Scott Anderson

Watch the Replay of Our Google+ Hangout with Erik Simanis

UPDATE: Our conversation with Erik Simanis has been rescheduled to 12 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Dec. 3.

Our next Google+ Hangout will feature Erik Simanis, head of the Emerging and Frontier Markets Initiative at Cornell University, a collaboration between Entrepreneurship at Cornell and the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.

The Hangout is scheduled for 12 p.m. EDT on WEDNESDAY, DEC. 3. Please bookmark this post, which will be updated with the embedded live broadcast. That will convert into a YouTube video when it’s complete, so if you miss the live event you may watch the replay.

If you’re at least partly acquainted with base of the pyramid scholarship – and/or Googled it recently – chances are you’ve encountered some of Simanis’ work, particularly as it pertains to the future of BoP as a business practice that enhances value for both the poor and companies aiming to serve them. His recent paper for The Harvard Business Review, “Profits at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” notes that profitability selling to the base of the pyramid is tough and the road to profits has been riddled with failures, but it can be done. He and co-author Duncan Duke, assistant profesor of management at Ithaca College’s School of Business, have devised an “opportunity map” for companies to “design and undertake ventures that match their resources and financial expectations – and make profits, too.”

We’ll talk about the map, and where Simanis sees the BoP domain moving. I’ll also ask him about a recent free, online class he is teaching about financial modeling for social enteprise startups, hosted with Acumen. Interested social entrepreneurs, you can find out more about the class here.

Simanis earned his Ph.D. in management from Cornell, an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received the Norman Block Award for highest academic achievement, and a BA magna cum laude from Wake Forest University.

He’s also been published in The Wall Street Journal, Sloan Management Review and the journal Innovations. He also contributes to the The Guardian’s sustainable business section.

We look forward to your questsions for Simanis, so please add them to our comments section, or Tweet them to us @NextBillion or to me @ScotterAnderson.

You can check out our full archive of Google+ Hangouts here.

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