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The Business of Development: Innovation, Profits, and the Common Good
Hear the word poverty, and the image of a bright-eyed child with an extended hand staring at you from the TV screen appears in your mind. Put the word business next to it, and the mental screen turns off, failing under the pressure of the oxymoron. Business and poverty are almost mutually exclusive; the affluence and life force of one is incompatible with the misery and lifelessness of the other. Or is it? Over the last f...
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Intel, AMD push wide web access with cheap PCs
Two of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology rivals will promote initiatives this week to grow their global business by providing low-cost computers to developing countries. Intel is announcing it will spend $1 billion to speed up the marketing of inexpensive computers to such emerging markets as such as India, China and Mexico. Its rival, Advanced Micro Devices, is already making bare-bones computers that cost $250 or less. While tech companies agree about the importa...
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Life insurance coming to rural India, 1 town/day
Bajaj Allianz notches up some good numbers selling life insurance in India?s smaller towns. Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance was languishing among the also-rans about a year ago. Today, it is in the reckoning for the top slot among private sector life insurers. The credit for this goes to Sam Ghosh, Bajaj Allianz?s CEO and country head for Allianz, who transformed the company from a niche play to mass marketer. Ghosh was chosen to spearhead Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance in January 2004, after he deli...
- Region
- South Asia
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Enterprise holds key to booming start-ups
When Wu Shengying’s wine-selling business failed in 2003, he abandoned farming in his hilly village in Shandong Province and turned to an idea that he hoped would please Chinese palates as much as KFC chicken wings [...] and after breaking several thousand eggs in experiments, he finally worked out a formula that he believes strikes a perfect balance between temperature and timing to make good roasted eggs. Wu’s roasted eggs, with ...
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Internet Connections Growing Fastest in Africa
Africa is gaining Internet connectivity faster than any other region and as such, service is spreading to smaller cities and rural areas via innovative technologies -- and that only can help the expansion of free press, democracy and development all across the continent, says the co-founder and chief executive officer of allAfrica.com, Reed Kramer. In an interview with the Washington File to mark May 3 World Press Freedom Day, Kramer cited a recent...
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Incubating Entrepreneurs
In Chile, a novel training program pairs business-school students with low-income entrepreneurs in a mutually enriching partnership. By Nicole Keller When M?nica Civilo decided to start her own business, she felt disadvantaged because she had no access to financing. (Banks generally require businesses to be up and running, or at least to put up collateral for a loan.) Once she did manage to get the money together, the family toymaker found herself in a complicated situation. ?...
- Region
- Latin America
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Moving Money in a Borderless World
Raul Hinojosa has a revolutionary idea. The poor don’t get poorer, as Karl Marx contended. On the contrary, Hinojosa says, the poor have buying power, are open to technology and can help launch new businesses. Entrepreneurs who understand this, he says, can help the poor, as well as themselves, get richer. The 49-year-old professor of political economy at UCLA, says an example of this type of business is the money transfer industry. He says many Americ...
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China to produce low-cost computers of its own
A Chinese company has developed the first computer costing around 1,000 yuan (125 U.S. dollars) using a Chinese-made Godson II CPU, and plans to put the computers into industrial production in June. We hope everyone can afford our computers, said Zhang Fuxin, an expert of the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) under the Chinese?Academy?of?Sciences in charge of developing Longmeng computers. Last...
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