Donohue Delivers BoP Career Advice
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
The founder of a startup venture in Brazil and Kenya and a member of the Base of the Pyramid Protocol visited WDI and UM Nov. 29.
Patrick Donohue spoke to students in two MBA classes studying base of the pyramid principles and hosted a brown bag lunch on careers at the base of the pyramid.
Donohue’s startup – BRINQ (
www.brinq.com) - attempts to collect the innovations of the world’s poor, creating an effective entry mechanism for companies and rewarding the tremendous diversity and ingenuity of those living at the edge of poverty. BRINQ – short for the Portuguese word for toy - specifically seeks to enable affordable local invention of toys in the developing world.
He also participated in the Base of the Pyramid Protocol, a process that guides businesses in building partnerships with low-income communities in the so-called base of the pyramid (BoP) – the more than four billion people living in the base of the world's socio-economic pyramid.
While at WDI, Donohue hosted about 20 students for an informal lunch to talk about career opportunities at the base of the pyramid. Students quizzed Donohue about his work, how he got started and what he sees as important steps to take in order to work at the base of the pyramid.
He spoke to Ted London’s MBA class “Business Strategies at the Base of the Pyramid.” London is director of WDI’s Base of the Pyramid research initiative.
Donohue also spoke to Mike Gordon’s “Social Enterprise: Innovation in the Information Society” class. Gordon, a professor of business information technology at Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, is a WDI research fellow.
Also, Donohue and London videotaped a one-on-one interview which will be available on the WDI Web site soon.
Donohue has a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University and an MBA from the University of North Carolina, where he served as President of the MBA Student Association and earned a number of prestigious fellowships and awards. He has managed and developed innovative technology programs for Rockwell International, Apple Computer, and NASA as well as a number of technology start-ups.
