The MicroConsignment Model Reconsidered: Invention-Led Development by Shifting Risk, Transferring Knowledge, and Scaling Capabilities (Innovations Case Discussion: The MicroConsignment Model) (original) (raw)
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Social Innovation, Social Entrepreneurship and Development
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Social innovation and development have to be placed in the perspective of sustainability. Overcoming poverty and pauperisation is not only an issue for the Third World; however, the so-called developed nations, i.e. mainly the OECD countries, are facing increasing social inequality and pauperisation after their short dream of ever-lasting prosperity (Lutz 1984). Mini-credits have been regarded as a means of overcoming pauperisation first in Third World countries, later in developed countries as well, and the idea has been compensated by the Nobel Prize for peace in 2006. But not only since the recent conflict about its initiator, Muhammad Yunus, there has been rising critique, especially in India. Strategies for sustainability include Corporate Social Responsibility, the development of a strong civil society, the quality of democratic participation, and by it strengthening the trade unions as the largest democratic institutions in our societies.
Dialectic evolution through the social innovation process: from microcredit to microfinance
Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2014
Microfinance is the provision of financial services to the financially excluded, usually the poor. We use literature reviews and descriptive research to present different aspects of the relationship of the microfinancial services to microenterprise. The first thrust in this field had been from microcredit and group lending to encourage business initiatives among the poor. The hope that these services would lift them out of poverty had largely built the brand image of the sector. However, the spread of consumer microcredit and uncontrolled growth of microfinance led to over-lending without adequate checks and balances, leading to over-indebtedness and associated stress, and critique of microcredit. To restore balance, other financial products, such as microequity, microsavings, microinsurance, microguarantees, and microremittances, have been suggested. We place these developments in a social innovation process perspective by showing that microfinance, through its wide range of innovatively distributed products, can be a key factor to foster entrepreneurship.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Social goals and Sustainability in developing countries
Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2022
The shift towards a sustainability-driven society includes changes to the educational system, business operations, innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems as well as policymaking. Moreover, such a shift demands particularly a combination of top-down policy-making initiatives and bottom-up social entrepreneur-driven changes. Social innovation and entrepreneurship are providing solutions for globally recognized social and sustainability challenges such as poverty, education, environmental and climate change, peace support-worldwide yet also in the particularly challenging context of developing economies. We aim to showcase the best practices of social and sustainability-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of developing economies. In particular, we address the question of how social entrepreneur and innovator with bottom-up ideas could complement the top-down policymaking initiatives. Our design implies qualitative research aiming to disseminate the inspiring story of a social innovative enterprise, which represents a successful example of complementing policy-making efforts. Accordingly, our findings contribute to the literature on social innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of developing economies and simultaneously informs social entrepreneurs and policymakers on potential opportunities for synergy in their efforts.
Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, 2008
In recent years, the increasingly popular topic of economic entrepreneurship has included a concern with entrepreneurial innovation in the not-for-profit sector. It seems to us that this sort of entrepreneurship is not yet generally or fully understood. For example, a New York Times op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristof (2008) offers examples of social entrepreneurship. We question whether some of these examples really represent social entrepreneurship: Andrew Klaber's charitable foundation covers the school expenses of children orphaned by AIDS, while Jennifer Staple's organization collects old reading glasses in the U.S. and ships them to poor countries. These are, of course, inspiring examples of young people who have created charities that have done a great deal of good, but they are not examples of entrepreneurship, let alone social entrepreneurship. A central reason is the fact that neither is truly innovative. Many charitable organizations, such as Orphans Against AIDS, provide educational assistance to such children; Save the Children is a wellknown, long-standing example of this work. As for the mission of Staple's Unite for Sight, the Lions Club International has been collecting eyeglasses and distributing them to the poor for many years. One might argue that Kristof 's examples are innovative because they are Internet-based, but both of the much older charities we mentioned also have extensive Internet sites.
Science Technology & Society, 2014
Microfinancing is widely perceived to contribute towards social innovation for poverty reduction. We examined the Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction (CFPR) programme implemented by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) between 2002 and 2007, as it used an innovative approach to microfinancing by transferring assets rather than cash to ultra poor participants. We examined two aspects: (i) the impact of microfinancing through asset transfer instead of cash on social innovation leading to poverty reduction; (ii) the factors that contributed to positive or negative impact on the economic conditions and poverty levels of the participant households and the trajectories of changes experienced by the success and failure cases. For this, we employed survey data from twenty-one beneficiaries and eight in-depth interviews among these households. The study found that participants who demonstrated proper planning, hard work and personal interest in the enterprise through microfinancing have witnessed improved quality of life and poverty reduction, while lack of motivation, absence of proper planning and certain social barriers resulted in failure. Our study makes two major contributions: (i) it fills a gap in the literature on microfinancing of social innovation to help ultra poor households to graduate out of poverty; (ii) it provides policy alternatives for designing appropriate microfinancing programmes for ultra poor which can produce high success rates in reducing poverty through social innovation not only in Bangladesh, but also in other developing countries.
Social entrepreneurship: A foundation for “creative capitalism” in rural African communities
2008
The authors wish to share some of their current learning in the creation of social enterprises to act as primary support mechanisms for Infopreneurs™ ("creative capitalists") in rural African communities. The objective is to attract interest and cooperation from others grappling with the challenges of scalable and sustainable innovation (technological and business) in rural African contexts.