Articles by Al Hammond
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Wednesday
November 28
2007A Lesson for BoP Technologists: Put the Business Model First
A recent Wall Street Journal article documents the demise of Nicolas Negroponte?s dream of a $100 “one laptop per child” for millions of schoolchildren in the developing world. (Thanks to Ethan Zuckerman for pointing it out.)? To give Negroponte his due, the idea stimulated...
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Wednesday
November 21
2007The Mobile Data Wave Begins
A new report from Vodafone shows that data revenue topped 1 billion pounds this past year, not including text messaging revenues. Moreover, data revenues grew 49% over a year ago, compared with 7% for voice and 9% for messaging. Think of this as a measure of the growing use of internet-based...
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Tuesday
October 30
2007Bringing Rural Brazil Into the Internet Age?
Co-ops are big in Brazil. They are how small communities organize to help themselves, given that they are often overlooked by large companies. Recently I had the opportunity to visit just such a coop in Valente, a town deep in Bahia in Brazil’s Northeast....
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Monday
October 29
2007Advanced Logistics for Base of the Pyramid Enterprises
A WalMart-type logistics system, tracking every sale of every item at every outlet? Surely that’s overkill for a base of the pyramid (BOP) business--or is it? Last week Julia Tran--WRI’s BOP health sector specialist--and I visited Mi Farmacita, a franchise pharmacy that provides low...
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Tuesday
May 29
2007Risk Capital for the BOP: Thoughts on TIE and Acumen Fund
Following famed venture capitalist Vinod Khosla to the speaker?s podium at the huge annual conference of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIEcon 2007) was interesting. First, some of the audience decided it was time to go to lunch. More interesting was the unexpected similarity of what we both had to...
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Friday
April 6
2007Making the BOP Case at Georgetown, USAID
Yesterday, I had the privilege of introducing our BOP market report, The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid, to nearly 100 people at the US Agency for International Development. The day before, I did the same for a more academic audience at the Mortara...
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Wednesday
March 21
2007TN4B: How Mobile Phone Companies Have Cracked the BOP Code
It is still not widely appreciated that the rapid spread of mobile telephony, and the only slightly slower spread of Internet services, have over the past 6 years transformed the lives of more people at the BOP than all of the world?s development projects together. More than 1.5 billion...
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Tuesday
March 20
2007Behind the Scenes at “The Next 4 Billion” Yesterday
The launch of our The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid report yesterday triggered a number of thoughts and conversations about how forces are starting to align in support of market-based approaches to alleviating poverty. First, the standing room only...
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