Dear Colleagues,
This has been a powerful and rewarding discussion for me -- and I hope
for everyone else. On behalf of the World Resources Institute, I want to
thank all those who have participated and shared their insights and
experience. I have been particularly struck by the degree of consensu
Vickram Crishna and others have written on this. From the perspective of
our research on successful BOP business models, we think that the
companies who have really done well have had both business and social
metrics, the latter articulated at the very top of the company. They
take the form of "We
On 11/17/04, Tom Abeles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What I would like to see is WRI's projection on the resources of the
> world with its increasing success in this approach to poverty
> alleviation even with increased efficiency and maximum recycling.
Tom Abeles raises the question of resource
For Tom Abeles and others who have joined the conversation recently, I
would like to point out that we have documented a number of what we
believe can be win-win models, and even sustainable models, in
connectivity, agriculture, finance, health care, and other sectors, in
detailed case studies that
Adriana Labardini raises a very important question--how to get
infrastructure and connectivity into rural areas. She poises the
question of prices, but the real failure of old-line telcos is that they
are wedded to a subscription model--the right business model (shared
use, pre-paid in small units,
Chetan Sharma points out that technology by itself may not generate
jobs. But entrepreneurship certainly does--and the examples of Germany
and Finland he points to may reflect lack of an entrepreneurial culture
more than anything about technology. And technology can play a role in
helping create en
Sam Lanfranco makes some nice points about profitability as an indicator
and driving force, even for "non-profit" or socially-motivated projects.
I'd like to turn the point around and argue that being profitable, or
the profit motive, is not a good basis for judging the social motivation
or social
I agree fully that benefits must reach the very poor, whose greatest
need is often livelihoods. And you are right that globalization--on the
export platfrom model--has so far contributed little to such people. But
I do believe that when companies target poor communities as customers,
something diff
Bettina Hammerich and Jim Forster both make useful points. Of course,
markets don't attend well to everything. But the core of providing
useful services at prices people will pay--and the market discipline of
listening to customers that Forster underscores--is a strength of the
business approach, o
Vickram Crishna offers interesting insights--and I accept that the world
is more complicated and that boundaries are often blurred in practice.
How do we understand the recent marketing partnership between Care and
Hindustan Lever in rural India--is it business (yes) or social
development (yes)? No
Cornelio Hopmann raises some important points. I agree that IT may often
be used by service providers rather than by the poor directly. But I
don't agree that there is no connection between what companies can sell
to the poor and the needs of poor households. In conjuction with
Professor CK Prahala
1. One of the key policy changes required to unlease a flood of
investment, job creation, and related benefits is for developing
countries to make unlicensed spectrum actually available for commercial
use, without licenses, fees, or other government approvals. WiFi uses
outside of specific establis
I agree strongly with Simon Woodside's answers--experimentation, more
modern technology, and broadband. But I was also struck by what another
contributor said, e.g. "Find successful and sustainable activities.
Replicate. Get constraints out of the way. Get funding on the right
basis. Let the demand
I think William Lester and Fola Odufuwa are pointing out something
important--the potential of cellular networks to provide data
connectivity inexpensively, if imperfectly. As converged devices
proliferate and newer network technologies spread to developing
countries, these problems will ease--and
I'd like to reply to Peter Burgess and clear up an important
misconception. Connectivity is essential for local networking, for
access to information, for local content generation, for increasing
transparency and trust, for e-commerce--so its not the goal, but it is a
critical tool. In most develop
A resource that describes briefly many such efforts can be found on line
at --our Clearinghouse, with over 900 ICT for
development projects. Quite a few are basic connectivity efforts--both
networks, like n-Logue, EID Parry's Corners, ITC echoupal, etc., as well
as access points like telecenters (w
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