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Scaling Up Without Losing Your Edge

Harvard Business Review

Following Abed's twist on Schumacher — "small may be beautiful, but big is necessary" — it now touches the lives of an estimated 126 million people with healthcare, education, enterprise development, microfinance and a slew of other programs. Today it runs a sprawl of surplus-generating businesses across diverse sectors.

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It Takes a Village to Raise an Entrepreneur

Harvard Business Review

Commercial microfinance organizations are perhaps the best-known hybrid organizations, but social entrepreneurs now use hybrid models to address a diverse set of social issues that includes hunger, healthcare, economic development, environment, education, housing, culture, law, and politics.

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Give Impact Investing Time and Space to Develop

Harvard Business Review

Second, in addition to time, the sector needs a framework to measure success, one that makes sense of the sector’s inherent diversity. We allowed microfinance and the venture capital industry the time and space to develop over a few decades. Impact Investing in the Future: Developed clusters across the spectrum.

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Making Sense of the Many Kinds of Impact Investing

Harvard Business Review

Currently, impact can mean anything from venture investments in new health technologies to microfinance loans in Peru; from affordable housing in the US to renewable energy in India; from social impact bonds to private equity funds that create jobs. Paradigms : Investments that attempt to change an entire system for the better.

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