The coming of September means the start of the school season in the U.S. and also the end of peak summer vacation time. Business activity picks up and many corporations start to think about business plans and budgets for the coming year because 2025 will be here before we know it
In my office’s public-private partnerships trainings, we often open with an ice-breaker in which we challenge groups of participants to complete a puzzle as a team, without the box top as a guide. As the groups attempt to finish the puzzle, they eventually realize that they are missing one crucial puzzle piece—and have an extra piece that doesn’t fit. Entrepreneurial team members are able to figure out that one puzzle piece has been switched with another group’s puzzle, and it’s only by trading those pieces that each puzzle can be completed.
There is a fortune at the Base of the Pyramid, not waiting to be found, but awaiting co-creation. That’s the message Ted London delivers in his new book, The Base of the Pyramid Promise: Building Businesses with Impact and Scale.
At the Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) Conference hosted last fall by Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program, former Administrator of USAID, Rajiv Shah, highlighted the changing landscape of foreign aid. In particular, he noted the game-changing emergence of the private sector. “This is the first time in history we are actually succeeding at reducing extreme poverty, and we have the ability to end it altogether,” Shah observed. “At the same time, the development sector has widened, and private companies are responsible for much of what has brought people out of poverty.” The lesson for the development community, he said, is to welcome in the private sector and operationalize PPPs to solve future problems.A Brief History of Partnership.
Partnerships are intended to de-risk a project, but carry risks of their own,” Judy Brown, the Chief Advisor for External Affairs in the East Pacific and Latin America at Rio Tinto and a veteran of field-level sustainability work, advised a group of 15 students in the Georgetown Master of Science in Foreign Service program. For both the public and private sector, the advent of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) make partnerships that catalyze the development of local markets especially important. Brown had joined Whitney Shinkle, a senior advisor to Bancroft Global Development, and me to speak with my class on public-private partnerships about the ethics, risks, and benefits of partnering with local governments and NGOs, something large companies are increasingly being
Building a responsible business is a lot like baking a cake. Most cake recipes have certain ingredients in common—the flour, the milk, the eggs, and the sugar. The recipe tells you which ingredients to use, how much, when, and at what temperature. All of these affect whether or not you end up with a delicious cake or one that goes into the garbage. Similarly, responsible businesses have common ingredients—sustainable strategies, processes, and implementation practices. However, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all recipe that will spark an overnight business transformation.
Tyson Weinert is a lively and ingratiating veteran trainer, who after 18 years of service, separated from the U.S. Coast Guard last year. Since then, he has traveled the country training groups of people from all walks of life to embrace the application and benefits of human-centered design. He had come to D.C. with a simple mission: to induct our group of 18 wannabe designers into the discipline of developing solutions in the service of people.
SiMPACT Strategy Group is pleased to announce that its Founder and CEO, Stephanie Robertson, will be speaking at Volunteer Canada's In Good Company Forum this June on the evaluation and impact of employer-supported volunteer programs.
In addition to existing US legislation and customer requirements, legislation in Europe and China is pending. At the 2016 AIAG Conflict Minerals Industry Briefing V, you will gain insights from thought leaders, OEMs and suppliers that will affect your company in the year ahead. This three-hour event will provide you an update on industry strategies and best practices, IPSA Audits and Smelter Engagement Activities.
Identifying the right partner involves trust and expertise that can be hard to spot if you don’t know what to look for. Deirdre White, CEO at PYXERA Global will speak at the interactive lab, A Guide to Cross-Sector Collaborations: Identifying the Right Partner at the 2016 Shared Value Leadership Summit in New York May 10 and 11.
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