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

PricewaterhouseCoopers tests partners by sending them to work in poor nations

PWC says the program, now in its third cycle, gives participants a broad, international perspective that’s crucial for a company that does business around the world. Traditional executive education programs turn out men and women who have specific job skills but little familiarity with issues outside their narrow specialty, according to Douglas Ready, director of the International Consortium for Executive Development Research. PWC says Ulysses helps prepare participants for challenges...

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BusinessWeek

?Sustainability’ fund emerges

Innovest Strategic Value Advisers, the research firm, and emerging market specialist Rexiter Capital Management, have launched the world’s first ’sustainability’ investment strategy focused exclusively on emerging markets. The Dutch pension fund ABP, the second largest in the world, is the initial investor in the fund. Matthew Kiernan, founder and chief executive of Innovest, said the launch was a response to a rapidly growing appetite among institutional investors for products...

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The Financial Times

Businesses and Academia Unite to Bring Information To Underdeveloped Regions

Whatever the acronym, the goal is the same: to dramatically broaden the spread of information technology to underdeveloped regions around the world. Companies and university researchers have launched a flurry of collaborative projects to design new computing and communications gadgets, some priced at $250 or less, to reach new users in India, China and other emerging economies. Read ...

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The Wall Street Journal

Why settle for single-digit margins, asks C.K. Prahalad, when there’s greater game afoot?

Look at which industries are growing rapidly. Take cell phones. There are 300 million cell phones in China, and not all are in the hands of rich people. There are 40 million cell phones in India, and they’re adding 1.5 million new subscribers per month. Again, not all rich people. It is poor people, ordinary people, on whose backs these businesses are being built. If you take three countries-China, India, and Brazil-you have 500 million cell phones, compared to 170 million in the Unite...

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Accross the Board

Operators draw low-income users with electronic payments

Southeast Asian mobile-phone operators, including Indonesian Satellite and Globe Telecom, which is based in Manila, have followed Smart’s lead in the past year, introducing electronic prepaid services to win users who cannot otherwise afford mobile services. The strategy is fueling sales and profit growth for operators in the Philippines and Indonesia, where per capita income averages less than $1,100 a year, according to the World Bank. ...

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International Herald Tribune

Mexico’s Cemex Feeds Kilns A Cheap Refinery Leftover Called Petroleum Coke

Cemex’s success in reducing its energy expense offers an unusual lesson in global business, showing what a developing-world company can do when forced to deal with competition from the developed world. In some cases the difficult operating environments of emerging markets -- economic turbulence, high borrowing costs, creaky infrastructure and corruption -- can act as a rigorous corporate boot camp, breeding the kind of innovation that makes for lean competitors on the world stage."...

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The Wall Street Journal

Region

Latin America

Rural homes without electricity get chance to receive solar power

For as low as P343 per month, rural households in areas not reached by electricity will have the chance to use modern conveniences such as television sets, electric lights, karaokes and radio sets through solar power energy. Last week, the Negros Oriental provincial government, the Shell Solar Philippines Corp. and the Southern Sun Solar Power Corp. signed a memorandum of agreement that seeks to give solar-powered systems in rural areas through heavily-discounted loan packages. ...

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Philippine Daily Inquirer

Poverty Is a Growing Risk to Asian Markets

Poverty isn’t something investors--nor many economists, for that matter--give much thought to. It doesn’t figure readily into bond yields or stock valuations. It’s not the first thing currency traders think about when placing bets. Nor is it an issue the world’s most powerful central banks ponder seriously. Yet that’s likely to change in the years ahead. All this matters to investors because China, India and other emerging Asian economies comprise the new frontier of c...

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Bloomberg