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Result
Acumen and Lean Data 2018 (218086)
by
Shawn Cole,
V. Kasturi Rangan,
Alnoor Ebrahim and
Caitlin Lindsay Reimers Brumme
- JANUARY 2018 (REVISED NOVEMBER 2018)
Acumen Fund is a pioneering global venture capital firm with a dual purpose: it looks for
a return on its investments, and it also seeks entrepreneurial solutions to global poverty. This case will
examine the evolution of Acumen's impact measurement.
Key Themes: Impact investing faces the challenge of defining, measuring, and ideally attributing
impact. Impact investors have to make decisions (and often trade-offs) around rigor,
cost, depth, time etc. Often impact measurement is a burden for companies. Lean Data
proposes that in the case of B2C companies serving lower-income customers, customer
data may provide useful information on impact for investors while offering business-relevant
data to investees.