Coca-Cola Gets Everywhere. Medicines Don’t. Why?
I am hugely exciting about a new partnership between ColaLife and International Development Enterprises which aims to answer this question. Together we are investigating the best ways to take ColaLife’s award winning anti-diarrhoea kit – Kit Yamoyo, the ‘Kit of Life’ – to scale across Zambia and potentially across the world. We have set an […]
Creating a Runway for Multinationals with Impact
Five years ago, Steve Bachar and I decided to create a venture capital fund that would only invest in companies capable of achieving three goals: Transforming the livelihoods of at least 100 million customers living on $2 a day or less; Generating at least $10 billion in annual revenues; and Earning sufficient profits to attract […]
Getting to the Bottom of…Toilet Innovation
Danielle Batist, Communications Associate at Ashoka UK More than a third of the world population does not have access to a clean toilet. 1.1 billion people defecate in the open. On the first UN-recognised World Toilet Day on 19 November, two social entrepreneurs explain why “everyone should give a shit”. When the UN Deputy Secretary-General […]
Achieving Scale
Scale is the single biggest unmet challenge in development and impact investment today. IDE, the development organization I founded, has helped some 20 million people living on a $1/day move out of poverty, but this is a drop in the bucket compared to the 2.7 billion people still living on less than $2/day. About the […]
iDE and innocent foundation: Creating successful NGO-Business Partnerships
Since 2006 non-profit organisation iDE UK and the innocent foundation have achieved a major impact in some of the world’s poorest communities in Africa and Asia. They have found new, innovative ways to create shared value that can offer insights into creating successful partnerships between NGOs and the business world. Creating shared value starts with […]
Social Impact Investing And The G8
Adviser, Department for International Development (DFID) Last week the UK Prime Minister hosted a G8 event on social impact investment at the Bloomberg Auditorium in London. Social impact investments are investments that have both a social and a financial return and in the case of international development are targeted at enterprises which benefit the poor […]
The SunWater Project – Advanced Solar Technology for Poor Farmers
In my last article, you heard about SunWater, a project to build a radically affordable solar water pump for $2-a-day farmers that will transform small plot agriculture, create new water markets, and significantly increase incomes that will raise bottom-of-the-pyramid families out of poverty. Our target customers are small-plot farmers in India and Africa. These farmers […]
Transforming Solar Pumping to Eliminate Rural Poverty
What if we could harness the limitless power of the sun to carry water to the crops of millions of small poor farmers around the world? If I want to water my petunias, I turn on the tap outside my house, hold my thumb over the end of a battered green hose, and water away. […]
Forget poverty. Let's talk about business
In an article I just finished for How Magazine on the future of design, I used Paul Polak as an example of why generalists are so important to the world right now. I said, “For example, it would be easy to think of global development pioneer Paul Polak as an expert in alleviating poverty, but […]
Forget poverty. Let’s talk about business
In an article I just finished for How Magazine on the future of design, I used Paul Polak as an example of why generalists are so important to the world right now. I said, “For example, it would be easy to think of global development pioneer Paul Polak as an expert in alleviating poverty, but […]
The Next Digital Revolution
In May this year I had the pleasure of speaking at Seoul Digital Forum (Korea). I was stimulated and challenged by Steve Ballmer’s keynote address in the morning, especially the description of the new Windows 8 and all its bells and whistles. But I had one problem with it. What Steve talked about has no […]
Cultivating Potential: iDE UK and the Rise of the Female Farming Entrepreneur
Since its founding iDE UK has watched its projects transform the livelihoods and income opportunities of poor rural farmers in the developing world. However it is the potential in women that iDE UK sees as the greatest game changer of rural poverty. At iDE UK we have long recognised the important role that women play […]
Paul Polak, Founder, iDE: At Least a Million
For many years I have been a vocal advocate for what I call the “Don’t Bother Trilogy” in the practice of design, which states: 1. If you haven’t had good conversations with at least 25 customers before you start 2. If the product or service you design doesn’t pay for itself three times in the […]
