Taking a multidisciplinary approach and drawing upon a variety of resources will enable a BAM practitioner make better decisions as they learn to identify and manage acceptable risks. Here are 14 recommended fruitful practices for managing the risk of doing business in a hostile environment – that is hostile to business, mission or life: 1. Think […]
The BAM Global Think Tank Report on BAM in Hostile Environments shares numerous personal stories and cases from BAM companies in hard places. Here are four brief experiences: Boat Building in East Asia In 2009 Josh was living in East Asia and had an opportunity to buy a boat building company there. He saw the […]
Read Part 1 Getting to Market with a Detour From tree to table, the average coconut oil has likely changed hands 9 times. Each change of hands hikes up the price and disconnects the consumer from the farmer. By the end, a hierarchy of profits has left the farmer, who usually needs it most, with […]
“We’re fighting this multi-billion dollar evil with a peashooter,” Stephen told Don as they wandered around the exhibition hall at an anti-human trafficking convention. At every booth they were encountering stories of abuse and human suffering. There were also stories of rescue and restoration… However, the sheer scale of global slavery seemed to dwarf the […]
Some things are learned the hard way. Mistakes are part of life. But we can also learn from others’ mistakes and hopefully avoid them. We asked BAM practitioners in very different sectors in different parts of Asia to share a lesson they had learned about developing their product or service. Here is their BAM blooper […]
It goes without saying that the product or service you develop will be tightly interwoven with your missional goals: social, economic, environmental and spiritual. We can learn a lot from mainstream business about how to most effectively develop products and market share that will turn a profit and create economic impact. We can also learn […]
Here are 6 fundamental questions, the answers to which will – if adopted – increase the likelihood of you successfully building a sustainable and fruitful BAM enterprise – one that impacts along the four bottom lines: financial, environmental, social and spiritual. 1. Is there a real market for my product or service? The first critical question is, […]
We are starting a new series this month on Business Planning: Product and Market. Figuring out your product or service offering is obviously at the very heart of any new business. However, it is at this crucial, early stage that many would-be BAMers go wrong by failing to properly consider whether there is a real […]
Here are 9 Keys for Successful BAM Deployment that have been themes shared over and over by experienced BAM practitioners and mentors. These are principles and practices observed over years of listening to BAM pioneers, writing BAM stories and collecting information about how to do BAM. Many of these Keys have been shared by BAMers […]
We asked eight people who have got involved in BAM in the last 5 years to share how they got launched and how well they landed. We asked them: What helped propel you towards business as mission? Was there anything that held you back that you had to overcome? What were some of the most […]
We asked eight people who have got involved in BAM in the last 5 years to share how they got launched and how well they landed. We asked them: What helped propel you towards business as mission? Was there anything that held you back that you had to overcome? What were some of the most […]
We asked eight people who have got involved in BAM in the last 5 years to share how they got launched and how well they landed. We asked them: What helped propel you towards business as mission? Was there anything that held you back that you had to overcome? What were some of the most […]
We asked eight people who have got involved in BAM in the last 5 years to share how they got launched and how well they landed. We asked them: What helped propel you towards business as mission? Was there anything that held you back that you had to overcome? What were some of the most […]
For Ryan Crozier, four passions remain constant: God, his wife, Romania and trafficking prevention. As a natural-born entrepreneur there have been many other passions and interests that have come and gone, but those are the ones that define his life. At age 12, Ryan fell in love with Romania on a short-term mission trip with […]
How do we multiply and scale the number of fruitful BAM companies around the world? One of our key tasks must be to envision and mobilise a new wave of would-be business as mission practitioners from every country on the planet. Some of those will come from a corporate or small business background, envisioned with […]
Interview with Peter Shaukat With 15 years of experience recruiting for, mentoring, and investing in BAM companies all over the Arab world and Asia, Peter has a unique perspective into Human Resources for business as mission. We asked him to share his insights on recruitment and hiring for BAM companies. What skills are BAM companies typically […]
How do people get from A to B? What propels them towards BAM? What factors help launch them out into stable, successful business as mission enterprises – wherever that might be? We will address these questions, and others, on The BAM Review Blog this month as we delve into the topic of ‘Launching Out and […]
We launched The BAM Review as a brand new BAM-focused blog in January this year. As we end 2015, we would like to share our year in numbers and a few things we’ve learned about the BAM tribe we’re part of. We have learned that there are many people trying to get connected to others […]
For Ryan Crozier, four passions remain constant: God, his wife, Romania and trafficking prevention. As a natural-born entrepreneur there have been many other passions and interests that have come and gone, but those are the ones that define his life. At age 12, Ryan fell in love with Romania on a short-term mission trip with […]
Stephen Goode has been involved internationally in relief and development work for over 35 years. For the past 6 years he has served on the Board of Not For Sale. We asked him how Not For Sale is responding to the challenge of human trafficking and why they have made business a central part of their strategy. […]
We interviewed Jennifer Roemhildt Tunehag, who is part of the core team for the new Freedom Business Alliance initiative and asked her how the FBA came about and what it is doing. We are hearing the term Freedom Business being used more and more, what is a ‘Freedom Business’? It’s a business that exists to fight […]
Neither of the founders of iSanctuary expected to be engaged in business as mission, particularly not in the area of helping victims of the commercial sexual exploitation industry. However, after spending time in India, Stephanie and Wendy saw needs that they could not turn away from and decided to act. In Stephanie’s case, a magazine […]
The Institute of Faith, Work and Economics recently shared 5 practical ways you can turn events in your business day into a conversation with God. We have summarised their ideas and rounded up some ideas and resources of our own. We hope these will spark some idea for busy business people wanting to integrate prayer in […]
We asked BAM practitioners what prayer habits, practices or experiences they have found helpful in their business life. We identified some recurring themes that BAMers shared with us: 7 prayer habits for effective business as mission! Read Part 1 for the first three prayer habits that BAM practitioners shared with us. Here are the final […]
We asked BAM practitioners what prayer habits, practices or experiences they have found helpful in their business life. We identified some recurring themes that BAMers shared with us: 7 prayer habits for effective business as mission! Prayer does make us more effective in business as mission because of that vital connection and co-working with the […]
How does prayer and direction from God shape a business? What role does prayer have in the birth of a company? We asked BAM practitioners to share how prayer has been significant to them in the preparation and launch stages of their companies. They shared how prayer has led them to discover new business opportunities, […]
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the […]
We interviewed a ‘practitioner of integration’ who over the last 16 years has tightly integrated business and mission together among an unreached people group in Asia. Can you tell us a bit about how and why you got started with business as mission? We were trained and sent out into the mission field with the vision […]
BAM companies have a lot to learn from the social enterprise movement. One of the things that social enterprises have been thinking about for a long time is: How do we measure more than the financial bottom line? Here are 4 resources that will help you think about metrics more holistically and give you tools […]
We interviewed Timothy, a consultant with a mission sending organisation that has been developing a metrics tool to evaluate businesses across their organisation globally. How did this metrics tool come about? I work as part of a team that consults to and supports BAM-type entities across Asia and we were looking for a way to […]