Mobile Value Added Services: A Business Growth Opportunity for Women Entrepreneurs

Examines the potential for mobile value-added services adoption by women entrepreneurs in Egypt, Nigeria, and Indonesia in expanding their micro businesses; challenges, such as access to digital channels; and the need for services tailored to women

Harnessing Technology: analysis of emerging trends affecting the use of technology in education (September 2008)

Research to support the delivery and development of Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning 2008–1

Less is more: what design against crime can contribute to sustainability.

Crime is a voracious form of premature obsolescence. Replacement of insured stolen items increases levels of product consumption that are unsustainable. Additional to the ecological cost of crime are the social and economic impacts linked to ‘courts, cops and corrections’ – money better spent on building social innovation and sustainability. The user/ abuser centered methodology of the Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC) at University of Arts London as a socially responsive design movement is described in this paper. It argues that DACRC’s approach is unique. It addresses social agendas by accommodating consideration of multiple, often competing, user-demands in a given context, and responding in ways that produce both fiscal and social capital through sustainable design

Social Media And Health: Implications For Primary Health Care Providers

This report is the second deliverable of the ?Digital Inclusion and Social Knowledge Media for Health: Frameworks and Roadmaps? project. The first discussed the concept of social and digital exclusion whilst this report focuses on the emerging phenomenon of social media. The report outlines current knowledge on the users and usages of social media for health and goes on to discuss social media in the context of a continuing focus (ref. D1.1) on the areas of mental health, smoking cessation and teenage lifestyles. The report concludes with an outline of an approach to a ?social media strategy? and with suggestions for directions for future research

The impact of mobile telephony on developing country micro-enterprises: a Nigerian case study

Informational challenges-absence, uncertainty, asymmetry-shape the working of markets and commerce in many developing countries. For developing country micro-enterprises, which form the bulk of all enterprises worldwide, these challenges shape the characteristics of their supply chains. They reduce the chances that business and trade will emerge. They keep supply chains localised and intermediated. They make trade within those supply chains slow, costly, and risky. Mobile telephony may provide an opportunity to address the informational challenges and, hence, to alter the characteristics of trade within micro-enterprise supply chains. However, mobile telephony has only recently penetrated. This paper, therefore, presents one of the first case studies of the impact of mobile telephony on the numerically-dominant form of enterprise, based around a case study of the cloth-weaving sector in Nigeria. It finds that there are ways in which costs and risks are being reduced and time is saved, often by substitution of journeys. But it also finds a continuing need for journeys and physical meetings due to issues of trust, design intensity, physical inspection and exchange, and interaction complexity. As a result, there are few signs of the de-localisation or disintermediation predicted by some commentators. An economising effect of mobile phones on supply chain processes may therefore co-exist with the entrenchment of supply chain structures and a growing 'competitive divide' between those with and without access to telephony

Return on Equality: Investment Opportunities that Help Close the Global Gender Gap

There is significant opportunity for individual investors, asset managers and companies to move closer to achieving the goal of gender equality and make direct social, market and global economic impacts, according to a compelling report launched today by BNY Mellon and the UN Foundation.The report, Return on Equality: Investment Opportunities to Help Close the Global Gender Gap, reveals new insights that underscore the urgency and opportunities for closing the global gender gap and proposes steps investors can take to advance progress towards the United Nations' Sustianable Development Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls." "We not only have a moral imperative to bridge the global gender gap, but the potential market benefits and investment opportunities in doing so are pivotal," according to Michael Cole-Fontayn, Executive Vice President, and Chairman of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). "Companies engaging in 'gender-lens' investing have typically supported women-led businesses and those promoting gender diversity. However, there is an increasing need to focus on the third (and less common) type of investing, in companies that advance gender equality through their products and services."Investors can now pursue these three gender-lens investment strategies through a variety of investment vehicles, including index funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs), venture capital and private equity opportunities, and innovative financing structures, such as private debt vehicles. However, investment vehicles related to products and services that advance gender equality are far and few in between.The five sectors examined in this report that present investment opportunities in products and services and further the advancement of women have an estimated market impact nearing U.S. $300 billion alone in incremental annual opportunity globally by 2025. They include telecommunications, contraception, childcare, water and energy

The global information technology report 2014

Executive summary When The Global Information Technology Report (GITR) and the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) were created more than 13 years ago, the attention of decision makers was focused on how to develop strategies that would allow them to benefit from what Time Magazine had described as “the new economy”: a new way of organizing and managing economic activity based on the new opportunities that the Internet provided for businesses. At present, the world is slowly emerging from one of the worst financial and economic crises in decades, and policymakers, business leaders, and civil society are looking into new opportunities that can consolidate growth, generate new employment, and create business opportunities. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) continue to rank high on the list as one of the key sources of new opportunities to foster innovation and boost economic and social prosperity, for both advanced and emerging economies. For more than 13 years, the NRI has provided decision makers with a useful conceptual framework to evaluate the impact of ICTs at a global level and to benchmark the ICT readiness and usage of their economies