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Lemurs Are Cool
If you?re in Madagascar at this very moment and you?re reading this blog, then chances are you?re attending Conservation International?s symposium, ?Defying Nature’s End: The Africa Context.? But for those of us who have to see lemurs in the zoo, here?s some information about...
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- academia
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June Cleaver with a PayPal Account – Kiva Hits the One Year Mark
With my head spinning from the loftiness of an IDB infused week, I happily returned to reality in a conversation with Kiva, which--as many of you know--is leveraging micro-finance institutions (MFIs) to create virtual connections between investors and micro-entrepreneurs. This doesn’t sound...
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How Big is India’s Base of the Pyramid Market?
Businesses interested in exploring base of the pyramid markets often ask for hard data: how many people? Where do they live? What do they spend money on? BOP pioneers CK Prahalad and Stuart Hart have done well for themselves and their ideas, as demonstrated by the success of their latest books....
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Will Blogging and WiFi Save the World?
Writing in the latest issue of the New Republic, Christine Rosen takes on techno-utopians like Glen Reynolds and argues that blogging and WiFi will not save the world. As someone who ekes out an existence publishing online musings about new technologies and the developing world, I could not...
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Pay-as-you-go computers in Brazil
I?ve decided to come clean and admit it. I hope Brazil wins its sixth World Cup. So for those of you cheering for the Ghanas and Ecuadors of the world, you will find little solace in this post, which extols the virtues of corporate superpower, Microsoft, and its latest business venture in...
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This Week: Brazil’s Buses Cooler Than its World Cup Team?
It’s painful as an (admittedly fairweather) fan of the US team to acknowledge that even with all the gossip about how Brazil’s World Cup team is performing below expectations?they will still probably fly home with a sixth championship under their belts (I’ll refrain from making a...
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Cell Phone Banking and the BOP: Wizzit
Driving to Wolftrap this past Friday, a story on NPR?s Marketplace prompted me to turn up the volume ? the national business media was covering WIZZIT, a South African cell phone banking firm that NextBillion has covered extensively in the past. For the uninitiated, WIZZIT is a 1-year-old...
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Biodegradable Plastics
In the 1967 film The Graduate, Walter Brook gives a baby faced Dustin Hoffman advice he should never forget. ?I want to say one word to you. Just one word.? After pausing for dramatic effect, he continues, ?Plastics.? Now, almost forty years later, Dustin Hoffman has forty times the...
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- Education
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- academia
