On the Frontier: Profits, Purpose, and the Future of Impact Investing

For many investors, emerging markets appear to be a turbulent
and risky frontier; for others, they represent an opportunity to
transform lives and communities.

In recent years, impact investing has
gained significant momentum as a way to match socially-minded
entrepreneurs with risk capital. This investment movement has
occurred alongside massive technological innovation – and with it
unprecedented ways to reach and connect the developing world.
Increasingly, business solutions to entrenched social and economic
problems are taking advantage of new technologies to bring goods,
services, and opportunities to some of the world's underserved
people and places.

But what does this mean in practice? Where do investors see the
most promising opportunities – and barriers – to earn financial
returns while addressing unmet needs? And what is it like to
actually build these ventures on the ground?