NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Better Stoves for the Poor

IF USER demand were the sole driver of innovation, the biomass cooking stove would be one of the most sophisticated devices in the world. Depending on which development agency you ask, between two-and-a-half and three billion people?nearly half the world?s population?use a stove every day, in conjunction with solid fuel such as wood, dung or coal. Yet in many parts of the world the stove has barely progressed beyond the Stone Age. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that tox...

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The Economist (link opens in a new window)

India: The Fastest Growing Telecom Market

India has emerged as the fastest growing telecom market in the world, attracting not just global service providers like Britian-based Vodafone but also big handset manufacturers like Finland’s Nokia that not too long ago was reluctant to make an entry because of low volumes. For a country that stood at the bottom of the pyramid in terms of telecom penetration a decade ago, 2008 was a watershed when India’s subscriber base topped 350 million users to make its network the second largest in...

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Trading Markets (link opens in a new window)

Sunil Jain: Top of the pyramid

Management guru CK Prahalad popularised the concept of the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), and among others, the country’s top mobile phone players seem to be taking this quite seriously given how they?re wooing BOP customers. It is, however, not quite clear how this strategy will pay off. According to a study by consulting firm BDA with chamber of commerce Ficci, the top 9 per cent of mobile phone users in India contribute 29 per cent to industry?s revenues and 45 per...

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Business Standard (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia

How Access to Information Can Tackle Poverty and Pollution

By Andy Posner What I realized, then, is that the poor need access to information far more urgently than they need handouts and subsidies. Still, that’s a risky statement to make, as many will argue that given a choice between, say, a cell phone and a meal, the vast majority of poor people will choose the meal. However, a fascinating NY Times article from last year titled ’Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?,’ argues that, given precisely that choice, most ...

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Huffington Post (link opens in a new window)

Female Empowerment and the Promise of Microfinance

By Roshaneh Zafar Recently, I came across a quote from Edmund Burke, an Anglo-Irish statesman of the eighteenth century, ?the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men (and women) to do nothing? (parentheses and emphasis, mine). The emphasis on ?women? is obviously my attempt to remind us that we need to review Pakistan?s situation through a gender lens. Looking at the recent events in Pakistan, I feel, at times, that a malaise ? a malaise of indifference -...

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The News - Pakistan (link opens in a new window)

Financial Times Announces 4th Editon of Sustainable Banking Awards

The Financial Times has launched the 2009 edition of the FT Sustainable Banking Awards, the leading awards recognising banks and other financial institutions for leadership and innovation in integrating social, environmental and corporate governance considerations into their operations. Now in their fourth year, the awards-organised by the FT in partnership with IFC, a member of the World Bank Group-are all the more timely in light of the financial crisis, which has exposed flaws in t...

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Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Should Businesses Save the World?

Michael Maiello is Editor of Intelligent Investing for Forbes.com. At the World Economic Forum last year, Bill Gates, who is as successful a philanthropist as he is an entrepreneur, introduced an idea he calls creative capitalism. It’s an attempt to harness the power of private ownership and laissez faire to improve lives while fixing what he sees as the major flaw in that system. Capitalism responds well to demand, but not at all to need. Or, as W...

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Forbes (link opens in a new window)

Business Education: Far From the Boardroom

When John Eder, an MBA student at Kenan-Flagler Business School in the US, was on a summer internship in Ethiopia giving business training to women with HIV/Aids, he discovered something surprising. ?Some of the women have been selling stuff in the local market for a long time,? he says. ?And they?d sit there and talk about principles I learned from my classes. Things my professors had been telling me, they would be telling me ? and they never went to any college or had any business t...

Source

Financial Times (link opens in a new window)