As 2008 screams to a close (I for one cannot believe it’s already December), there seem to be more and more articles about small, growing businesses serving base of the pyramid markets. I think it’s a testament to our movement that the articles are not only growing in number, but in depth. More often than not, journalists are looking to explore how organizations like Acumen Fund are building transformative businesses to solve the problems of poverty by exploring sectors, metrics, systems, lessons and successes.
In the last few weeks alone, there has been some great press coverage. In case you’re not monitoring Google News for every mention of Acumen Fund (and if you are, well, I guess we love you even more!), here are a few highlights:
Power to the People, Financial Times: FT’s Sarah Murray explores how companies, multilateral institutions and development groups are working to deliver power to the world’s poorest communities - including Acumen Fund.
Thinking Big — and Small, Forbes: Ellen Grasso from Forbes’ Executive Woman series profiles Acumen Fund CEO Jacqueline Novogratz.
Social Enterprise Honor Roll, Fast Company: Anne C. Lee at FC looks at our portfolio metrics tracking system, re-named Pulse (as in taking the pulse of an investment to get an idea of its health).
Let’s Share, Stanford Social Innovation Review: Jennifer Roberts at SSIR (one of my favorite, journals) also profiles the Pulse system (formerly known as Portfolio Data Management System or PDMS) in its What’s Next section.
Business Defeats Poverty, New York Times: Nicholas Kristof’s On the Ground blog takes on the idea that business can defeat poverty; Kristof suggests he’s going to focus more on this idea in 2009.
Let’s hope Kristof - and these other fine journalists - continue the trend in 2009. But the burden is also on us at Acumen Fund and our friends in the same space (members of ANDE, for example) to keep pushing the envelope and generating results that merit press coverage.
