We surveyed one of the most popular streets to hang out in Pune - Fergusson College road with a variety of shops and restaurants making it a hot spot for people of all ages.

True - this is not a slums area, but we decided to try a new strategy in response to the 2 crore award announced for the cleanest ward in Pune. We will create a package of potential areas to place toilets in the entire Deccan area and present it to the corporator. This package which will include the slums,…

The Girls’ Education Challenge’s ‘Innovation Window’ offers funding of between £250,000 and £2 million for the most innovative, effective and well evaluated pilot projects that support marginalised girls to succeed in their education. The Innovation Window is open for funding applications until 29^th…

It was a ginger-grinding shift not a chilli pepper shift during my second visit to the AACE Foods factory in Lagos earlier this month – yet this didn’t make a difference to my constant sneezing and coughing. Other than that an awful lot has changed since my first visit in March 2011 and coming back to meet the company again in July 2012.…

We met Sumitha Kale of DGPS, an organisation working in the Deccan area to improve civic facilities. They are familiar with the area, stakeholders and key people. Through her we got an idea of the basic needs of the area and began surveying around.

We met Mrs Madhuritai Sahasrabuddhe, the corporator of the new area we are looking at:

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In a new 'Time with...' interview, the Business Innovation Facility speaks to Mezuo Nwuneli, Director of…

A select number of indigenous Nigerian Construction Companies have put in significant effort to distinguish themselves in the market and to employ practices that are considered to be the “gold standard” for the building industry in Lagos State. These companies have remained ethical and committed despite working in a business environment that does not always reward such high standards.  Professionalism like this undoubtedly leads to success and such success does not go…

A Business Case is often developed to determine the return on an investment. Other times, what the client is truly interested in is what lies behind the numbers. These could be a host of concerns/considerations which are not easily quantified.

Accenture and BIF collaborated to support a global alcoholic beverage company with a large presence in Nigeria in determining the most appropriate operating model for their sorghum supply chain operations and for tying an increased social…

Strategy is the choice of a future for the company or organisation, and of a way to reach that future, understood as the plan (or pattern) that coordinates, unifies and integrates the company or organisation’s decisions (and actions). It may also be understood as the pattern or plan that integrates an organization’s major goals, policies, and action sequences into a cohesive whole.

The field of Strategic Management on the other hand deals with the major intended and emergent…

“I am excited about inclusive business and will definitely spread this gospel”

That is my most inspiring comment from the 25 feedback forms given by participants of the BIF Nigeria workshop on “Social Impact Measurement as a Tool for…

Although it's true the number of toilets to people ratio is not ideal, it's not that the slums of Pune don't have toilets at all - most areas do have a toilet facility built by the government. There just isn't an efficient system for their maintenance. Usually, there is a cleaner appointed by the local corporator. He is given a room to stay on top of the toilet, but no salary. He collects money from the people and cleans the toilets. The problem comes here: People do not pay regularly, and…

Dear Ms. Parveen

Could you please help me to join the Bangladesh network

It’s been a busy week; barely a week since I’d joined the BIF team in Nigeria and here I was standing before you all, professing to be a believer, because I am. Let me paraphrase Bram Stoker, in the epic Dracula, here - I was longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we would talk together freely and build our castles in the air. Let’s face it, building castles in the air is exactly what most meetings, conferences and seminars do. So consider the ingredients: We were by the sea…

Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD 2012), a temporary coalition of 13…

At a crowded event in London last night we discussed why and how companies measure their development results.    The headline messages I took away were:

1. ‘It is only going one way' -  more interest, more relevance -  in the words of a senior banking executive, echoed by a mining multinational.   The business case for measuring socio-econonomic is getting clearer: perhaps not many companies have reported publicly yet but they are now considering and discussing it. …

“Partnering with other sectors is a bit like being a parent. Until you’ve experienced it for yourself, you really can’t appreciate what it’s like” – head of education partnerships of a multinational bank.

Inclusive business (IB) projects, by definition, tend to sit in areas outside of companies’ traditional comfort zones. Whether providing incomes to disadvantaged people by including them in the company’s value chain, or developing new markets with…

The Jatropha farmers who gathered to meet the BIF team last month at Kapiri Mposhi in central Zambia are optimists. Several years ago, organisations came and encouraged them to plant Jatropha, in the belief that a good income could be made from selling the bushes' oily nuts as feedstock for biofuel production. Today, they continue to maintain their Jatropha fields, even though no reliable market for the crop ever materialised. Neighbours laugh at them for persisting with the crop; one farmer…

One of the impressions that sticks in my mind from the Agribusiness Supply Chain Conference and Sustainable Supply Chain Workshop in Dhaka last month is the quality of networking.  Considering that that this was a completely new…

What exactly is inclusive business? This is a question that has a much more varied answer than was previously thought.  The definition of the term itself is new and one that has yet to be settled, which opens it up to interpretation.  There is, however, a general consensus on what it should be: a profitable core business activity that also tangibly expands opportunities for the poor and disadvantaged in developing countries through the engagement of the poor along some part of the value…