Fazle Hasan Abed and Imran Matin Beyond Lending How Microfinance Creates New Forms of Capital to Fight Poverty The very idea of microfinance has changed banking as we knew it. Providing small loans to the poor, mostly women, replaces physical collateral with collective responsibility. Aujourd'hui, microfinance is an established way to provide financial serv- ices to the poor. It can be scaled up in widely

Letters Reader Commentary RE: “TAKING ANIMAL TRAFFICKING OUT OF THE SHADOWS,” BY DENER GIOVANINI Dener Giovanini does an excellent job of describing the challenges—and risk— faced not only by RENCTAS, but by all conservationists who seek to protect wildlife from illegal take and trade. And like the illegal trade of drugs and guns, wildlife smuggling is a global business—one that often goes hand in hand

Sharon Stieber Is Securitization Right for Microfinance? The microfinance industry is playing a leading role in helping to alleviate poverty by providing tiny loans to the marginalized majority of the world’s population that lives on less than $3/day. The demand for microfinance loans, cependant, exceeds the current supply of capital available to microfinance institutions. Innovations in the commercial capital markets are starting to play a

Jacqueline Novogratz Meeting Urgent Needs with Patient Capital The past 20 years have seen an unprecedented rise in wealth, with new technolo- gies changing the economic landscape. But globalization has also increased the divide between rich and poor, creating a growing sense that something must be done to extend the benefits of the global economy to the 3 billion people—or half the world’s population—who live

Guy Stuart Regulatory Innovation in Microfinance The MACS Act in Andhra Pradesh If the past is any guide, continued progress in addressing public chal- lenges will require continued innovations—the efforts of individuals, groupes, and communities who creatively employ new organizational forms, and in many cases new technology, to effect discontinuous change. —Philip Auerswald and Iqbal Quadir from “Introduction to the Inaugural Issue,” Innovations Winter 2006

Susan Davis and Vinod Khosla The Architecture of Audacity: Assessing the Impact of the Microcredit Summit Campaign In 1997, a dozen heads of state1 joined almost 3,000 participants from 137 coun- tries in Washington, D.C. for the world’s first Microcredit Summit. During the summit, all agreed on an audacious objective: to reach 100 million of the world’s poorest families, especially the women of those families,

Allen L. Hammond, William J. Kramer, Robert S. Katz, Julia T. Tran, and Courtland Walker The Next 4 Billion In an informal suburb of Guadalajara, Mexico, a growing family is struggling to expand its small house. Help arrives from a major industrial company in the form of construction designs, credit, and as-needed delivery of materials, enabling rapid completion of the project at less overall cost.

Michael Chu Commercial Returns at the Base of the Pyramid More than three decades after its birth as a quixotic initiative in Latin America and Asia to bring financial products to the poor, modern microfinance is entering the mainstream consciousness. While its profile had been rising steadily in develop- mental circles for half that time, a breakthrough with the public at large came with the

Boru Douthwaite Enabling Innovation Technology- and System-Level Approaches that Capitalize on Complexity Making innovation happen is central to what many engineers do. Cependant, when we finish our training most of us believe that it is our job to conceptualize designs, develop products and worry little about what happens after they have been intro- duced. Our courses are generally too practical to bother with theories about

Allison Macfarlane Is It Possible To Solve The Nuclear Waste Problem? Discussion de cas sur les innovations: Siting of Eurajoki Nuclear Waste Facility With the issuance of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in February 2007 the world faces the stark reality that it must reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately or face dire consequences. Nuclear energy provides a reliable source of carbon dioxide-free electricity, and a

Klaus Schwab and Pamela Hartigan Social Innovators with a Business Case Facing 21st Century Challenges One Market at a Time If there is one thing about which public and corporate leaders around the world today can agree, it is the ever-growing importance of innovation. The search for innovative solutions to the world’s myriad local, national and global challenges has become a clarion call rallying people

Yochai Benkler Commons-Based Agricultural Innovation Innovations Case Discussion: CAMBIA-BiOS Computation and access to existing scientific research are important in the devel- opment of any nation, yet both still operate at a remove from the most basic needs of the world poor. On its face, it is far from obvious how the emergence of the net- worked information economy can grow rice to feed millions of

Sara Boettiger and Brian D. Wright Open Source in Biotechnology: Open Questions Innovations Case Discussion: CAMBIA-BiOS The case narrative by Richard Jefferson in this issue of Innovations shows how the rate and direction of progress in biology is constrained by available tools; a novel tool can set the field on a new and more productive course, but only if creative sci- entists are free to

Letters Reader Commentary RE: “OPEN STANDARDS, OPEN SOURCE, AND OPEN INNOVATION,” BY ELLIOT MAXWELL At many conferences I have mumbled privately that the word “open” should be banned. Everyone agrees that “open” is good, but agreement ends there. Different speakers use the word for different purposes, referring to different processes or outcomes. While it would be Draconian to ban the word, it would force speakers

Richard Jefferson Science as Social Enterprise The CAMBIA BiOS Initiative Nearly four billion people live on daily incomes lower than the price of a latté at Starbucks. Most of them make dramatically less than that—and from that income, they must acquire their food, their medicine, their shelter and clothing, their edu- cation, and their recreation, and they must build their future and their dreams. Their

Keith E. Maskus Reforming U.S. Patent Policy Getting the Incentives Right The U.S. patent system comes under much criticism these days. In a lightning-rod case, the maker of the popular BlackBerry communication device, Research in Motion (RIM), chose to pay a $612.5 million settlement in order to avoid a court- ordered shutdown. Dans ce cas, the judge supported a patent infringement case brought by NTP

Letters Reader Commentary RE: “THE ENERGY INNOVATION IMPERATIVE” BY JOHN HOLDREN In his article, “The Energy Innovation Imperative” (Innovations, printemps 2006), Professor John Holdren makes a compelling case for a highly accelerated transition to the widespread use of alternative sources of energy in order to address two of the most fundamental challenges of our time: 1) reducing the geopolitical and eco- nomic vulnerabilities that result

Mahad Ibrahim, Aman Bhandari Jaspal S. Sandhu, and P. Balakrishnan Making Sight Affordable (Part I) Aurolab Pioneers Production of Low-Cost Technology for Cataract Surgery Blindness from causes treatable by modern medicine afflicts millions of people every year. Cataracts, the single largest cause of preventable blindness, can be treat- ed by a simple and quick surgical procedure that restores sight; malheureusement, extreme poverty and its consequences