shared value

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Social Enterprise

Columbia Business School student explains impact investing and its main players

Until recently, investors had to choose between earning a social or financial return on your investment. Impact investing marries the two.

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Value Chains

Good charity v. bad charity

People face a complex and murky world when they decide to donate. Two ethicists lay out how they think you should decide.

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Global Ideas News Brief: Starbucks in Colombia + Afghans' views on Western influence

Staff picks: What we're reading this week. Wiring the world, Starbucks opens in Bogota, and Afghans share their view on the West's influence.

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Mobile Technology

Quotable: Internet for the next 5 billion people

Will extending Internet access to the world's poorest solve all social problems? Yunus and Zuckerberg think so.

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Value Chains

How to make markets work for the poor--and measure the results

Despite local demand for hay, Kenyan dairy farmers face milk shortages due to lack of quality supply. But instead of handing over the hay, why not bring the hay market to the farmers?

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Global Ideas News Brief: Measuring shared value + Cash transfers

Staff picks! What we're reading this week: Corporate leaders struggle to implement shared value, two views on cash transfers to the poor, and how to donate.

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Value Chains

Can we shop to end poverty?

The digital world makes it easier for us to do good through everyday actions, but often these acts feed our egos more than they feed the poor.

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Value Chains

Help a Bolivian farmer: Eat quinoa

Andean farmers have enjoyed an economic bonanza from growing quinoa. But the farmers' success may prove their undoing, as farmers in the United States and Canada have begun growing the grain.

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Value Chains

Toms shoes responds to critics, but it may not be enough

Toms’ buy-one, give-one corporate philanthropy model has repeatedly come under fire from critics for doing more harm than good. But the shoe company's recent efforts to evolve its giving model still fall short.

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Mobile Technology

Testing the future of emergency assistance

A quiet revolution is underway to streamline the delivery of assistance to people in crisis — using the most prolific technology in the world. And it could help people become more financially literate and secure for the long-run.

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Value Chains

Developing the tractor-for-hire business in post-conflict northern Uganda

As opportunity grows in northern Uganda after 20 years of violent conflict, farmers are building back and reinvesting in the land. But a lack of tractors could keep the region hungry.

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Sustainable Energy

Solar provides a roadmap for financing alternative energies. Will microfinance bite?

Solar was once the wild west of alternative energy. Today, microfinance banks see it as a solid investment, even for poor clients, and bio-gas may follow its footsteps.

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Value Chains

Obama's new fix-Africa-toolbox includes one shiny new tool: private investment

President Obama wants America’s relationship with Africa to move beyond aid. The private sector would play a big part in the new partnerships.

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Global Ideas News Brief: Is there an app to save the world?

New! Staff picks: A roundup of news we're reading this week.

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Sustainable Energy

Doing good with green: How d.light is making solar work

An American solar company is showing the world how to get electricity to poor families cleanly and efficiently, and how to make money at the same time.