PhD Defence: Bridging profitability and sustainability: Essays on Private Sector Innovation for Sustainable Development in Low-Income Contexts

This dissertation examines when and how private-sector innovation aligns profitability with sustainable development in low-income contexts, integrating micro-, meso-, and macro-level analyses across four studies. First, it develops and validates the DePMAD framework on 57 cases, identifying five recurring chasms—design, production, marketing, adoption, and diffusion—and shows that dynamic capabilities, user inclusion, and locally embedded partnerships are decisive for survival and scaling. Second, a systematic review of 301 publications maps humanitarian innovation as fragmented and incremental, proposing a systems perspective to strengthen coordination, learning, and directionality. Third, an empirical study of blended finance for refugee-led enterprises in Kenya and Uganda introduces the Blended Finance Enablement Pyramid (BFEP), demonstrating how guarantees, paired with technical assistance and enabling policies, reallocate risk, lower the cost of capital, and enable financial institutions to profitably serve underserved clients. Fourth, a quantitative analysis disaggregates corporate sustainability into actionable dimensions, finding heterogeneous relationships with financial performance. Synthesizing these findings, the thesis advances a multi-level account of mutual value creation: firm-level innovation depends on regime-level coordination and risk-sharing instruments, while landscape shifts toward leveraging private capital reshape incentives and opportunity structures. The results show that aligning sustainability and profitability is possible but conditional, requiring both contextually suited capabilities and supportive financial–institutional architectures.