Giving Compass' Take:

• Stanford Social Innovation Review examines how many southern-hemisphere social enterprises excel at planning, scaling, and extending their influence — important lessons for the rest of the world.

• The ambition for growth shown by organizations in emerging markets looking to help underserved populations provides an inspirational message. How can we tap into such a drive in all sectors?

• Here's how local experts are driving impact in sub-Saharan Africa.

In many prosperous and developed northern countries, social enterprises do not yet challenge mainstream business, in part because the movement is not yet large enough for the wider economy to notice. But around the world, there are many examples of innovative enterprises in low-income countries that tackle problems at scale, transforming the communities and industries in which they work.

The now-legendary Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, for example, pioneered the microfinance industry, which was entirely new at the time. Today, microlending provides an estimated $102 billion in credit to approximately 132 million individual borrowers, according to the 2017 Microfinance Barometer. Almost all of this funding comes through socially oriented financial institutions.

Northern-based social enterprises could be just as transformational. Our experience has led us to identify how these initiatives can maximize their potential at each stage of development: through innovation, consolidation, scaling, and maturity. Inspiring examples from around the world suggest ways that organizations in the global North might learn from and emulate their Southern peers.

Read the full article about what social enterprises in the global south have learned by Tom Rippin, Aly-Khan Jamal and John Macartney at Stanford Social Innovation Review.