Publication database

Social enterprises have shown resilience and agility in response to the pandemic's severe challenges, offering new products, services, and trading models to support their communities. This global survey explores these responses along with the uneven impact on different demographic groups and variations across regions. It also looks at support provision, growth expectations and implications on social enterprises as generators of employment.

Foreign companies operating in a ‘host’ country’s private sector play an important role in fostering inclusive development in these nations. This PhD thesis, exploring the contributions of the Dutch private sector to inclusive development in Kenya’s three most important sectors, tea, flower and renewable energy, finds that private companies operate in a very specific context and must adapt to existing local circumstances that are often not automatically inclusive.

This article attempts to move the needle on extant inclusive business discourse by delineating, conceptually, what it means to be(come) an inclusive business. By drawing on the rich literature on inclusive growth, sustainable business models, social enterprise and hybrid organizations, it offers revised definitions of inclusive businesses and inclusive business models. The article argues, amongst others, that inclusive businesses necessarily prioritize value creation over value capture and should be judged based on the net value they create for ‘income-constrained’ groups. It furthermore proposes how the boundaries of entrepreneurial responsibility can be delimited, with implications for how sustainable business models more generally should be designed.

The idea of Inclusive Business is taking Africa by storm. The timely publication of a new concise book 'Inclusive business in Africa': A business model aims to take readers on a journey into the subject of Inclusive Business in Africa and shows how companies can be agents of change, contributing to inclusive development and growth. The publication brings together research supported by the Partnerships Resource Centre (PrC), a specialist research centre at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) and RSM’s Professor Rob van Tulder. 

Given the adoption of the European Green Deal, as well as the current health pandemic, the call to rethink our conventional social and economic models has never been so clear. The aim of this policy brief is to provide an overview of how sustainable and inclusive business models can deliver positive social, economic and environmental impact in partner countries – as well as to provide concrete recommendations for the EU and Member States to support these businesses.

The global spread of Covid-19 has made being an entrepreneur more challenging than ever. Although it seems like a crisis unlike any other, the pandemic has many lessons to offer entrepreneurs working with underserved communities in low income markets. The Manual to Land by MIT D-Lab aims to help entrepreneurs to better navigate crisis leadership while focusing on finances, the team or the customer side. 

The Covid-19 crisis is expected to roll back some of the progress made against global poverty over the last two decades, with the greatest impact on individuals at the base of the economic pyramid. Inclusive businesses that expand access to goods, services, and livelihoods for these individuals are responding to the crisis by reorienting and adapting their inclusive business models and operations. This IFC note highlights seven actions that companies are taking to address needs at the base of the pyramid. These actions can be seen as examples of what other businesses could do in response to the needs of those at the base of the pyramid.

Thirteen interdisciplinary research projects were reviewed for this synthesis paper. These projects addressed a range of business processes and innovations by and for small-scale producers and entrepreneurs in the agri-business sectors in countries across sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. The paper stresses that innovations supporting inclusive business are only relevant and effective for the poor and marginalized when they are applicable to a specific problem and context, affordable at low costs, and accessible to all. This Is called the Triple A: applicability, affordability and accessibility.

This report provides practical lessons from TechnoServe’s past experiences working with businesses during crises, as well as early insights from the coronavirus pandemic. It outlines TechnoServe’s three-step framework for supporting entrepreneurs through the crisis: (1) Reset the goal to business survival, (2) Adapt the program to the new needs of entrepreneurs during the crisis, (3) Engage the ecosystem to foster cooperation and learning.

Producer organizations (POs) provide benefits to smallholders by alleviating market access challenges. However, whether all farmers benefit from a PO is still a question. However, whether all farmers benefit from a PO is still a question. Limited evidence is available on whether POs are inclusive of poor farmers. Even if the poor join, do they participate in decision‐making? This report provides insights into decision-making structures and what factors influence power balances.