Business Innovation Facility

The Business Innovation Facility is DFID-funded pilot programme that aims to support companies as they develop and implement inclusive business. Inclusive business refers to profitable core business activity that also expands opportunities for poor people at the base of the economic pyramid: either as producers, suppliers, distributors or consumers of affordable goods and services. Inclusive business offers the potential to scale up commercials solutions to development challenges. Wehn a pro-poor opportunity is also a business opportunity, it can grow, evolve and adapt in new markets. The Business Innovation Facility was created to ensure that innovative business models and companies with social and commercial objectives have an improved chance of success, by offering hands-on advce, technical expertise and access to a growing range of knowledge resources.

The Practitioner Hub for inclusive business is a key component of the Business Innovation Facility's knowledge exchange activity. The Practitioner Hub for Inclusive Business is a website and online community for anyone developing a business that delivers both commercial return and social impact. It is jointly hosted by the DFID-funded Business Innovation Facility (BIF) and the Sida-Funded Innovations Against Poverty (IAP) programmes. This dynamic knowledge-sharing Hub combines blogs, informational pages, videos, discussion groups and more. It is hosted on a NING platform and it is aimed at people working in inclusive business (‘practitioners’) and is fast-evolving as new projects are added and membership expands. It currently has about 3,000 members and 4,000 visitors per month.