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If we stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognizing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity can open up.

What we need is a better approach to help the poor, an approach that involves partnering with them to innovate and achieve sustainable win-win scenarios where the poor are actively engaged and, at the same time, the companies providing products and services to ...

Bill Gates suggests we need to reexamine the role of capitalism. His solution was to move to “creative capitalism.” He defined it as 

There are two great forces of human nature: self-interest and caring for others. Capitalism harnesses self-interest in a helpful and sustainable way, but only on behalf of those that can pay. Government aid and philanthropy channel our caring for those who can’t pay. But to provide rapid improvement for the poor we need a ...

Business leaders who have engaged  themselves actively with the Bottom of the Pyramid have started to reexamine the role of business in society. Mr. Patrick Cescau, the retired CEO of Unilever, is one of them. His views reflect the growing appreciation of the role of the private sector in the protecting the planet and at the same time serving the poor.

He said, ” For one, there is a growing recognition that the social and environmental ...

This is the time to look at globalization strategies through a new lens. For companies with the resources and persistance to compete at the bottom of the world economic pyramid, the prospective rewards include growth, profits, and incalcullable contributions to humankind.

Countries that still don’t have the modern infrastructure of products to meet basic human needs are an ideal testing ground for developing environmentally ...

Energy Performance Contracting is an innovative financing technique that uses cost savings from reduced energy consumption to repay the cost of installing energy conservation measures. Normally offered by energy service companies, this innovative financing technique allows building users to achieve energy savings without up-front capital expenses. The costs of the energy improvements are borne by the performance contractor and paid back out of the energy savings. Other advantages include the ability to use a single contractor to do ...

High impact philanthropy means getting the most good for your philanthropic buck. It is the process by which a philanthropist makes the biggest difference possible, given the amount of capital invested. 

It introduces cost per impact as the fundamental measure of any philanthropic investment. In order to assess cost per impact, philanthropists must be able to assess, to the extent possible, its two components: 1) social impact, as measured by specific, objective criteria for success; and 2) ...