Blog Archives

Staying Connected

April 12, 2010
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Most mornings I try to go running.  I take a route that takes me on a relatively well trodden path through beautiful Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.  As I run, I’m constantly passing people – all kinds of people – there are other runners, hipsters, bikers, moms with strollers, bums with carts, dog owners, old ladies, walkers, the park staff and so on.  Across such a diverse group, there is one thing that is held in common: everyone is isolated in their own world.   Read more »

Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know

April 8, 2010
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The renowned author David Bornstein, in conjunction with the CEO of BRAC, Susan Davis, is just about to release a new book titled “Social Entrepreneurship – What Everyone Needs to Know”.  Though the book is not officially released until April 15th, we already have a book review here on Rising Pyramid (Those who pre-ordered received the book a bit early)!  The book is meant to be a general introduction into the Social Entrepreneurship space for those who would like to understand the basics.  In many ways it is meant to provide readers a brief snapshot of all the key players and recent happenings in the space.  To accomplish this, the authors base their chapters off of a series of common questions about social business.  The questions/chapters are grouped into three primary parts:

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Collaboration and Competition

April 1, 2010
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Competition is a very healthy activity that spurs society on to innovate faster and perform better.  On the other hand, collaboration utilizes the benefit of collective wisdom and idea sharing to advance and unlock new improvements.  It is essential to maintain a balance between competition and collaboration in order to take advantage of both.  In the realm of social entrepreneurship there appears to be a great deal of competition.  If you scan the headlines, you’ll read about numerous unique funding competitions, highly competitive fellows programs (e.g. PopTech!) as well as jobs that are very challenging to receive.  At first glance, the space may seem more competitive than collaborative.

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The Blue Sweater

March 25, 2010
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The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz begins with a touching anecdote about how Jacqueline realized as early as the 1980s how truly interconnected the world that we live in is.  Nowadays, with the prevalence of the internet and the rise of the mobile era, we are even more connected than ever before.  Even in developing countries, access to the internet and information is becoming commonplace.  As Jacqueline has stated, “[the story of the blue sweater made me realize] how interconnected we are, how our action and inaction can impact people we might never know and never meet everyday of our lives all around the world.”

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Rewards of Giving Back

March 18, 2010
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There are several reasons I want to be a social entrepreneur, but certainly an element of it has to do with the rewards of giving back.  As a profession, teaching won’t earn you very much money (financial rewards), but ask nearly any educator and, unless they just had a bad day, they will usually tell you they love their job because it is rewarding to see their students learn, grow and mature.   In the same way, we can make a difference in the world by inspiring young people and helping to share the skills they need to be change makers.

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What Social Businesses are Doing to Fight Terrorism

March 11, 2010
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Rising Pyramid is proud to announce  that author Bryan Farris will occasionally be featured on NextBillion.net.  The following post was originally published on NextBillion.net on Tuesday, March 9th.

Imagine that you’re a 13 year old, the oldest of seven kids, growing up in Pakistan in a poor family.  As you try to fall asleep each night, you wonder whether you’ll have something to eat the next day and your back hurts because you spent the last week lifting and pushing wheelbarrows to help your mother and father with their work.

Rather than dream about one day becoming a professional athlete or a world famous musician, you look ahead and expect that you’ll be doing back breaking work like your mother and father for the rest of your life.  Life isn’t terrible though; you have a very loving, happy family and wonderful friends.  Despite that, you know that your parents are fighting a daily battle to make ends meet and you have a growing sense of responsibility to help provide for your younger siblings.  If you’re struggling to picture the desperate scenario I’ve described, just think of young people in gangs across the U.S.; this situation is not so different from what a lot of poor people in America face.

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Tonight: Rising Pyramid's First Event

March 4, 2010
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Tonight, Rising Pyramid is set to host its first event at UC Berkeley. As Chris described in a previous post, the event will be held at the Haas School of Business and will feature Kushal Chakrabarti, CEO and co-founder of Vittana.org as a speaker.  Vittana is a person to person micro loan site that allows users to make small loans to poor people who would otherwise not have much access to financial instruments.  What makes Vittana unique though, is the fact that they provide student loans only.  Typically, microfinance loans are made to individuals who plan to start a business or make capital investments that will improve their earning potential going forward.  With the emphasis of microfinance on businesses, other types of loans such as student loans (and I would imagine housing loans too) were being underserved.  Kushal recognized that there was a unique need and started Vittana to serve it.

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Social Entrepreneurship: A Global Movement (Part 1 of 2)

February 22, 2010
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The term “Social Entrepreneurship” did not exist until some time in the 1950s and did not become widespread until the 1980s when Bill Drayton of Ashoka started using it to describe the social innovators he was seeking to find (Ashoka seeks to identify and fund high impact social entrepreneurs in developing countries through rigorous evaluation and screening).  Even today, most of the general public doesn’t quite know what social entrepreneurship means, though many have heard of it.  Read more »

Capitalism at the Crossroads by Stuart Hart

February 18, 2010
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In the second edition of “Capitalism at the Crossroads” Stuart Hart makes a very strong case for MNCs to start thinking about the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) and environmentalism as opportunities.  The book, which is subtitled “Aligning business, earth and humanity”, manages to cover the most significant global issues of our time – global warming, global poverty and terrorism – in a way that is comprehensive and insightful.  Hart argues, in a very compelling manner, that to be successful tomorrow, the businesses of today need to embrace green practices and target the world’s poor.  As if that weren’t enough, Hart goes on to provide unique guidelines for how businesses can go about transforming themselves.  The title reflects Stuart’s argument that businesses have a choice to make; they can invest to become the leaders of tomorrow, or they can continue to operate under the status quo and miss the next big wave of growth. Read more »

Microfinance's Bubble May Be Bursting-Lets Hope Not

February 11, 2010
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The global economic slowdown all began with a credit bubble.  The over-simplified version of what happened is that too much credit (loans, etc) was given out while spreading the risk over many players.  As a result, no one had a clear understanding of the cumulative risk across the system.  This lead to an increase in delinquency rates because too many bad loans had been approved.  As more people stopped repaying their loans, banks felt pressure because they had less money to repay their own debt.  The entire ordeal was much more nuanced than I describe, but essentially a rise in loan defaults was one of the first signals of the financial collapse.  Banks across the world were all connected to the crisis in some way, but somehow the microfinance industry remained unscathed.  Despite the economic downturn, the world’s poorest continued to generate an excellent track record and repay their loans. Read more »

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