary in order for entrepreneurs to succeed.  Recently within social venture business models, there has been a growing trend away from reliance on subsidies towards commercial strategies. Reliance on solely either of these funding methods is hardly optimal for social entrepreneurs to succeed.  In order to create sustainable ventures, entrepreneurs must utilize a mixture of both commercial and philanthropic methods.  As proven by VisionSpring, a non-profit organization in China, low-cost technologies paired with innovative business models are an effective way to both provide affordable products and create sustainable job opportunities.

The aforementioned application of these “learning laboratory” experimental innovative models to other businesses requires them to be replicated as well as scaled.  This means that in order to be considered valuable, it is necessary that they be cost-effective and transferable as well as socially-impacting.  However, entrepreneurs can also benefit from recognizing the failures and patterns of these experimental business models and applying new knowledge to future innovations.  As financial crisis pushes businesses towards innovation, it can be expected that the growth trend towards social entrepreneurship will continue due to necessity.  If this trend persists, many of the social and environmental issues that have been attributed to capitalistic markets in the past can be alleviated over time.

Read the original article here.

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29
Jun

Disruptive Innovation and Conventional Strategic Management Theory

In November 2009, Hari Nair, partner at Innosight Ventures wrote an article in the social enterprise magazine Beyond Profit on his company’s philosophy of supporting “disruptive innovation.” This form of innovation typically involves those that are smaller, cheaper and simpler than those of the traditional market leaders. Such innovation often reshapes a market. An example of such innovation would be Razor Rave — a booth-operated micro franchise that offers premium grooming services for men at costs far lower than than conventional service providers.

Mayank Jaiswal, Villgro Fellow 2010, takes a look the the concept of disruptive innovation through the lens of conventional strategic management theory.

Read Hari Nair’s full article here.

Hari Nair, in his piece, “Shaping For-Profit Enterprises Through Disruptive Innovation,” presents the concept of “disruptive innovation.” In this analysis I have attempted to understand it through the lens of conventional strategic management theory.


In the diagram alongside, the curve ODT represents an efficient Price Quality Frontier (which essentially means that it represents the best quality for a certain price and vice versa available in the market).

Disruptive innovation moves the frontier to point C so assume a curve passing through OCT rather than the solid curve shown passing through ODT. What this means is a business has found a new way of doing something which either provides a better quality at the same price as the efficient frontier or same quality at a lower price than the corresponding efficient frontier.

Let us further assume that A and B were established players who were providing a certain quality for a certain price. For example A is a Ramada Inn, which is a budget hotel with best quality in class similarly B is a Taj Palace, high quality for high price. We also see that both A and B have ‘influence circles’ – it is the area from which A and B derive their consumers. Thus if a company comes along and ‘breaks’ the frontier at D and raises it to C, we can have two types of migration – the ‘quality migrators’ people willing to pay slightly higher prices for a much higher quality or ‘price migrators’ people willing to settle for slightly lower quality with a considerable decrease in price. Thus we see flight of two types of consumers.

Additionally, it might so happen that region D was a consumer ‘wasteland’ say 20 years ago – i.e. no consumers existed in that region. However, with the change in the economic conditions may be region D has now become a ‘hot spot’, the entrenched players A and B usually miss out on these if they are not conducting timely surveys of the consumer landscape, and keeping themselves abreast of the latest changes in consumption patterns.

Razor Rave is a case in point. A can be thought of as the street hair dresser and B as the high end salon. With the entry of Razor Rave kiosks and the fact that there is more disposable income with Indians especially in the middle class, Razor Rave is C. It has come in where no players existed and has created disruptive innovation by serving the consumer professionally (quality axis growth) at not very high price points.

The theory has implications for new social enterprises as well. I If new enterprises can develop innovative approaches which provide better services orquality at similar prices or similar quality at lower prices and can identify “consumer wastelands” which will be no more, there is scope for a successful enterprise to be set up. The need and chances of developing such enterprises in the social space are very high given the current rate of growth in countries like India.

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29
Jun

How Public-Private Partnerships Can Spur Rural Employment

Villgro Fellow Mayank Jaiswal highlights the working of a new public-private partnership to address the challenges of rural employment. As part of his Fellowship, Mayank works with e-Jeevika, a Villgro incubatee company that provides employment and recruitment services for rural India.

Rural India is teeming with youth who could be made employable. This will bring the youth and their families out of a vicious circle of poverty and deprivation. It not only imparts the youth with the financial stability that comes with a job but also empowers them and develops their self confidence by enhancing their social status in the community.  Companies are increasingly relying on rural India to staff their front and back offices in urban and semi-urban towns.

For long the most coveted jobs in India were with the government. Rapid economic growth, driven by a thriving private sector has changed that, but the government isn’t completely out of the picture as yet. In fact a new initiative in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, offers models for public-private partnership in providing employment to rural youth. The The Employment Generation & Marketing Mission (EGMM), headquartered in Hyderabad, not only trains young people, but also helps them get employed. The project was started by World Bank and was taken over by the state government of Andhra Pradesh.

The program identifies Grad 10-level students studying in government schools (where education is free)  in rural Andhra Pradesh,  who can be trained, groomed and prepared for an assortment of entry-level jobs in a range of sectors, including telecom, hospitality, manufacturing, retail and outsourcing. EGMM proactively talks to the industry and develops a curriculum, which it makes sure to include essential soft skills . The Mission provides a basic 75-day residential training program, which includes English and computer-skills classes, personal hygiene sessions and counseling. To minimize preconceived notions of what employment might entail, the last 15 days of the program provide on-the-job training at prospective workplaces ranging from security agencies and telecom firms to pharmaceutical companies and retail outlets. This allows trainees to get a feel for the work environment and see what’s expected of them. The familiarization helps youth adapt to their new lives later.

EGMM is a small but important start. If other states are able to replicate the model, there could be enough ammunition to handle India’s rural employment dilemma.

Read more about the EGMM, here.

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29
Jun

Mobile Banking in 2010

Mobile Banking technology has played a huge role in financial service delivery, and therefore financial inclusion. The industry and its players have also moved rapidly to develop partnerships with social enterprises engaged with delivering financial services to low-income markets, be it microfinance institutions, technology enterprises, large-scale commercial banks and so on. In this post Robert Moore, Villgro Fellow 2010, reviews literature that provides insight into the working of the industry.

“Mobile banking may be an industry I would like to start a business in: There are millions of people with phones but not bank accounts – mostly in developing countries”. This quote is from my first blog post of 2008 on www.poorbillionaire.com and marks the day I started taking a big interest in the mobile banking industry.

If you take a lesson from the telecommunications industry you can see that the developing world has “skipped” a step in development: starting with no phones at, skipping land lines, and adopting mobile phones.  If this could influence the banking industry the developing world can go from having no bank accounts at all straight to mobile banking – both a leap in the standard of living for the poor and a leap in the progress of the banking industry.  Think of all the things you can do with your mobile that you can’t do with a landline and you will start to realize the impact this change in the industry will have.

To support the growth of this industry a conference called the Mobile Money Summit was started in 2008.  An example of this conference’s impact is showcased in a paper produced from the 2009 summit titled “Accelerating the Development of Mobile Money Ecosystems ” which talks about how quickly this industry is growing and how the challenges both as a market opportunity and as a poverty alleviation tool are being better understood.

But the paper I really want to talk about is Nexbillion.net Editor Nathan Wyeth’s three part article titled “Report from the Mobile Money Summit”.  His introduction says: “My hope in attending the summit was to share with NextBillion readers the state of the industry and what can be expected in the future outside of places where mobile banking and payment systems have already taken significant hold – namely Kenya and the Philippines (and significant branchless banking in Brazil) – as well as indicate how mobile money systems can be brought into base of the pyramid business models not only for microfinancial services but far outside of the financial services sector – in health, education, agriculture, energy, and more.”

His article brings you up to speed about the potential of this industry and teaches a little about the developing world market.  Part one – “State of the Industry” talks about the industry’s markets structure, business model structure, and the banks’ need/priority of “stability before inclusion”.  The idea that the poor will actually except negative interest on savings accounts if they are able to save their money securely is one of the interesting concepts that he mentions in Part two – “Product Innovations to Reach the Poor” and that credit profiles can be generated based on current mobile banking transactions for future use in microloans.  Part three – “Learning from Agent Networks” discusses the distribution channels involved in making this all happen.

Nathan’s article is a worthwhile read for those interested in Mobile Banking or a glimpse into the world of developing economies and one of the angles that is being used to approach them.

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29
Jun

Is All Entrepreneurship Social?

In all the talk of social entrepreneurship, we often forget the social value that regular entrepreneurs hold. While their enterprise, or innovative product may not be designed specifically for, or with the explicit need for to solve a social need, the benefits derived can not be ignored.

In an article in Standford Social Innovation Review, Carl Schramm, CEO of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, walks us through why we shouldn’t ignore the contributions of regular entrepreneurs.

He builds his thoughts around the process of development and entrepreneurship that the United States of America went through. For example, he points to how delivering improvements in health care are always perceived as being social value that the government or non-profits add. However, as in the case of the U.S, private entrepreneurs and businesses have contributed significantly to improvement in health standards as government health programs.

These private sector contributions came in the form of improved quality of services that contributed significantly to overall improvement of living standards. For example, the development of the rail network lead to more movement of goods and services across the country, which in turn enabled cash-strapped Americans to earn a higher wage, and live better lives. Another example he sites is that of the growth of industry that lead to better quality clothing and shelter – two other goods that Americans in the mid-19th century did not have access to. Improvements in these three areas lead to unprecedented rates of change in the 19th century.

Schramm moves on to draw a parallel to 21st century development efforts. Case in point: cell phones. While disease still plauges much of the world today, as it did 19th century America, the power of the cell phone to overcome these difficulties has been remarkable. While cell phones themselves can not cure disease, Schramm points out that they have been and can be instrumental in developing new business models, companies and technologies, and as a consequence have a direct bearing on economic growth.

In conclusion Schramm does not belittle the efforts of social entrepreneurs, or even programs targetted at improving development indicators. Rather the point he reiterates that in the years to come larger social change will be had as a result of the work of regular entrepreneurs. And therefore, they must also be lauded in their role in improving society.

Read the complete article here.

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28
Jun

Technology, Innovation and Gender

In February we featured a study by the International Council for Research on Women titled “Bridging the Gender Divide: How Technology can Advance Women Economically.”  Villgro Fellow 2010, Jeanne Chen takes another look at this piece, focusing on how social enterprises can be more conscientious of the gender gap in innovation.

Technology and innovation are two words that form a pillar of social enterprise – even social enterprise itself is still considered an innovation. Social enterprises seek to develop technologies with the underlying assumption that they will increase productivity or create opportunities for social economic advancement. Some technologies are simple like the treadle pump, and others are complex like solar lanterns, but all of them help the BoP and it’s this latter benefit that we invest in. As social entrepreneurs, we’re obsessed with measuring this benefit and finding new ways to scale the impact further – in short we want to know that everyone who can benefit from this technology is adopting it. All the aforementioned statements are frequently discussed, but what we don’t hear enough about is whether these successful innovations are reaching men and women equally or whether there is a gender gap to adoption of technologies.

The International Council for Research on Women (www.icrw.org) recently published the report “Bridging the Gender Divide: How Technology can Advance Women Economically” (downloadable here: http://www.icrw.org/files/publications/Bridging-the-Gender-Divide-How-Technology-can-Advance-Women-Economically.pdf), which focuses on understanding how technology for the BoP differs in its impact on men versus women and what measures can be taken to ensure more inclusion of women. Four main barriers to adoption were identified:

-          Lack of education and technology literacy: women are often excluded from opportunities to learn the new technology

-          Time poverty: domestic responsibilities leave limited disposable time for tech exploration

-          Social norms: women are often not in the habit of operating technology, or adoption would require women to enter a public arena (i.e., market) outside their customary comfort zone

-          Limited economic means: domestic finances are most often controlled by the men of the households, leaving women unable to make a purchase decision to adopt innovations

These barriers can be overcome when developers of the technology or the social enterprise promoting the innovations take efforts to address the root causes, starting with including women in the design process. ICRW gives an example of the the Upesi rural biomass stoves, which were designed with inputs from women and consequently were adopted. I find this point to be one of the strongest recommendations – it addresses a systemic concern that prevents women adoption. As long as technology continues to be designed by men, women adoption will be low, perpetuating social norms that continue to support the existing gender gap. Sometimes, the solution is as simple as making a technology like a cooking stove, a height that women can reach. ICRW also suggests that inclusion of women in the design process can help to overcome many of the technology literacy and social norm barriers.

Other recommendations are centered on customizing the last mile distribution to address the awareness training needs, purchasing financing, and distribution through channels catered to women. By providing financing or bringing the innovation directly to the women, rather than relying on market place distribution, women are enabled to make the adoption. It is only through active efforts of the social enterprise to convert women adopters that this is possible.

ICRW provides the example of Solar Dryers in Uganda, which were financed by a partner NGO, enabling women to dry fruits for commercial consumption. As in the Solar Dryer example, technologies which can either create income generating activities or increase the productivity of women can go a long ways to contributing to their economic advancement. In addition, ICRW cites that the indirect benefits of increased productivity can also reduce the barrier of time poverty.

Overall, what I find most compelling and the most important point to takeaway is the need to examine and reevaluate how we think about the potential impact of a technology on helping the BoP. Social enterprises need to be more conscientious of the gender gap in innovation adoption and need to be vigilant in their efforts to address this gap.

One particular example comes to my mind of an innovative successful business model, who could benefit from thinking about their social impact with respect to an adoption gender gap. VisionSpring (www.visionspring.org), an organization recently partnered with Villgro, uses a high touch-point sales distribution model to bring low-cost reading glasses to the BoP across southeast India. VisionSpring’s customer demographics are heavily skewed towards men even though there are many women who attend the eyecamps and should be customers. There seem to be two primary reasons for the gender divide between VisionSpring’s customers. The first is that eyeglasses are perceived as aesthetically unappealing, which trumps the value of clear vision. The second is that women are less likely to have disposable income and the economic means to make the purchase. Both these reasons are problems that should be and can be addressed by the social enterprise. Awareness campaigns for the importance of proper reading glasses in the preservation of vision, not to mention the benefits of increased productivity, can be conducted to overcome what is essentially a misguided social norm that is a barrier to wearing glasses. Women can also be engaged in sourcing frames that are more aesthetically appealing. Finally, some form of partnership with a microfinance institution to finance the purchases is also possible to overcome the economic concern.

The point I want to emphasize is not how VisionSpring can work to increase its female customers, but rather that it needs to proactively think and evaluate the impact of its technology to identify how to overcome the gender gap. This is true across all social enterprises. Even though many social enterprises have introduced game changing technologies to the BoP, I think if we look closer, we would see a divide in the impact by gender. This gap is one that needs to be overcome if we truly want economic advancement for all of the BoP – of both women and men.

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28
Jun

Social Entrepreneurship = Social Transformation?

There is no doubt that entrepreneurship in different forms has lead to social transformation. There is invariably a ripple effect on several spheres, including politics and society. Social enterprises are no exception to the power of transformation.

What are the factors that are commonly associated with social enterprises? Do successful enterprises have anything in common at all? Authors Sarah H. Alvord, David Brown and Christine W. Letts of the Kennedy School of Government take a look at seven social enterprises to establish this.

The findings are presented in their paper, “Social Entrepreneurship and Social Transformation: An Exploratory Study.” The study looked at the following enterprises:

  1. BRAC, Bangladesh
  2. The Green Belt Movement, Kenya
  3. The Highlander Research and Education Center, USA
  4. Plan Puebla, Mexico
  5. SEWA, India
  6. Grameen Bank, Bangladesh
  7. Six-S, Burkina Faso and France

The study identified several forms of core innovation, including building local capacity, innovative ways of disseminating a group of innovations, and building a movement from grassroots alliances to take on the more powerful. These findings form a part of the first hypothesis for successful social entrepreneurship.

The second hypothesis the study makes is that successful social enterprises involve innovations that mobilize existing assets of marginalized groups. An example of this would be the work of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which encourages its clients to participate more effectively in local economies.

The third hypothesis for a successful social enterprise is that success is built when there is an emphasis on systematic learning in order to operate at scale.

Read more about the study here.

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25
Jun

Growing Social Innovation

With it’s Office of the Third Sector, the UK invests a lot of money into supporting the social enterprise sector. NESTA – the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts brought out a report titled “In and Out of Sync: The Challenge of Growing Social Innovations,” brought out a report which looks at the ways in which social innovation grows and spreads.

Drawing from 11 cases studies, the establishes conditions for growing a social enterprise. It also addresses the fundamental issue of growth: synchronizing ‘demand’ and ’supply’ factors through several strategies. Additionally, the report seeks to establish that there is in fact a distinct difference to the diffusion of social innovation from a diffusion of technology innovation, and therefore emphasizes the need to address social innovation differently.

The four necessary conditions for scaling up innovative products and services are identified below:

  • A ‘pull’ factor, in the form of addressing an acknowledged societal need.
  • A ‘push’ factor which stems from effective supply
  • Effective strategies that connect ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors, and finds the right organizations structure for the innovation
  • A process of learning and adaption that ensures the innovation achieves its social impact, and adapts to changes in the environment

One finding that comes out of the report is the lack of institutions that connect ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors.  The report identifies several causes for this — fragile markets, an underdeveloped capital market, weak institutions and networks, a lack of knowledge of established methods and strategies for nurturing and growing innovation, and a lack of managerial talent.

Key to the growth of innovation is the strategy in use. The report develops a framework for classifying the growth/diffusion of innovation — depending on the organizational form, the control exerted by the innovator, location and the intended beneficiaries.

The framework identifies the following types of innovation diffusion:

  • Uncontrolled diffusion: Typically carried forward by a self-appointed champion. Such diffusion tends to adapt itself to local conditions.
  • Innovator-led diffusion: Such innovation typically follows prescribed processes and methods established by the innovator or parent organization. This can be done through concerted promotion through formal or informal networks, franchising, licensing and so on.
  • Taken-over diffusion: Where innovators can adopt a deliberate strategy to allow their innovation to be taken over by a larger organization.
  • Diffusion through organizational growth: Where the innovation spreads through the growth of the company itself

Besides adopting different strategies, the report goes on to list a set of priorities required for improving and scaling up innovation:

  • Availability of more mature sources of financing. Particularly those that allow genuine risk-taking
  • Developed exchanges and intermediaries
  • Stronger knowledge and experience base for the field of social innovation
  • Incentivizing the adoption of better performing models

While the case studies used in the report are not based in the developing world, the findings of the report definitely have implications for how social innovation globally can be enhanced.

This report was authored by Geoff Mulgan with Rushanara Ali, Richard Halkett and Ben Sanders. Read the entire NESTA report here.

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24
Jun

Enhacing Food Value Chains

Agricultural practices have a direct bearing on how an economy feeds itself and the general quality of life of a population. Adopting sound agricultural practices is therefore crucial for any economy. Agri-businesses no doubt, play a strong role in enhancing agriculture value chains.

According to a recent report by the World Economic Forum, “Next Billions: Business Strategies to Enhance Food Value Chains and Empower the Poor,” more than 70% of the bottom of the pyramid depends on agriculture value chains for their income. The benefits of enhancing these value chains through new business models is no doubt huge.

Tapping in on this opportunity, the report takes a look at the several business models that can be employed to enhance value for the several actors in play. The report presents solutions to producers, consumers and solutions to empower entrepreneurs.

It also makes recommendations for stakeholder engagement, such as strengthening incentives for business engagement, providing complementary funding and capacity, facilitating corporate engagement.

The report offers business models that have the potential to create substantial value for the poor consumers, producers and entrepreneurs as well as for companies. It hopes to provide a roadmap for companies seeking a win-win approach in emerging markets, and those that wish to establish a workable, profitable and scalable business model.

Read the complete WEF report here.

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