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The Volume from 60 Decibels
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A monthly collection of our own data and insights, plus the best things we're reading elsewhere.
We hope you enjoy :)
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> 100,000 and counting!
That’s right, last month we crossed a big milestone. We’ve heard from more than 100,000 people in 34 countries and 33 languages. That’s the data that fuels our impact benchmarks. Vroom! And just a few stats about all those surveys: our average Lean Data interview time is 15.6 minutes, so we’ve spent 26,000 hours in conversation with customers. Next stop: 1 million.
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> What do you do when customers tell you something isn't working?
If you're Psaltry International, you take action. Psaltry buys cassava from Nigerian farmers, with the goal of increasing their incomes. But their Lean Data results revealed that high transportation costs were eating away at farmers' earnings. With these results in hand, Psaltry moved to build three new mini-mills closer to farmers. Psaltry also took farmer feedback about financing needs to local banks to help the company raise debt. Check out our interview with Psaltry CEO Yemisi Iranloye to get the full story.
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> What's going on with Fair Trade?
This balanced long read from the Guardian investigates the pros and cons of the Fair Trade certification for farmers, why Sainsbury dropped Fair Trade, and the growth of private certifications by the likes of Nestlé, Starbucks and others.
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> The CDC on good jobs
We liked the clarity of the CDC Group's assessment of how investors can improve the impact of job creation in their latest insight report. The headline: "replace informal, unstable jobs that pay poorly with formal, stable jobs that pay well." This has important consequences for what we measure and deem high impact performance (don't just count the numbers of employees!).
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> My memory's just fine, thank you
There are almost too many things to mention from the North East Universities Development Consortium annual conference, but for the data geeks among you, check out this research from Iraq that challenges the notion that people can't effectively recall their consumption behaviors.
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> From Sasha: Where does innovation come from?
What’s not to like about a story that begins with John Clease and the Ministry of Silly Walks, jumps to how Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote one of the Hamilton songs on the subway, and ends with an Innovation Ingredient List? Happy cooking.
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> If we could wave a magic wand
We’re looking for inspiration: where have you seen new ideas and practices go from fringe to mainstream (things like music streaming or food labels)? Since we're trying to make customer-centric impact measurement go mainstream, we're looking for ideas from other sectors. What other examples should we be studying, and if we had a magic wand, what would we do to accelerate this change in our sector? We'd love your suggestions.
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> Catch us in SFO or NBO
Our co-founder Sasha will be at SOCAP 19 speaking about our favorite topic: accountability in impact measurement. Sasha will be on two panels, covering emerging new approaches in impact measurement and how investors and social enterprises have used Lean Data to inform decisions. Reach out if you’re going to be there and want to chat! Or, if you’re Nairobi the week of November 5th, catch Kat Harrison at the Clean Cooking Forum. Check out our Energy Report for some pre-reading.
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> Interested in a better way to listen? Let's talk : )
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