Brian Gallagher, CEO of United Way Worldwide, on more meaningful philanthropy, and measuring the impact of and enforcing accountabilty in philanthropy projects. As a charitable organization, United Way Worldwide (UWW) enjoys two unique advantages: the benefit of scale, and the ability to organize and manage community impact projects locally. UWW, a 125-year-old institution now, is […]
Sustainability and Inclusiveness Primer: Challenges of Impact Investing in China
Impact investing, or investments that try to create quantifiable positive social and environmental impact alongside a financial return to any organization or entity, also falls under the big umbrella of strategic philanthropy (See ‘Sustainability and Inclusiveness Primer: Doing Good through Strategic Philanthropy’). Impact investing is not about simply writing a check and making a donation […]
Sustainability and Inclusiveness Primer: Doing Good through Strategic Philanthropy
Giving to a worthy cause used to be as simple as signing a check and mailing it to a charity. As the idea of philanthropy continues to gain traction, buzzwords such as ‘impact investing’, ‘venture philanthropy’, ‘social venture capital’ etc., have emerged. All of these belong to a broader umbrella concept called ‘strategic philanthropy’ and […]
Bottom of the Pyramid and Beyond: The Thinker Interview with Stuart Hart
In the year 2002, C.K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart published a groundbreaking article in Strategy+Business magazine that introduced to the world the idea of the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). The idea, which says that the poor present a vast untapped business opportunity, and if companies serve the poor, they can help eradicate poverty and […]
Kickstarters: China’s Innovation Incubators
China’s incubators set entrepreneurial spirit in motion. Stephen Bell has high hopes for Chinese student entrepreneurs. The American venture capitalist invests in seed-stage start-ups across China, betting that the next Mark Zuckerberg will emerge from the world’s second-largest economy. Bell’s Beijing-based venture-capital firm Trilogy VC runs the ChinaStars incubator program at the country’s top universities. […]
Sir Tom Hunter and his Idea of Venture Philanthropy
An interview with Sir Tom Hunter, noted entrepreneur, philanthropist and Scotland’s first billionaire. Sir Tom Hunter’s story is an inspiring one. The son of a grocer in a small mining village in Scotland, he started a business selling sneakers from the back of a van. From humble beginnings, he went on to create sportswear retail […]
Beyond Profits: China’s Social Entrepreneurs
A new breed of entrepreneurs takes on China’s most vexing problems
Liao Jianwen on Social Innovation
In recent years, a handful of Chinese entrepreneurs have set up companies that use legitimate business models to tackle some of the country’s most vexing problems — and also turn in a profit. As these early experiments show, social innovation — or using business models to solve social and environmental problems — requires a fundamentally […]
CSR in China: Domestic enterprises outshine MNCs
Globalization has increased awareness of, and controversy over, corporate social responsibility (CSR) around the world. China is certainly no exception. Encouraged by the country’s economic reform in 1978, and later, by its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, multinational corporations (MNCs) flooded into the Chinese market. With them, they brought not only […]
A Nation of Provinces
In March 2011, Jiuquan’s Municipal Energy Bureau issued a set of regulations imposing “construction requirements” on wind energy firms. Companies that failed to buy local equipment, the notice said, would no longer be able to do business in the area. In response, China’s National Energy Board (NEB) issued a statement banning Jiuquan officials from “requiring […]
