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Tata Plans World’s Largest Wimax Network
The Indian telco plans a system of 3,000 base stations to deliver limited or full broadband service to 110 cities. Tata Communications is planning the world’s largest commercial Wimax rollout, with full coverage in 15 cities across India. The Indian telco has contracted US vendor Telsima to build the network, which it expects to capture 200,000 retail customers in 2009. The network of 3000 base stations will provide limited coverage for enterprises in 110 citi...
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Brands and Creative Capitalism
At the recent annual World Economic Forum, Davos, the redoubtable Bill Gates spoke of ?creative capitalism??an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world’s inequities. There is an increasing recognition and acceptance of this new and more complex definition of business. And at a different level, it could be the harbinger of a new way o...
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Entrepreneurs in Brazil: Betting the Fazenda
SETTLE down at one of S?o Paulo’s sushi bars and before long you will overhear a discussion about a start-up business making energy from obscure weeds, or some other bright idea for relieving members of the country’s growing middle class of their disposable income. A field study of this kind displays a strong sample bias, but the point is clear: Brazil does not lack go-getters. Yet according to a more thorough survey backed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a sister orga...
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An Empty Revolution: The Unfulfilled Promises of Hugo Ch?vez
Summary:? Even critics of Hugo Ch?vez tend to concede that he has made helping the poor his top priority. But in fact, Ch?vez’s government has not done any more to fight poverty than past Venezuelan governments, and his much-heralded social programs have had little effect. A close look at the evidence reveals just how much Ch?vez’s revolution has hurt Venezuela’s economy -- and that the poor are hurting most of all. FRANCISCO RODR?GUEZ, Assistant Profess...
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The Only Nonprofit That Matters
(Fortune Magazine) -- Peter Mukasa needs $250 to buy some hooch. Care to help a guy who’s down on his luck if he promises to pay it back? Oops, too late. Mukasa, the owner of a closet-sized liquor store in the Ugandan village of Makindye, posted his funding request on Kiva.org one afternoon in mid-November. Within hours, ten lenders ponied up $25 each to help the man stock his shelves. Case open, case closed. That’s how quickly things happen at the hottest nonprofit on the...
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Grupo Salinas Founder and Chairman Ricardo B. Salinas Addresses FIU Highilighting Opportunities at t
With a presentation entitled Selling to the Poor: a 100-Year Success Story, Mr. Salinas shared some of the entrepreneurial and social development opportunities of businesses that focus on low-income consumers, a market referred to by University of Michigan Business School Professor C.K. Prahalad as the Bottom of the Pyramid. The best solution to the problem of poverty is to create wealth, argued Mr. Salinas. We need to look for new entrepre...
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- Latin America
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Why Business Models and Market Mechanisms Alone Are Not the Answer for Social Entrepreneurs: Lessons
In the field of social entrepreneurship there is a tendency for some to view profits or earned income models as the pivotal element in the sustainability and scaling up of social mission organizations.? The Global Social Benefit Incubator has worked with more than seventy organizations around the world. Twenty-five percent of its alumni organizations have scaled up significantly and an additional fifty-five percent are sustaining their valuable social mission impacts with what appear to be vi...
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Question Box: The Internet Ror Remote Places, No Literacy Or Keyboards Required
The Question Box is a project from UC Berkeley’s Rose Shuman to bring some of the benefits of the information on the Internet to places that are too remote or poor to sustain a live Internet link. It works by installing a single-button intercom in the village that is linked to a nearby town where there is a computer with a trained, live operator. Questioners press the intercom, describe their query to the operator, who runs it, reads the search results, and discusses them with the questio...
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