Iceland used to have the worst teenagers in Europe: smoking, drinking, getting high, staying out late. What’s a country to do?...
Category: Case Studies
Designing a Credit Market for Stormwater Management
Heavy rains and flood waters flow across the impervious surfaces of roads and parking lots. That flow pushes pollution on those surfaces–plastic bottles, cigarette butts, motor oil–into stormwater management systems. That pollution then dumps into lakes and streams. This system is how so much plastic ends up in our oceans....
Innovative Pricing Turns Plastic Into Transit
It’s a different way to pay with plastic — bottles instead of credit cards. Cities like Beijing, Istanbul, Sydney, and Surabaya let you pay public transit fares with recyclable plastic. Innovative transit pricing is one way that public and social sector marketers achieve multiple goals at once....
Estonia Runs On Digital Government
I visited Estonia in the mid-1990s. Back then, I said it would be fascinating to return in 20 years and see what changed....
Case Study in Nonprofit Healthcare: Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative
For social goods like health care, the buyer and the end consumer are often two different parties. In much of health care, an insurance company or a government agency is the buyer, while the individual patient is the end consumer. At least in the United States, for-profit medicine companies exploit this split. They charge...
Continue reading
Distributing Help to the Homeless
How do you deliver help to homeless people with no fixed address and little to no money? ...
Using Social ROI for Market Entry Decisions
If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you are looking for ways to increase your impact. Social return on investment, or social ROI, lets you objectively define and measure your impact. Once you can define and measure impact, use that ability to identify communities to serve. Decisions about who and where you choose to...
Continue reading
Data-driven Design for Transportation Infrastructure Saves Lives
According to U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 47 percent of fatal traffic accidents in the U.S. occur in urban areas, resulting in nearly 15,000 deaths per year. That’s more than 40 people dying each day on urban roadways. If there was a data-driven design for transportation infrastructure that saved lives, shouldn’t we implement...
Continue reading
Three Ways To Eliminate Low-Quality Charitable Products
Are you designing and distributing low quality charitable products? How do you know? Just because your clients may benefit from, and even rely on, products that are free to them doesn’t mean you can give them crap. It also doesn’t mean they stop becoming savvy consumers just because something is free to them. Your...
Continue reading
Turning Bright Spots Into Products and Services
Look for bright spots of success and hope among your market audience, and you may find your next big idea. Here are lessons from a story about how one underfunded aid worker used turning bright spots into products and services to change a nation....