"Now in its second edition, the Social Investment Landscape in Asia serves as a resource for funders and resource providers to assess the opportunities and challenges for social investment in 14 markets in North, South and Southeast Asia. It is designed to be a guide for new social investors and intermediaries looking to enter the Asian market and existing actors exploring partnerships as well as cross-border or cross-sector opportunities. Each market report provides a holistic overview of the current and emerging trends in the social economy."

"This manual provides social entrepreneurs a comprehensive yet easy to use guidebook on how to develop successful relationships with social investors. The guidebook presents an overview of the social investment landscape, offers concrete approaches to finding and approaching the right investors for social enterprises, as well as the best practices for having a successful due diligence process and for negotiating a mutually beneficial long-term social investment arrangement."

"Recent field experiments demonstrate that advice, mentorship, and feedback from randomly assigned peers improve entrepreneurial performance. These results raise a natural question: what is preventing entrepreneurs and managers from forming these peer connections themselves? We argue that entrepreneurs may be under-networked because they lack the necessary social skills- the ability to communicate effectively and interact collaboratively with new acquaintances-that allow them to match efficiently with knowledgeable peers. We use a field experiment in the context of a business training program to test if a short social skills training module improves who the participants choose to learn from within the program. We find that entrepreneurs who were exposed to the social skills training formed 50% more relationships with peers. These relationships exhibited more matching based on managerial skill and were more ethnically diverse. Finally, the training also substantially increased entrepreneurs' business performance. Our findings suggest that social skills help entrepreneurs build relationships that create value for both themselves and their peers."

"Government, NGO, and business leaders typically see great promise for digital tools to empower smallholder value chains and make them more efficient and profitable for farmers. However, hope is not enough - new technologies only reach scale when they are delivered within a functioning business model.

To scale, the business model must provide a 1) Lifetime Value for each new customer which exceeds 2) the cost of acquiring each new customer. However, finding a business model which meets this requirement on small, remote farms is a tough job. Delivery and acquisition costs are typically high, and Lifetime Values low as each farmer's revenue is limited.

By observing the full range of solutions that have been developed across the ASEAN region, we see startups migrating to five business models which seem to show the greatest potential in reaching smallholder farmers at scale. This report provides an overview of those five business models, and why we think they show the greatest promise."

"This guide concerns smallholder farmers and their engagement with markets in Africa. It looks at their degree of engagement as well as the possibilities to link them to formal firms in ways that may improve access to capital, inputs, know-how and markets. It adopts three perspectives to frame thinking about key issues: agricultural development policy, rural market failures and a 'business view', the latter with regards to high start-up costs and learning thresholds."

"The Shell Foundation commissioned Enclude and the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) to conduct research on how to spur significant scaling up of investment in and reach to SMEs in Sub-Saharan Africa over the coming three to five years. This study is based on research conducted from late 2016 to mid-2017, with generous participation from leading providers of SME finance globally through roundtable discussions, surveys and interviews. The findings in this report highlight both individual approaches and systemic interventions necessary to achieve significant scale."

"This thesis aims to present the main challenges regarding employability that the economically vulnerable population in Brazil faces, and to map opportunities for the development of social impact businesses that can support the reduction of inequality and bring improvements to their lives."

"Social Enterprise in Emerging Market Countries provides a clear picture of where social enterprises are and where they need to go, and identifies key players in the social enterprise field and how they can take the bold steps needed to facilitate the growth and impact of these models.

Etchart and Camolli focus on NESsT's research in Latin America and Central Europe, the two regions where it has operated for over 15 years, particularly in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, with some cases from other countries in Latin America. For the purpose of illustrating important models and innovative programs and policies, this book also highlights cases and experiences from Central Europe."

"This paper seeks to outline the social enterprise landscape in Ghana. It reviews the enabling environment and the scope of capacity-building activities supporting social enterprise to provide an overview of the profile of existing social enterprises and social innovation activity. It presents information on perceptions and levels of awareness of social enterprise, the obstacles and challenges faced and opportunities to improve the enabling environment; and lessons from social enterprise activities in other national contexts. It should be noted that the study is not, and did not set out to be a comprehensive review of all social enterprises and support organisation in Ghana."

"This paper synthesises findings, based on case studies of social enterprises operating in the agriculture and health sectors in Kenya and Vietnam. Main conclusions are that the concept of social enterprise needs to be clearly defined if governments and donors want to give preferential support to such organisations and that defining social enterprise as a hybrid business model facilitates identification and analysis of enterprise models that are distinct from mainstream business. The research found that the social enterprises covered in the survey were often small, personality driven, and internationally supported. Social enterprises face special constraints linked to their hybrid business model: access to finance, human resources, legal status, difficult markets, and management weakness. Market and state failure creates niches for social enterprise: serving disadvantaged communities, managing public infrastructure, and creating environmental benefits. Governments, donors and promoters should assess the niche for social enterprise in specific market contexts in place of blanket promotion of the concept."