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Book Review: Improving Profit by Understanding Poverty
When I first saw the book on the Internet, I thought the title was rather provoking yet puzzling for people like me who work in the development field. It seemed as though the poor were a commodity for making money. So I decided to buy it and my view did a complete turn-around. This book gives a different perspective to improving profit and reducing risks by understanding poverty. It is also useful for people who want to use business as a tool to help the poor. With talk about CSR grow...
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The New Holy Grail
Companies that serve the next billion consumers can sustain competitive advantage. Here’s how? ? As Janmajeya Sinha begins his presentation on ?The Next Billion?, the screen behind him fills up with a brown slide. ?Get used to this colour,? he tells his audience. ? ?You?ll be seeing a lot of it in coming years.? It?s a dramatic bit of attention-grabbing, but the managing director of The Boston Consulting Group India says it is also a much-needed wake-up call. ...
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The Limits of Leapfrogging
Mobile phones are frequently held up as a good example of technology’s ability to transform the fortunes of people in the developing world. In places with bad roads, few trains and parlous land lines, mobile phones substitute for travel, allow price data to be distributed more quickly and easily, enable traders to reach wider markets and generally make it easier to do business. The mobile phone is also a wonderful example of a ?leapfrog? technology: it has enabled developing countries to ski...
- Source
- The Economist
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Of Internet Cafes and Power Cuts
Within a few months China will overtake America as the country with the world’s largest number of internet users. Even when you factor in China’s size and its astonishing rate of GDP growth, this will be a remarkable achievement for what remains a poor economy. For the past three years China has also been the world’s largest exporter of information and communications technology (ICT). It already has the same number of mobile-phone users (500m) as the whole of Europe. China...
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Mad Dash for the Low End
If anyone still doubts that low-income folks make good customers, they should talk to executives from Nokia (NOK). The Finnish company owes its 40% share of the global handset market in large part to residents of places like Calcutta, Lagos, and Shanghai, many of whom live on just a few dollars a day. Now, with the No. 3 player, Motorola (MOT), on the ropes, Nokia has an opportunity to extend that lead. But other rivals are eyeing the Finns’ success and stepping up efforts to woo those same ...
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Why Bill Gates Hates My Book
By William R. Easterly This newspaper reported recently that Bill Gates hates my ideas. I have no hurt feelings, at least nothing that months of intensive psychotherapy can’t cure. Mr. Gates, after all, has allied himself with the foreign aid establishment. This establishment is notoriously sensitive to criticism from people like me, who find no evidence that the aid industry’s grand schemes are actually lifting anyone out of poverty. Mr. Gates has now put ...
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Making Friends, Creating Customers
Intel’s World Ahead Program is an ambitious billion-dollar venture, but other tech and telecom companies are also building relationships in developing countries that promise to become the most massive of mass markets. Among them: Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) Working with the United Nations and other organizations in 53 developing countries, Cisco’s Networking Academy has trained more than 50,000 students on the essentials of information technology, network operati...
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Many Are Already at Work on Fulfilling Gates?s Vision
By John Markoff Bill Gates?s bold Davos challenge to the world?s capitalists last week should have come with equally bold footnotes. There are billions of people who need the great inventions of the computer age, he asserted. Breakthroughs change lives only where people can afford to buy them. Conspicuously missing from the appeal, which asserted that human nature is not just driven by greed but also by concern for our fellow bein...
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