Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 5, 2016

A major challenge for international development efforts is determining which financial tools provide durable buffers against such setbacks. The Grameen model of microfinance gained a great deal of attention in the international development field after early data showed that it was associated with high repayment and low default.

Microfinance 10

Microfinance Insurance Banking Bottom-up 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 18, 2016

and globally, and Habitat for Humanity, which works in 70-plus nations to provide home construction, rehabilitation, and increased access to shelter and financing, gathered data from their sites to make the case for profound change. A critical part was adapting a proven model in a related field: microfinance.

Microfinance 9

Microfinance Strategic Planning Finance Globalization 9

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

We wanted to create an immersive experience wherein we could introduce potential customers to our vision of energy everywhere, a place where highly trained and enthusiastic staff could entertain, educate, and entice visitors to the unique benefits of the HomeStove. Experiment #5: Microfinance Institutions.

Marketing 8

Marketing Microfinance Retail Development 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 11, 2013

Six years ago, David and Donna Allman approached Opportunity with an idea that fell outside our traditional microfinance model: to build a Community Economic Development (CED) program in Nicaragua. We know that microfinance alone will not break the poverty cycle.

Microfinance 8

Microfinance Rogers Tourism Engineering 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 18, 2013

Without economies of scale, they argued, developing societies would never develop the efficiencies needed to modernize. To address the needs of youth in developing countries, BRAC launched a girls' empowerment program, Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA), in 2008. So BRAC got into food processing.

Microfinance 8

Microfinance Follow-up Bureaucracy Self-aware 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Yet unlike in finance, where distributing risk across institutions is the goal, in drug development the focus is on isolating risk. Although new drugs are developed for those with a particular disease, they are tested in a healthy population before they are distributed and assessed in a vulnerable one.

Banking 10

Banking Pharmaceuticals Microfinance Risk Management 10

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

Do we really want to beat India at developing clean tech, cheap medical devices, and affordable housing? Entrepreneurship in financial services has been given a bad rap as one contributor to the economic crisis, but we desperately need innovative financing models for start-ups. How about if, as nations, we win together?

Venture Capitalist 14

Venture Capitalist Entrepreneur Microfinance Finance 14