Editor's note: The R4D-managed Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) has been following an organization called World Health Partners since 2010. They serve more than 40 million people in some of the most remote, rural areas in India. CHMI recommended World Health Partners and its President, Gopi Gopalakrishnan, for the Skoll Award. R4D Managing Director Gina Lagomarsino provided supporting testimony about their groundbreaking work to bring quality healthcare to rural India, and the organization won the award. Gopi was recently profiled in Forbes Magazine.

When it comes to social innovation, there’s no place like India.

With its vast underserved communities and the sheer number of groups serving them, India is the site of countless cutting-edge programs focused on the base of the pyramid.

The Innovative Secondary Education for Skills Enhancement (ISESE) Competition blog series features the winners, runners-up and five additional models that have been selected due to their innovation, impact, sustainability and potential for replication in Africa and Asia. This is Part 2 of our 10-part series.

A collection of links that caught the attention of R4D staff in last week. 

If poverty was a disease, malnutrition would be a symptom. Plumpy’nuts, a nutrient fortified, peanut butter bar-like food packet, treats the symptom, but what happens in the meantime when it comes to curing the disease? 

Harvard Kennedy School professor Dani Rodrik authored a timely Project Syndicate column on “Doing Development Better”, where explained the differences between micro- and macro- approaches to development and what they can learn from each other, especially as Jim Yong Kim, who hails from the former, soon takes the reins of the World Bank, an institution firmly from the latter.

Early in his stand-up comedy career, Steve Martin started jotting down notes after each of his performances, evaluating what worked, what to tweak for the next time and what to throw out entirely.

Hollywood and global development have surprisingly a lot more in common than Don Cheadle, George Clooney, and Brangelina.

There is a dangerous perception that, of all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), those for education are closest to success.

While there is some truth to that, and the expansion of enrolment in developing countries since 2000 has been unprecedented, momentum has recently been lost and the increased rates of enrolment are now declining. More importantly, this focus on enrolment masks a much bigger problem that the very success has itself created, which is that children in many developing countries are simply not learning even though they are in school.

If you think innovation is a complex task, try supporting innovation.

Financial support to innovators in the form of early stage grants or later stage equity or debt is one thing, but supporting innovators still isn’t the same as supporting innovation as a process.