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

Businesses That Profit the World

By Vivek Wadhwa I’m mentoring a team aiming to enter Duke University’s contest for startups that improve life in poor nations while generating earnings In Hollywood, it seems that everyone wants to be a star or has a script for the next great blockbuster. Tech entrepreneurs, similarly, dream of launching the next eBay. In universities, business-plan competitions are the rage. Contest winners earn big prizes, yet few ever achieve business success or leave a mark on ...

Source

BusinessWeek (link opens in a new window)

In today’s customer-centered market, companies need to meet buyers’ often-unspoken needs. Here are

It is tough leading a company today when the initiatives you are expected to control are buffeted by constantly changing forces. The rules business once lived by have been turned upside down. Power has shifted from producers to customers, for instance. Any color they want as long as it’s black has been replaced by: What they want, when they want it, at the price they want. It’s not only the customers who have gained control, the companies close to the ...

Source

Business Week (link opens in a new window)

Google, AMD, Brightstar, News Corporation, and Red Hat have signed on to MIT’s low-cost laptop initi

MIT Media Lab, taking a page out of a revolutionary business book by C.K. Prahalad, is developing a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power sources -- including batteries or hand crank -- and will be able to do most everything that a standard laptop can do except store large amounts of data. According to MIT, these rugged laptops will be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have USB ports, a 500MHz processor, and 1 gigabyte of storage capacity using flash memory ...

Even though Professor CK Prahalad pioneered the notion of companies targeting the lowest rungs of the market way back in the mid 1990s, it was after his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid was published about a year back, that the concept gained increasing momentum. His key argument: the so-called Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) with an estimated 4 billion people who live on less than US$ 1,500 per annum, is a major market opportunity. Not surprisingly, a number of...

Source

Business Standard (link opens in a new window)

Generating Hope by Kevin Bullis

Drinking water infested with germs and parasites or steeped in toxic chemicals is the number-one health problem in the world. It’s so big, in fact, that the United Nations has proclaimed 2005-2015 to be the Water for Life decade. The UN goal is to get its member nations to honor their commitments to halving the proportion of individuals without access to safe drinking water. But such huge development programs run by international entities such as the UN ar...

Source

Technology Review (link opens in a new window)

At his first media interaction after taking over as Hindustan Lever’s non-executive chairman, Harish Manwani was asked whether the company’s practice of compulsory rural posting for its managers had outlived its utility. The question was relevant in the context of the increasing perception that the FMCG major is fast losing its celebrated status as the Mecca for top B-school students who are now reluctant to go through the mandatory heat and dust of rural postings.

The idea is a simple one. Lower the price of a device and you will get more people to buy. Bottom-of-the-pyramid markets - those in the lowest global income band (below USD1500 a year) - provide a tantalising market opportunity. Wharton Business School academic C K Prahalad has argued this case in his book the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. This week saw the launch of MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte’s USD100 laptop which makes ambitious claims to becoming more an educa...

Source

Balancing Act (London) (link opens in a new window)

CThe low-cost computer was originally meant for farmers in India or residents of favelas in Brazil. But starting Sunday, U.S. consumers of modest means or those just looking for a good deal can also get a $299 computer. The Personal Internet Communicator, a brainchild of chip company Advanced Micro Devices, went on sale at Radio Shack over the weekend. The deal is a departure for AMD as it was specifically designed for developing countries. AMD first launched the device in India near...

Source

Red Herring (link opens in a new window)