| Worn out by the financial crisis? Head for the Social Stock Exchange! |
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A fully-regulated stock exchange where investors can trade in the shares of social enterprises is about to get off the ground. Stephen Brenninkmeijer explains why he is backing the London-based project.
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| Hope at the bottom of the pyramid |
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In Brazil, one very active social entrepreneur uses technology to cross more than just the digital divide between rich and poor.
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| Fortis Healthcare: Moving beyond India |
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Healthcare needs are almost desperate in many parts of Asia and one company is ambitiously ramping up its services across the region.
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| Web-based medical advice circles the globe |
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North American online health advice seekers have long been served by WebMD. Now an ex-Google developer is aiming at the rest of the world with Medico.com.
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| Pharmaceuticals: The case for outsourcing R&D |
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Drug companies worldwide are under pressure. The rise of generics, looming patent expirations and the expanding innovation gap are creating cost pressures from every direction. Could outsourcing R&D be one way to ease the pain? One former industry sales executive thinks so.
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| Who cares for society? |
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The economic crisis has put most governments on an austerity programme, cutting social benefits at a time when demand for such services is skyrocketing. Enlightened businesspeople can make a difference as social entrepreneurs.
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| From poverty to entrepreneurship: That's friendship |
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One social entrepreneur seeks to elevate those at the bottom of the pyramid in Bangladesh. But can she navigate the straits between government, the private sector and Mother Nature?
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| Microfinance takes root in Pakistan |
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Sadaffe Abid spent much of the last 14 years building what is now one of Pakistan’s leading micro-finance institutions. Drawing on her experience, she offers tips for social entrepreneurs worldwide.
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| Handing out some radical Asian philanthropy |
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Wealthy Asian dynasties are redefining the way they share their gains with the communities that helped them prosper. A new study by INSEAD and UBS reveals for the first time shifting trends in Asian philanthropy, from obscure donations to progressive strategies.
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| Rats replace doctors in pioneering disease diagnosis |
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Send in rats to prevent the spread of a deadly disease? The idea seems like a contradiction in terms, but a team of Johnson & Johnson executives and MBA participants took the Blue Ocean Strategy to a new dimension for their imaginative solution to reducing tuberculosis cases.
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| The business of improving lives: An entrepreneur lights the way in Africa |
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These days Sameer Hajee is breathing a bit easier. A major investment player has just given him scale-up funding in the form of carbon credit purchases to move his Nuru Lighting company to the next tier. INSEAD Knowledge first started to follow Hajee’s story in December 2009. This is the latest chapter…
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| Cabbages, condoms and bamboo schools: Achieving sustainability with social enterprise |
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Recovering costs and generating revenues goes hand-in-hand with one group’s approach to eradicating poverty and empowering rural communities in South East Asia.
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| The farmer, the scientist and the nuclear engineer: can they together create a sustainable future? |
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Could industrial farming, genetically modified foods and nuclear power be part of the solution to creating a sustainable future?
Surprising as it may sound, these were some of the topics discussed at the recent 24th Sustainability Executive Roundtable here at INSEAD - where non-governmental organisation (NGO) activists, politicians and captains of industry came together around the topic of “Business and Politics: Partners or Opponents?”
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| Billionaires and mud huts: Can Asia solve its real sustainability issues? |
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“Asia today has two major sustainability issues,” says Ravi Fernando, CEO of the Sri-Lanka Institute for Nanotechnology (SLINTEC). “One is the shortage of water, and the second is poverty. If we look at poverty - the figures - one in two people in the world earn less than two dollars per day,” he says. “A good percentage of that “below-two-dollar population” is in Asia.”
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| A golden age for healthcare |
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Do today's global energy efficiency initiatives work? "Insufficiently ambitious," says Nobuo Tanaka, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency. So what do we need to address the challenge of climate change?
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| Carbon leakage: EU cap-and-trade rules could do more harm than good |
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Despite its good intentions, the next phase of EU emissions trading scheme (to be implemented in 2013) could end up doing more harm than good, both to the global environment and to European industries that must comply with the rules, says David Drake, a PhD candidate in Technology and Operations Management at INSEAD.
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| A golden age for healthcare |
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As populations age, healthcare - be it providers such as hospitals or pharmaceutical companies - has become a global, multi-billion dollar business, looking to grow even more. And despite the diversity of cultures in the world, there is an increasing commonality in certain diseases: diabetes, for example, once the hallmark of the industrialised nations and their processed foods and lack of physical exercise, has now spread to emerging nations such as India, currently the world's diabetes capital. How can and how should global healthcare companies address these issues? And what tools and resources are available?
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| Emerging economies in healthcare: catching up or taking the lead? |
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Some twelve months ago, practitioners and business leaders alike were discussing at INSEAD's first Alumni Healthcare Summit how to provide low-cost drugs and care to so-called emerging markets and still keep shareholders happy.
Recently, at the second Summit, the whole picture has changed - some of those 5.7-billion new patients in emerging markets have become a potent source of revenue, and representatives from companies in India, Brazil and China made it clear they do not plan to leave these emerging markets to the Western industrial giants.
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| Living with diabetes in an online world: a personal account |
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Kyle writes that although, as a person with Type 1 diabetes, he was excited about the INSEAD Alumni Healthcare Summit's focus on chronic disease management this year, he was surprised that social media didn't figure much in patient outreach strategies discussed by representatives of multinationals at the forum.
"It made me wonder whether large healthcare firms are so detached from their end-customers that they don't realise the importance of online communities in their customers' lives", he says.
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