Connected Women: How Mobile Can Support Women's Economic and Social Empowerment

This report explores how mobile services provided by Vodafone and the Vodafone Foundation are enabling women to seize new opportunities and improve their lives. Accenture Sustainability Services were commissioned to conduct research on the services and to assess their potential social and economic impact if they were widely available across Vodafone's markets by 2020. It showcases the projects and the work of those involved and also poses the question -- what would the benefit to women and to society at large be if projects such as these were taken to scale and achieved an industrialscale of growth? This reflects the Foundation's commitment not solely to the development of pilots but rather the Trustees' ambition to see projects which lead to transformational change. In order to understand this more deeply, the Report looks at the benefits for women and society and providessome financial modelling for how the engagement of commercial players could achieve industrial, sustainable growth in these areas. Accenture has provided the modelling and, given the public benefit and understanding which the report seeks to generate, these are shared openly for all in the mobile industry to understand and share. It is the Trustees' hope that the collaboration with Oxford University and Accenture in the delivery of this Report will stimulate not only the expansion of existing charitable programmes but will also seed other philanthropic, social enterprise or commercial initiatives

Management innovation made in China: Haier’s Rendanheyi

This article shows how emerging market companies like China’s Haier Group create management innovations that are appropriate for an environment characterized by increased volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Dealing with VUCA effectively requires practices favoring nimble and decentralized responses; the Haier Group developed a platform of management practices under the label Rendanheyi (in Chinese: 人单合一) to transform itself from a conventional hierarchical manufacturing firm into a highly responsive online-based entrepreneurial company with “zero distance to the customer”. We demonstrate how the organizational, competitive, institutional, and technological contexts mattered for the development of Rendanheyi. Our study contributes several insights for practitioners and academics. First, we showcase how context dependent management innovations are created to allow emerging market firms like Haier to deal with a high VUCA world. Second, we draw lessons from Haier’s experimentation process for other firms. Finally, we create an extended process model of management innovation that managers, in both emerging and developed countries, can readily apply

Shared Value in Emerging Markets: How Multinational Corporations Are Redefining Business Strategies to Reach Poor or Vulnerable Populations

This report illuminates the enormous opportunities in emerging markets for companies to drive competitive advantage and sustainable impact at scale. It identifies how over 30 companies across multiple sectors and geographies design and measure business strategies that also improve the lives of underserved individuals

The Human Capital “Impact” on E-Business: The Case of Encyclopedia Britannica

[Excerpt] The term “New Economy” has been coined to describe the remarkable economic performance of the 1990s. Stiroh, (1999) an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York observes that its defining characteristic is a “focus on increasing globalization and expanding information technology” (pg. 87). Research suggests that revenues from electronic based business to business trade will double over the next five years from $43 billion in 1998 to$1.3 trillion in 2003. Revenues from business to consumer trade are predicted to rise from $8 billion to$108 billion over the same time period (Forrester Research, 1998). However, there is increasing attention to the challenges facing business in the new economy, and an increasing chorus of analysts suggesting how tenuous many of these business models really are. A recent Barron’s article showed that many dot-com companies have only days of remaining cash (Willoughby, March 20, 1999). Such a key emerging phenomenon has not escaped the attention of writers, though the existing body of writing has some important gaps. We would classify existing e-business literature into two groups. First, there is a growing body of literature that discusses the how the Internet is transforming business models and organizational strategies. A second, much smaller body of work has focused on e-HR, or more specifically, the implications of the Internet on various HR practices

The Industry and Policy Context for Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion:Market Analysis, Future Prospects and Key Challenges in Videogames, Serious Games and Gamification

The effective use of digital games for empowerment and social inclusion (DGEI) of people and communities at risk of exclusion will be shaped by, and may influence the development of a range of sectors that supply products, services, technology and research. The principal industries that would appear to be implicated are the 'videogames' industry, and an emerging 'serious games' industry. The videogames industry is an ecosystem of developers, publishers and other service providers drawn from the interactive media, software and broader ICT industry that services the mainstream leisure market in games, The 'serious games' industry is a rather fragmented and growing network of firms, users, research and policy makers from a variety of sectors. This emerging industry is are trying to develop knowledge, products, services and a market for the use of digital games, and products inspired by digital games, for a range of non-leisure applications. This report provides a summary of the state of play of these industries, their trajectories and the challenges they face. It also analyses the contribution they could make to exploiting digital games for empowerment and social inclusion. Finally, it explores existing policy towards activities in these industries and markets, and draws conclusions as to the future policy relevance of engaging with them to support innovation and uptake of effective digital game-based approaches to empowerment and social inclusion.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

The Green Investment Report: The Ways and Means to Unlock Private Finance for Green Growth

This report is a first step by the Green Growth Action Alliance to deliver on the G20 Leaders' request. It aims to provide a common point of reference to guide policy-makers, financial institutions and investors as they seek to better understand, and address, the global gap in green investment. This report documents and synthesizes the best available green investment data, research and case studies from a number of leading organizations, including Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the Climate Policy Initiative, the International Energy Agency, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank Group and the World Resources Institute, and provides important messages for different groups of stakeholders. New analysis is also presented on clean-energy asset finance flows, the findings of which can be used to guide investment decisions and priorities in other sectors

Launching the Grand Challenges for Ocean Conservation

The ten most pressing Grand Challenges in Oceans Conservation were identified at the Oceans Big Think and described in a detailed working document:A Blue Revolution for Oceans: Reengineering Aquaculture for SustainabilityEnding and Recovering from Marine DebrisTransparency and Traceability from Sea to Shore:  Ending OverfishingProtecting Critical Ocean Habitats: New Tools for Marine ProtectionEngineering Ecological Resilience in Near Shore and Coastal AreasReducing the Ecological Footprint of Fishing through Smarter GearArresting the Alien Invasion: Combating Invasive SpeciesCombatting the Effects of Ocean AcidificationEnding Marine Wildlife TraffickingReviving Dead Zones: Combating Ocean Deoxygenation and Nutrient Runof

Two case studies on electronic distribution of government securities: the U.S. Treasury Direct System and the Philippine Expanded Small Investors Program

The case study on the U.S. Treasury Direct examines the evolution of the electronic distribution systems for marketable and nonmarketable government securities, the main objectives, and the basic legal infrastructure and the preconditions enabling the system. The U.S. experience highlights that the enabling environment and infrastructure (for example, in terms of information databases such as Pay.Gov) make a large difference in terms of both the security and convenience that customers can expect in the use of the system. The system also achieved important cost savings for the Bureau of the Public Debt. The case study on the Small Investors Program of the Philippines looks at a program that the Philippine government has been experimenting with to sell its securities directly to retail investors over the Internet. The recently revised version of the program-called the Expanded Small Investors Program-aims to increase access to government securities and distribute them more widely, develop better savings products, and enhance competition in the primary markets for these securities. The authors analyze whether the program's main goals can be achieved while mitigating the risks. Their analysis suggests thatthere are good reasons to believe that the new program will succeed. Still, regular and responsive assessments and adjustments will be required as the program moves forward.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Environmental Economics&Policies,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Financial Intermediation,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform

The marketization of poverty

Increasingly, transnational corporations (TNCs) see themselves, and are seen by multilateral development organizations and national governments, as part of the solution to global poverty alleviation. Guided by C. K. Prahalad's theories about the "bottom of the pyramid" (BoP), TNCs are developing products and services for the billions of people living on a few dollars a day that are supposed to enable these poor people to enterprise themselves out of poverty. In the process, poverty and the poor are made amenable to market interventions by being constituted as a potential new market for TNCs. Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) e-Inclusion program was the first corporate-wide BoP initiative in the high-tech industry that aimed to create corporate and social benefits. An analysis of its companyinternal evolution from an intrapreneurial initiative to a fully incorporated business operation is complemented by a study of e-Inclusion's activities in Costa Rica, which aimed to improve the lives of rural Costa Ricans by providing access to HP technology and by creating new sources of income for electronic entrepreneurs. However, transforming the poor into protoconsumers of TNC products and services cannot address the structural drivers of their circumstances and will lead to neither the eradication of poverty nor a corporate fortune at the BoP. © 2011 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved