NextBillion - A WDI Publication

Challenging Systems: Partnerships between Business and Social Entrepreneurs

Businesses and social entrepreneurs could form successful partnerships as long as their engagement is based on solid partnering principles At a three day conference in Denver, Colorado, Muhammad Yunus (Nobel prize winner, Founder of the Grameen Bank and father of the Micro-credit movement) spoke of A World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism to a packed audience. In his speech he gave the view that poverty was not inevitable but it was the...

Source

International Business Leaders Forum (link opens in a new window)

Company Lessons in Reaching the World?s Poorest

Christian Seelos, director of the platform for strategy and and sustainability at IESE business school, is winner of an essay competition sponsored by the Financial Times and the International Finance Corporation on the private sector’s role in development. This is his essay: Abstract Recent research on business models that target the ?Bottom of the Pyramid’ (BOP), the vast untapped potential market made up of the world’s poorest peo...

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Financial Times (link opens in a new window)

Como Hacer Buenos Negocios con Consumidores con Bajos Recursos

No s?lo el cart?n y el papel son reciclables. Eso lo saben bien los cartoneros, que acceden a la telefon?a celular a trav?s de aparatos reciclados con una financiaci?n especial que les permite usar un servicio que de otro modo les resultar?a inaccesible. Ellos son parte del 70% de la poblaci?n de Am?rica Latina que gana menos de u$s3.000 por a?o, es decir no m?s de u$s8,2 por d?a, pero que a?n as? son consumidores activos y esperan acceder a bienes y servicios como cualquier otro se...

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Infobaeprofesional.com (link opens in a new window)

Nestle Releases the Company’s First Creating Shared Value Report

March 17, 2008 - Nestl? has launched the company’s first Creating Shared Value report, including new figures on the impact of its business activities on the environment and society across the world. In 2007, Nestl? reduced its direct greenhouse gas emissions by 16% compared to ten years ago, and its overall water withdrawal by 28%, while at the same time increasing the total volume of goods produced by 76%. In 2007, Nestl? invested over CHF 100 million in environment-related industrial impro...

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CSR Wire (link opens in a new window)

An Entrepreneurial Path to Peace

By providing small businesses with incubators, Israeli industrialist Stef Wertheimer hopes to give Israelis and Arabs economic opportunities that will lead to peace. About five years ago, Stef Wertheimer came across Gamila Hiar, a Druze woman with no formal education who had learned the ancient art of making soap from wild herbs and olive oil as a child. At the time, Hiar was supplementing her family’s income, producing about 500 soap bars a week, from a corner in a room underneat...

Source

Business Week (link opens in a new window)

The BoP Beckons: Why grassroots design will determine the winners in developing markets

By Joshua Weissburg ?Spring 2008 How do you go about delivering reliable energy to poor, off-the-grid villages in India? If you’re an established energy company, you don’t. Enter Decentralised Energy Systems (DESI Power), a young, India-based power company that built a biomass gasification plant that runs on inexpensive agricultural residues such as ipomoea, a weed plentif...

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Stanford Social Innovation Review (link opens in a new window)

Book review: ?The Bottom Billion? by Paul Collier

I’ve got a hip-high pile of books by my bedside, including several manuscripts written by good friends. But after Paul Collier’s talk at TED , his book moved to the top of the pile, and I spent a rainy Saturday diving into his new book, The Bottom Billion. It was time well spent. Collier has dedicated the ...

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My Heart’s in Accra (link opens in a new window)

Region

Sub-Saharan Africa

A Cellphone with no Flips, no Folds – Just a Very Low Price

PARIS: It looks a bit like a child’s toy, a walkie-talkie circa 1975, a cheap plastic throwback to the good old days when telephones were made for talking. But to Spice Ltd., a telecommunications company in the world’s fastest-growing phone market, this new product embodies the latest, greatest innovation in cellphone technology today: a handset priced at less than $20. Spice, which is based in Noida, India, unveiled what it is branding the People’s Pho...

Source

International Herald Tribune (link opens in a new window)

Region

South Asia