Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Can Technology and a Business Approach Make Globalization Work for the Poor?

[Venkatesh Hariharan]

Fola Odufawa's post on 10/28/04 reminded me of a paper titled "The
Bangalore Boom: From Brain Drain to Brain Circulation?" by AnnaLee
Saxenian of the University of California at Berkeley. The URL for this
is: 

The Indian experience has been that many of our country's top technology
professionals migrated abroad because the opportunity to exploit their
talents was not available within India. For example, Vinod Dham who led
the team that designed the Pentium chip at Intel once said that he would
never have got an opportunity to work on such a significant technology
back home in India. This statement was made around six years ago.

Over the last few years what we have seen is that many of the
professionals who went abroad are coming back, attracted by the growing
Indian market and the professional opportunities that are opening up in
the country.


Venky




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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Blurring Corporate and NGO Lines

[Sam Lanfranco]

Al Hammond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> is correct when he observes:

> Vickram Crishna offers interesting insights--and I accept that the world
> is more complicated and that boundaries are often blurred in practice.
> ...[text deleted].. Nonetheless, until recently, few socially-minded
> entrepreneurs were starting for-profit businesses aimed at serving the
> poor, and few large companies consciously adopted strategies aimed at
> low-income markets, and now it is distinctly more than a few--we are
> looking, potentially, at a paradigm shift here.

We are on a slippery slope here. In one direction we slide into
generalities about what could be. In the other direction we slide into
danger. At the core of this discussion is the helping relationship, or
more bluntly, the gifting relationship. At the core we are talking about
how the "haves" help the "have nots" to reduce the quality of life gap
that divides them.

The world has a long history of gifting relationships, most built within
communities and ranging -in practice- from simple giving to more
sensitive joint efforts with all those desirable partnership properties
we are so keen to identify as essential. The world has a long history of
good (and bad) corporate participation in such efforts, some carried on
as charitable "gifting" and some carried on as social entrepreneur
efforts. It comes as no surprise that within an era where
entrepreneurship is touted, that we have the emergence of NGOs looking
to carry out socially progressive business and focus on "social capital"
schemes.

The driver at the heart of this is no different than that which has been
at the heart of utopian community efforts across time. Can we work
together and can we do better?

There is nothing wrong with the motive, the WHY. The challenges come
with the WHAT and HOW. The corporate sector may just want to "Do good",
it may be looking to "More markets", or it may be trying to blend both.
That is obvious and efforts can be judged as they unfold.

What is less obvious but more slippery is the roles for NGOs here. For
most NGOs the WHY motive is laudable. The problems arrise with the WHAT
and HOW. The core problem for most NGOs is access to resources. The
solution, in most cases, is to seek resources from the "haves" to
help/work with the "have not's". There are only three ways for NGOs to
get resources: 1) seek them as donations; 2) seek them as contracted
program/project funds; or 3) act like a business and "grow" them from
revenues.

The risk here is that the HOW drives the WHAT. This is the problem of
what I call "The NGO dance". Simply put, the problem for the NGO is
either "Who do you dance with?" or "Who do you dance for?" Dancing WITH
and dancing FOR are long recognized as two very different kinds of dance
activity.

It is worth looking at recent history here. When the United States,
addressing the United Nations, identified NGOs as partners in the US
effort in Iraq, a noticable shutter went through the NGO community.
This, as well as the use of contracted companies for "reconstruction"
work in IRAQ, blurred the line between NGOs and others in that tragic
situation. There are other factors at work of course, but the safe space
for NGO work has been diminished. Blurring the lines is not always
useful. Likewise, those NGOs who decide to dance to their own music, by
growing revenues from a business model, run the risk of the HOW
perverting both the WHAT and the WHY?

Sometimes the appropriate reponse to an offer of a helping hand, or a
novel internal business strategy, is to say "Thanks but no Thanks." This
is frequently the appropriate response for the have nots of the world,
and may be the response that NGOs should consider if they wish to remain
true to their vision and their mission. Better to be small and part of
the solution than to be large and part of the problem. Enter the dance
with caution.


Sam Lanfranco
Distributed Knowledge Project
York University




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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Can Technology and a Business Approach Make Globalization Work for the Poor?

[Bettina G. Hammerich]

Having worked for government, as a Development Economist, and as a
Management Consultant for an IT MNC, and currently as a board member of
an international NGO I feel that I can see "both sides" to this
discussion and below are some of my thoughts. In short:

* There is a clear business case for a BOP (bottom of the pyramid)
  approach.

* ICT for development is extremely important.

* Businesses are more likely to be efficient service providers

* Governments and NGO's can be corrupt and/or ineffective

* I have no doubt that women in rural Bangladesh can figure out how to
  use a mobile phone and will use it to her advantage

However,

* Environmental and human rights are not best served by the free market

* The level playing field is uneven and everyone is not "free to choose"

* MNCs are not transparent

* Business seldom reaches out to the poorest or the most disadvantaged.
For example, we have to insure that women in seclusion, disadvantaged
children, Dalits, or entrepreneurs with no access to capital or IT
infrastructure, get access to these technologies -- and access for all
is vital in order not to widen the digital divide.

ICT really offers great promises and opportunities, and business in this
sector can help make globalisation work for all. As such, businesses in
this sector should be encouraged to invest in poorer markets.

Meanwhile, we will have to be able to discourage monopolistic behaviour,
damaging environmental or human right practises, and help disadvantaged
groups with access to these technologies - and this business cannot do
alone.

There are no single simple solutions for all, no vacuums where one actor
can be single-handedly responsible for an outcome. Therefore,
partnerships and dialog between business, civil society, government,
intergovernmental and UN institutions, seeking best practises, etc. will
have to continue to be important.


Yours, 
Bettina Gronblom Hammerich




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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Can Technology and a Business Approach Make Globalization Work for the Poor?

[Vickram Crishna]

On 10/28/04, Ed Deak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> While you are talking about the wonderful effects of hi tech etc. on
> farming communities, what will happen to these millions who still had
> something while they were on their lands, but now have nothing in city
> slums ?

And that's only farming.

Over ten years since economist Mahbub Al Haq created the Human
Development Index and yet no perceptible appreciation of the very
different, perhaps permanently, clashing economic systems that
constitute 'cash' and 'non-cash'. We appear to have been permanently
seduced (we = those living in the literate world) by the invention of
money as a exchange mechanism to replace barter. When I say
appreciation, I mean application of value to those economic systems
(forest cultures, nomadic farming etc., etc.) that do not involve money.
History is replete with example of cultures and lives destroyed by
devaluation of a way of life.

The most important impact of 'globalisation' is the replacement of all
economic systems by cash values. This is what is deepening the divide
between the 2 and the 4 billion. The digital divide is just another
facet of it.

I am not proposing here a solution to this, and certainly feel deeply
impotent by not having even the hint of an answer to offer at this
point, but I believe we owe it to ourselves to ponder upon it.
Certainly, bringing the 4 billion into the rat race by stripping them of
their wealth and earning capacity and starting them off as poor as
church mice is hardly encouraging. Does GKD want to be the place for a
discussion on this?

-- 
Vickram




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[GKD-DOTCOM] Is Profitability Essential for Sustainability?

[Global Knowledge Dev. Moderator]

Last week, GKD members discussed some of the benefits that can be gained
from "pro-poor" business strategies, along with some examples, and the
striking challenges to creating and implementing those strategies. This
week we examine profit, and the functional, and dysfunctional, role it
can play in promoting activity that provides real value to the poor.

Telecenters are a telling example. During the past decade, international
donors have spent tens of millions of Euros/dollars to fund telecenters
throughout the developing world. Yet most telecenters have failed to
become sustainable. Worse yet, subsidized telecenters often drive out
for-profit companies that cannot compete with the subsidized prices.
When the donor funding ends, the telecenters often founder and fail, and
the community is left with nothing.

A couple of years ago, GKD received a message from an enterprising young
Nepali, describing a striking contrast. He had established a cyber-cafe
(i.e., for-profit telecenter) in a small town, and explained how he had
made his company successful. Initially, he followed the standard
approach: put out some signs, talked to some of the town leaders, handed
out some flyers. But few people came and he faced failure. He decided to
take a new approach. He visited people at their homes and shops to find
out what they were interested in. Then went back to the cafe and
searched the web for relevant websites. When he had collected enough
material, he invited them to the cyber-cafe to review the material
(sometimes with his accompanying translation) for free -- the first
time! His driving motive: profit.

The story has been repeated with other products and services. This kind
of experience has convinced some that profitability is essential for
sustainability. They argue that profit provides the incentive needed for
the kinds of effort and investment needed to make enterprises
successful. Further, the need to make a profit forces all companies --
large and small -- to identify and deliver products and services that
are valued by customers, i.e., that customers will pay for.

Others harshly criticize the recent emphasis on "public-private
partnerships." They feel that for-profit firms inevitably place profits
above the well-being of poor communities. They charge that companies,
especially international corporations, will make the investments needed
to serve the middle and upper class, but not the poor. They argue that
for-profit companies are less likely to provide sustainability, because
they will desert a poor community as soon as higher profits can be found
elsewhere.

Key Questions:

1) Is profit important -- even essential -- to successful and
sustainable "ICT for development" activities?

2) Do you know of large or small local companies that have used ICTs to
serve the poor while making a profit? How about multinational
corporations?

3) How do we ensure that the profit motive drives companies to provide
ICT goods and services with real value for the poor? To succeed in
selling to the poor, do companies have to create trust by providing real
value?

4) Are there ICTs that offer entrepreneurs from poor communities a
chance to create successful small enterprises, either free-standing or
as franchisees of a larger entity?

5) When large corporations seek to serve the poor, who are the "winners"
and "losers"? What "win-win" models are possible?





This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative
Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's
Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD.
http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org
provide more information.
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