News
Chasing the 'base of the pyramid' 
By Marc Gunther, Fortune Magazine, November 15, 2006
Veteran cleaning-product firm SC Johnson seeds startups in the poorest parts of Africa. Socially responsible? Yes, but also good business, reports Fortune's Marc Gunther.
>> More Details | created on: 11/21/2006
HLL, ITC draw up two-pronged strategies to woo customers
By LALITHA SRINIVASAN, The Financial Express, August 31, 2006
India’a largest FMCG company Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) is gearing up to launch its rural initiative ‘Project Shakti’ in Bihar and Jharkhand very soon.
With this, Project Shakti will be operational across all states in India. The company also plans to cover 500,000 villages with 100,000 Shakti Ammas (women entrepreneurs) in the next two years. Competitor ITC Ltd is also planning to set up 50 Choupal Sagars (rural super stores) by the end of this fiscal year.
Clearly, India’s two major FMCG players in rural markets are now extending their reach to woo new consumers.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
UN Tourism Agency Teams Up With Microsoft to Boost African Tourism
allAfrica.com, July 12, 2006
The United Nations tourism agency has teamed up with Microsoft to use information technology to improve the industry's competitiveness and quality in developing countries, especially in Africa which at present accounts for only 4 per cent of international tourism.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
UN and Microsoft for small business in Africa
Bloomberg, July 12, 2006
Cape Town and Seattle - Microsoft, the world's biggest software company, and the UN are forming a partnership to supply information technology (IT) and other support to small businesses in Africa.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
Motorola May See Gains In Emerging Markets
By R.M. Schneiderman, Forbes, July 11, 2006
Motorola, the number two manufacturer of wireless headsets, could see market share gains in both developed and emerging markets in the second quarter, according to a Monday report by Morgan Stanley.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
'One lakh' car to roll out from 3-4 places: Tata
The Economic Times - India, July 7, 2006
NEW DELHI: Tata Group Chief Ratan Tata on Friday said the ambitious Rs 1 lakh car will be manufactured from three-four places, including West Bengal and Uttaranchal.
>> More Details | created on: 09/13/2006
Business Joins African Effort to Cut Malaria
By Sharon LaFraniere, The New York Times, June 29, 2006
BELULUANE, Mozambique — With malaria spread across southern Mozambique, executives at the international mining company Billiton expected some workers to call in sick as it began building a massive new aluminum smelter amid the cornfields here.
What they did not expect was that nearly one in three employees would fall ill — 6,600 cases in just two years. And they certainly did not expect 13 deaths, not after the company had built a medical clinic, doused the construction site with pesticides and handed out bed nets to thwart malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
>> More Details | created on: 06/30/2006
Citigroup and Coca-Cola: Two Global Investors Share Their Experiences in Emerging Markets
Knowledge @ Wharton, June 22, 2006
Todd S. Thomson, chairman and CEO of global wealth management at Citigroup, and Muhtar Kent, president of Coca-Cola International, clearly head up vastly different operations, but during keynote speeches at Wharton's Global Alumni Forum in Istanbul June 8-9, they shared a sense of opportunities still to be realized in a number of emerging markets in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
>> More Details | created on: 07/31/2006
The role of business in tomorrow's society
By Odd Gullberg, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, June 2, 2006
The global enterprises of today enjoy unprecedented opportunities, but they also face some uncomfortable challenges. On the one hand, many companies are doing well, achieving new levels of reach, innovation and brand awareness. On the other, operating at global scale means they come face to face with the world's most pressing problems – including climate change, poverty, resource depletion, inequality, fast-growing populations in developing countries and ageing populations in developed ones.
>> More Details | created on: 06/15/2006
Microsoft Testing Pay-as-You-Go PC System in Brazil
By Mary Jo Foley, Fox News, May 22, 2006
Microsoft (MSFT) unveiled a new financing program designed to make PCs more affordable to emerging-market customers on May 22, the day before the kick-off of its annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle.
>> More Details | created on: 05/23/2006
India: Largest international banker to diversify into agribusiness financing
Sify Business, May 10, 2006
Standard Chartered, the largest international banker in India, has firmed up plans to enter agriculture and commodities financing during 2006. It will also consolidate its operations in traditional as well as in the growing retail banking sectors.
>> More Details | created on: 05/25/2006
Intel CEO: Need To Speed Gains For ‘Next Billion People
Intel Press Release, May 3, 2006
The multiplying effects of computers, the Internet and education can double the reach of technology’s benefits worldwide in the next 5 years, Intel Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini said today in a speech at the World Congress on Information Technology.
>> More Details | created on: 05/08/2006
What's next for Tata Group: An interview with its chairman
By Ranjit V. Pandit, The McKinsey Quarterly, April 28, 2006
In this interview, Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata discusses the strategies of India's huge steel-to- software conglomerate, his vision of India as a global knowledge center, and the trade-offs between business success and social responsibility.
Rather than aspiring to be truly global, Tata Group seeks to expand in countries where it can achieve "a meaningful presence."
At home Tata Group wants to pioneer new products, including a $2,200 "people's car," for India's emerging mass market.
Tata, who is also the chairman of India's investment commission, explains why improving the infrastructure of his country is essential to retaining its best people and persuading those who have left to return.
>> More Details | created on: 04/28/2006
Rural Students Benefit from the World of Computers
Development Gateway, April 11, 2006
The PiL Program( China), which began in 2003 and ends in 2008, Microsoft will contribute over US$10 million in investment, donations and other forms of support to help furnish computer education and computer-aided teaching programs in primary, junior middle and teachers' schools, especially those in rural and remote areas.
>> More Details | created on: 04/13/2006
Six Trends Will Drive Sustainable Development, According to PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers, April 10, 2006
Sustainable development will steadily advance over the next 10 years, with six major trends influencing industry world-wide, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers' report, "Corporate Responsibility: Strategy, Management and Value." The challenge of creating strategies that meet immediate needs without sacrificing the needs of future generations will be driven by the growing influence of: global market forces; revisions in corporate governance; high speed innovation; large scale globalisation; evolving societal requirements and communication, the report says.
>> More Details | created on: 04/11/2006
Making the market work for the poor
By Ann Bernstein & Paul Zille , Business Day, April 6, 2006
AS a new development approach, making markets work for the poor (MMW4P) can have a big impact in SA because it is about changing the circumstances that prevent the poor from participating more effectively and extensively in the market economy.
>> More Details | created on: 04/11/2006
ICRISAT to collaborate with CII and Coca Cola Foundation on watershed development
Moneycontrol.com, April 3, 2006
ICRISAT & Coca-Cola Foundation Collaboration for Backward Areas Development through Strategic Intervention in Watershed Development The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Coca-Cola Foundation will collaborate for sustainable and equitable management of Rural Water Resources Infrastructure and other Natural Resources Management (NRM).
>> More Details | created on: 04/07/2006
Sales Effort Gives India's Rural Poor an Opportunity
By John Lancaster, Washington Post, April 2, 2006
This article discusses a Hindustan Lever initiative that enlists about 20,000 poor and mostly illiterate women to sell products.
>> More Details | created on: 04/07/2006
Intel Kicks Off Low-Cost PC Effort
By Jeremy Kirk, PCWorld.com, April 1, 2006
Intel has partnered with a Mexican telecoms company to sell an affordable PC designed for first-time computer users in developing countries. It's the latest effort by technology vendors to develop products for emerging markets.
>> More Details | created on: 04/07/2006
New environmental targets for DSM plants
Hugin News/DSM, March 26, 2006
The Nutrition Improvement Program, which focuses on the fortification of foods with vitamins and minerals in order to prevent disease and mortality due to malnutrition, is DSM's first initiative in the context of the 'Base of the Pyramid'. This is a new development in the field of sustainability to which the company will increasingly be paying attention.
>> More Details | created on: 04/04/2006
Bottled Water Big for Multinationals
By Mark Stevenson, Yahoo News, March 21, 2006
Violent protests have driven away corporate investment in desperately needed municipal water systems in developing nations. So the world's poor buy bottled water from Coke, Pepsi and other multinational companies.
>> More Details | created on: 03/30/2006
Building Wealth by the Penny
By John Lancaster, Washington Post, March 14, 2006
With its open sewers and mud-walled homes, this impoverished farming village of 2,200 in southern India did not look like fertile territory for an entrepreneur. But Srilatha Kadem was undeterred. Oblivious to the midday heat, she marched briskly along the unpaved streets, her cloth bag filled with soaps and shampoos and her heart with vaulting ambition.
>> More Details | created on: 03/14/2006
Grameen teams up with Groupe Danone to set up food plant
By Reaz Ahmad, The Daily Star, March 13, 2006
Microcredit guru Prof Muhammad Yunus launches a joint venture food enterprise in collaboration with one of the world's major food producers -- Groupe Danone.
>> More Details | created on: 03/22/2006
Power to the people
Economist, March 11, 2006
AS A young boy in rural Bangladesh in 1971, Iqbal Quadir walked ten miles to collect some medicine for a sibling who was unwell. But when he arrived at his destination, the medicine man was not there, so he had to walk home empty-handed, having wasted an entire day. Many years later, having moved to America and become an investment banker, Mr Quadir was reminded of this episode when the network at his New York office stopped working.Mr Quadir was seized by the idea that "a telephone is a weapon against poverty". He decided to dedicate himself to making telephones more widely available to the poor in his homeland.
>> More Details | created on: 03/10/2006
Tech a Key to Easing Poverty, Microsoft official adapts software for Third World uses
By Sara Israelsen, Deseret News, March 11, 2006
The connection between a computer and the economic stability of an African villager may seem like a stretch, but to Kevin Johnson, it's a connection he works on every day. Johnson, co-president of the Platforms and Services Division of Microsoft, spends his weeks traveling the world, trying to adapt Windows technology to the various developing countries and citizens.
>> More Details | created on: 03/17/2006
Give Africans the Blackberry -- and they will do the Job
By Dan Latendre, The Record, March 11, 2006
What do computers, cellphones and BlackBerrys have to do with eradicating extreme poverty in Africa? Quite a bit as it turns out.
>> More Details | created on: 03/17/2006
New infoDev Report on m-Commerce
By InfoDev, February 24, 2006
The proliferation of mobile communications in developing countries has the potential to bring a wide range of financial services to an entirely new customer base. This report explores the use of mobile phones to expand financial services in the Philippines.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
The Birth of Philanthrocapitalism
By The Economist, February 23, 2006
RELATIVE to the corporate environment, we are in the 1870s. But philanthropy will increasingly come to resemble the capitalist economy, predicts Uday Khemka, a young Indian philanthropist and a director of the SUN Group investment company owned by his family.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
The Business of Giving
By The Economist, February 23, 2006
Philanthropy is flourishing as the number of super-rich people keeps growing. But the new donors are becoming much more businesslike about the way their money is used, says Matthew Bishop.
>> More Details | created on: 02/28/2006
Fancy Phones to Clash with Low Cost PCs
By Pragya Singh , Financial Express, February 20, 2006
Here is something the bottom of India’s mobile user pyramid can cheer about. If 2005 was the year of the cheap PC, 2006 will see the dawn of entry-level smart phones in rural parts.
>> More Details | created on: 02/23/2006
MTN's CSR Initiative Wins GSM Association Award
Africa News, February 17, 2006
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
Grameen and Segway team up to produce micro-entrepreneurial "Slingshot"
By Erick Schonfeld, CNNmoney.com, February 16, 2006
Dean Kamen, the engineer who invented the Segway, is puzzling over a new equation these days. An estimated 1.1 billion people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don't have electricity.
>> More Details | created on: 02/23/2006
Intel's Hiring Spree
By Michael Fitzgerald, Technology Review, February 14, 2006
Why is Intel, the giant chip maker, in the process of hiring more than 100 anthropologists and other social scientists to work side by side with its engineers? While the success of this strategy will become clearer over the next 12 to 18 months, it's obvious Intel is betting that sales will rise and new markets will emerge because of this nonintuitive pairing.
>> More Details | created on: 02/23/2006
Google's Big BOP Bet? Bringing Wi-Fi to Africa
By John Paul, World Resources Institute, February 9, 2006
Google
announced this week that it has selected Abuja, Nigeria as one of about seven African cities the company will fully connect with a wireless network.
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
Q&A: C.K. Prahalad
Red Herring, February 6, 2006
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
Business Prophet
By CK Prahalad, Business Week, January 23, 2006
This article discusses how strategy guru C.K. Prahalad is changing the way CEOs think.
>> More Details | created on: 01/27/2006
All They Need is a Fair Chance to Compete
By Heather Stewart , The Observer, January 22, 2006
Hilary Benn tells Heather Stewart that, far from being the enemy, the global private sector is the one certain way that poverty can be made history.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Putting Paid to Poverty
By Al Hammond & Bill Kramer, January 17, 2006
"Putting Paid to Poverty" provides a hopeful scenario for the development of the 'base of the pyramid' over the next ten years.
>> More Details | created on: 02/17/2006
OSS CEO Announces Global Campaign to Deliver Intelligence to the Poor, Lifting the Bottom of the Pyramid - the Poor - With Information
Yahoo Finance, December 14, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/04/2006
Can Africa Join the Investment Revolution
By Africa Business, November 29, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/09/2006
Founder of Ebay sets up Dollars 100m microfinance aid fund
Financial Express, November 4, 2005
The Dollars 100m (Euros 84m, Pounds 56m) fund, which will be run for profit by endowment managers at Tufts University in the US, marks a growing trend among a new generation of philanthropic entrepreneurs and technology billionaires to seek market-based solutions to global poverty rather than rely solely on traditional charities.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
India's phone-to-farmers operator
Financial Express, October 19, 2005
The idea was to connect India's farms with the world by modernising a clapped-out supply chain that allows most produce to rot long before it gets to market.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
AMD to jointly sell cheap personal computers in India
Agence French Presse, October 14, 2005
US-based semiconductor maker AMD said it would enter a joint venture with an Indian firm to sell personal computers for the same cost as cellphones.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Calling an End to Poverty: Mobile Phones and Development
By The Economist, July 7, 2005
Discusses how mobile phone firms have found a way to help the poor help themselves.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Pennies from the poor add up to fortune
By David Ignatius, The Korea Herald, July 1, 2005
>> More Details | created on: 01/03/2006
Trickle-Up Economics
By David Armstrong & Naazneen Karmali, Forbes.com, June 20, 2005
How low-tech, low-cost designs are helping the poorest farmers on Earth grow their way out of poverty.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Selling to the Poor: There is a Surprisingly Lucrative Market in Targeting Low-Income Consumers
By Kay Johnson & Xa Nhon, Time Magazine, April 25, 2005
Identifies the lucrative market in targeting low income consumers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Selling to the Poor: Mobile Firms Plan Cheap Handset
BBC News, February 1, 2005
An alliance of mobile phone firms has launched an ultra-cheap handset in the hope of connecting millions more customers in developing countries.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
The Akassa Community Development Project in Nigeria: Statoil and BP
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, January 1, 2005
Reviews how corporate social responsibility programs are helping to build and sustain livelihoods in the Niger Delta.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
The Global Compact: A Business Perspective
International Chamber of Commerce, July 1, 2004
A look at the Global Compact as businesses begins to take more of a role in International Development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Deutsche Bank: microcredit development fund
Deutsche Bank Microcredit Fund, May 1, 2004
The Deutsche Bank Microcredit Fund was conceived as a vehicle to combine the interest, abilities, reach, and resources of Deutsche Bank and its Private Bank clients to support the long-term sustainability of microcredit institutions.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Global Community Investment
Business for Social Responsibility, December 1, 2003
As companies expand their operations globally, deriving ever-larger shares of their revenues and profits from international operations, they are finding business value from expanding their community involvement activities internationally as well.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Sonae: Delta Cafés socially responsible coffee
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, September 26, 2003
Delta has since successfully developed a “socially responsible” coffee brand, Delta Timor, creating competitive communities at the beginning of the supply chain, in the plantations of East Timor, and establishing a “solidarity market” for the brand among Portuguese consumers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Business and Poverty: Bridging the
Gap.
By Maya Forstater & Jacqui MacDonald, Resource Center for the Social Dimensions of Business Practice, December 1, 2002
This article makes the case for the role of business in poverty allieviation.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
How Marketing Can Reduce Worldwide Poverty
By Martha Lagace, HBS Working Knowledge, January 7, 2002
Discusses how the marketing profession can play a huge role in alleviating global poverty.
>> More Details | created on: 01/24/2006
Let's Focus on the Digital Dividend
By C.K. Prahalad, European Business Forum, 2002
Disucusses the idea that in the new economy, where access to knowledge is critical for economic success, the increasing importance of the internet will further accentuate the differences between the rich and the poor.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Strategic Innovation: Hindustan Lever Ltd
By Rekha Balu, Fast Company, June 1, 2001
Highlights Hindustan Lever's success through soap marketing and distribution at the BOP.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Bottom Up, Digitally Enabled Development, A Vision
By Allen Hammond & Elizabeth Jenkins, iMP Magazine, February 1, 2001
The authors address the importance of "Digitally enabled Development" as one of the keys to third world development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Academic Research
International Technology Diffusion and the Growth of TFP in the Manufacturing Sector of Developing Economies
By Andreas Sawides & Marios Zachariadis, November, 2005 (Review of Development Economics, Vol. 9, No. 4)
This paper evaluates various channels through which foreign technology diffuses to the manufacturing sector of developing economies. These economies undertake virtually no own R&D, so they rely on foreign technology to a much larger extent than developed economies. We investigate the direct effect of foreign R&D, as well as technology embodied in imports of intermediate and capital goods and foreign direct investment, on the growth of total factor productivity and value added in the manufacturing sector of 32 economies during 1965-92. We find that foreign R&D typically has the biggest positive impact on domestic productivity and value-added growth. Imports of capital goods and foreign direct investment also play a similar role, but their effect is of smaller magnitude and is not always significant.
>> More Details | created on: 01/20/2006
Strategies that Pit Emerging Markets
By Tarun Khanna & Krishna G. Palepu, Harvard Business Review, June, 2005
When entering emerging markets, many firms simply go with what they know--and fall far short of their goals.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
At the Bottom of the Pyramid: Responsible Design for Responsible Business
By Nirmal Sethia, Design Managment Review, June 1, 2005
In this article, Nirmal Sethia, a professor of management and director of the Center for Business and Design in the College of Business Administration at California State Polytechnic University, in Pomona, calls our attention to what he calls "a pressing business responsibility that is a significant new business opportunity." The opportunity he refers to is what he calls "the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP)-almost four billion people, or nearly two-thirds of humanity, who live at the bottom of the economic pyramid, with a vast majority of them struggling to survive on less than two dollars a day."
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
The Quest for Customer Focus
By Ranjay Gulati & James B. Oldroyd, Harvard Business Review, April, 2005 (Subscription Required)
Companies have poured enormous amounts of money into customer relationship management, but in many cases the investment hasn't really paid off. That's because getting closer to customers isn't about building an information technology system. It's a learning journey--one that unfolds over four stages, requiring people and business units to coordinate in progressively more sophisiticated ways.
>> More Details | created on: 06/13/2006
Ending Poverty Starts with Enterprise not Charity
By Kurt Hoffman, Shell Foundation, March 14, 2005
The Director of the Shell Foundation discusses how BOP strategies can be applied to solving poverty.
>> More Details | created on: 03/13/2006
Expanding in China
By Ann Chen & Vijay Vishwanath, Harvard Business Review, March, 2005
Bain consultants offer three key strategies multinationals can use to expand from China's premium segment into the broader market.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Global Manufacturers at a Crossroads
By Peter Koudal, Harvard Business Review, March, 2005
As multinationals decrease their direct investment in low-wage markets, they're opening the door to competitors.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Lessons from the Slums of Brazil
By David Neeleman & Daisy Wademan, Harvard Business Review, March, 2005
JetBlue's David Neeleman talks about how his lessons from working with the poor have informed his company's culture.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Productive Friction: How Difficult Business Partnerships Can Accelerate Innovation
By John Hagel III & John Seely Brown, Harvard Business Review, February, 2005
Companies are becoming more dependent on business partners, but coordinating with outsiders takes its tool. However, as the article points out, interactions between organizations can yield benefits beyond the goods or services contracted for. Companies get better at what they do--and improve faster than their competitors--by working with outsiders whose specialized capabilities complement their own.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Corporate Social Responsability and Global Supply Chain Management: A Normative Perspective
By Robert Spekman & Patricia H. Werhane, Darden Business School Working Paper No. 04-05. , 2005
This paper develops a framework for considering the obligations of the more powerful supply chain member to the other members of the supply chain. We examine the extent to which one supply chain member should exert governance as it relates to social responsibility on the members of the extended supply chain.
>> More Details | created on: 01/20/2006
Winning the Indian Consumer
By V.T. Bharadwaj & Gautam M. Swaroop, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 2005 (Subscription Required)
India will be a critical growth market for many multinational consumer goods companies. But several distinct Indias now coexist. Global players must define which of them to target—the biggest opportunity is the rapidly growing middle class—and then design the right business model. While the journey will not be easy, the reward will be a share of the world's last big untapped consumer market.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Premium Marketing to the Masses: An Interview with LG Electronics India's Managing Director
By Pramath Raj Sinha, McKinsey Quarterly, 2005 (Subscription Required)
In this interview, Kwang-Ro Kim shows how LG Electronics India has built a dominant position in India's consumer electronics and white-goods markets.
The company has overcome India's notorious distribution challenge, in the process pushing deeper into rural territories than have most competitors. Indian consumers, LG has found, will pay a premium for quality and service.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
The Right Passage to India
By Kuldeep P. Jain & Nigel A. S. Manson, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 2005 (Subscription Required)
Multinational companies are often successful precisely because they can replicate products and processes and even market-entry strategies across multiple markets. In India, however, that approach can bring disappointing results.
The multinationals with the most success in India are those that tailor their products and practices to the idiosyncrasies of this market—even when that means starting from scratch.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
India's Economic Agenda: An Interview with Manmohan Singh
By Rajat K. Gupta, McKinsey Quarterly, 2005 (Subscription Required)
In an interview, India's prime minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, discusses his country’s prospects and challenges, saying that the ultimate goal is to wipe out poverty, ignorance, and disease.
To him this can be accomplished by increasing foreign direct investment, particularly in infrastructure and by opening up the retail sector.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Fulfilling India's Promise
By Rajat K. Gupta, McKinsey Quarterly, 2005 (Subscription Required)
The article discusses how India must take steps to boost its economic prospects, lift its living standards, and improve opportunities for the multinational companies that do business there.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
New Strategies for Consumer Goods
By Peter D. Haden & Olivier Sibony, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, December, 2004 (Subscription Required)
Most consumer goods companies can still improve some of their operations, but a few of them will look for innovative new strategies, such as outsourcing production, building new service businesses, or developing neglected product categories.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Why Selling to the Poor Makes for Good Business
By C.K. Prahalad, Fortune v. 150 no. 10, November 15, 2004
There is an invisible market lying at the bottom of the global economic pyramid: a market of 5 billion people who live on less than $2 per day. They are invisible to the majority of big companies because few executives can imagine a market among people that poor. Businesspeople believe that the poor cannot afford their products and services and also assume, naively, that the poor have no use for advanced and cutting-edge technology. Actually, selling to the poor is a uniquely powerful way to achieve breakthroughs in products and management practices: The base layer of the economic pyramid is a sandbox for innovation. It is necessary to understand the rules of the game, however, which can be dramatically different from what executives are used to. The writer discusses several aspects of selling to the poor.
>> More Details | created on: 01/25/2006
Lessons from the Field: An Overview of the Current Uses of Information and Communication Technologies for Development
By John Paul & Robert Katz, WRI Paper, November, 2004
An overview of the digital divide that effects many in the developing world and highlights many of the projects that are attempting to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to bridge this divide
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Where to Find 4 Billion New Customers: Expanding the World's Marketplace
By Medard Gabel, The Futurist v. 38 no. 4, July, 2004
Canny companies looking for new growth opportunities should consider the unseen 4 billion consumers that represent the base of the global economic pyramid. Of the world's 6.3 billion people, fewer than 40 percent are tapped as markets for the vast majority of goods and services offered by today's corporations. Although the remaining 4 billion people are usually thought of as the "poor," or as living in "developing countries," it would be wrong to believe that they lack purchasing power or are not interested in the products, services, or whatever an organization's core competencies could provide. Guidelines for reaching the world's underserved markets are provided.
>> More Details | created on: 01/25/2006
Reinventing Strategies for Emerging Markets: Beyond the Transnational Model
By Ted London & Stuart L. Hart, Journal of International Business Studies, 2004
Asserts that business strategies that rely on leveraging the strengths of the existing market environment outperform those that focus on overcoming weaknesses. Looks at specific strategies that businesses can utilize to more successful in this arena.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Pharma's Emerging Opportunity
By Farhad Riahi, McKinsey Quarterly, 2004 (Subscription Required)
Focusing on the diversity within emerging markets can help pharma companies serve them profitably.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Understanding the Chinese Consumer
By Jacques Penhirin, McKinsey Quarterly, 2004 (Subscription Required)
China's consumer goods market, stimulated by rapidly rising incomes, is growing quickly. Multinational companies are competing against one another and an array of increasingly sophisticated Chinese players to serve the mass market, but doing so cost-effectively is becoming more difficult.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Marketing to China's Consumers
By Yougang Chen & Jacques Penhirin, McKinsey Quarterly, 2004 (Subscription Required)
To broaden the appeal of a premium brand, consumer goods companies can adjust a product's inputs and packaging as well as cut prices.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
China's Market for Mobile Phones
By Bram J. Bout & Vincent Chang, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 2004 (Subscription Required)
China's manufacturers of moble phones better understand the needs and preferences of their own market and thus are capable of grabbing market share at a much quicker pace then their foreign counterparts. The article discusses how foreign competitors can slow the gains of the local competition and improve their profit margins.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Small and Medium Enterprises, Growth, and Poverty: Cross-Country Evidence
By Asli Demirguc-Kunt & Thorsten Beck, et al, December, 2003
This paper explores the relationship between the relative size of the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, economic growth, and poverty using a new database on the share of SME labor in the total manufacturing labor force. Using a sample of 76 countr
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Challenges to Sida's Support to Private Sector Development: Making Markets Work for the Poor
Sida Provisional Edition, October, 2003
The document forms a background to Sida's action for private sector development by 1. Taking a stand in the overriding objectives and values underlying Swedish development assistance; 2. Explains how private sector development can be an effective instrume
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
China Tomorrow: Prospects and Perils
By Kenneth Lieberthal & Geoffrey Lieberthal, Harvard Business Review, October, 2003
Chinese companies may grab market share from financially mightier rivals across the globe. How to seize China's opportunities--while avoiding its risks? Rethink your companies' strategies for post-WTO China. Deepen your understanding of Chinese culture to negotiate better with potential partners and customers. And prepare for emerging Chinese brands challenging the global market.
>> More Details | created on: 01/23/2006
Cracking China's Chip Market
By Derek Dean & James Hexter, McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 (Subscription Required)
The country’s semiconductor market represents a lucrative opportunity for foreign companies, but to exploit it they must adapt to the needs and expectations of Chinese customers.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Electronic Architectures for Bridging the Global Digital Divide: A Comparative Assessment of E-Business Systems Designed to Reach teh Global Poor
By Nik Dholakia & Nir Kshetri, ARCHITECTURAL ISSUES OF WEB-ENABLED ELECTRONIC BUSINESS, 2003
We discuss some examples of electronic architectures for Bridging the Global Digital Divide. We provide a comparative assessment of four e-business systems designed to reach the global poor.
>> More Details | created on: 01/20/2006
A Wholesale Shift in European Groceries
By Javier Castrillo & Jose Manuel Martinez, McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 (Subscription Required)
Large retailers that can transfer their scale-based capabilities to the right opportunities in Europe’s wholesale markets will be poised to earn large revenues from them in the future.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
How Corporations and Environmental Groups Cooperate: Assessing Cross Sector Alliances and Collaborations
By Dennis A. Rondinelli & Ted London, Academy of Management Executive, 2003 (Vol. 17 No. 1, 2003)
Gives a set of strategic criteria for executives who are interested in participating in more intensive cross-sector collaborations on environmental issues with their nonprofit counterparts
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Brand Building in Emerging Markets
By Gilberto Duarte de Abreu Filho & Nicola Calicchio, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 (Subscription Required)
Brand-name products will always capture their share of affluent consumers. But in the low end of emerging markets, companies should take their cues from local competitors: keep local managers in place, adhere to local standards of quality, and maintain the autonomy—and the cost efficiency—of local operations.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
How Businesses can Combat Global Disease
By Rajat K. Gupta & Lynn Taliento, McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 (Subscription Required)
The global health outlook is bleak. In 2002, more than six million people—most of them in poor countries—died from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria (exhibit). These three diseases, plus a handful of others, have crippled economic growth and progress in developing countries. This article thus discusses how and why MNCs should be involved in controlling global epidemics.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Hypergrowth for China's Hypermarkets
By Alvin Miu & Jacques Penhirin, McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 (Subscription Required)
The rapid rise of hypermarkets in China represents a huge opportunity for both domestic and multinational retailers trying to capture a piece of this enormous market. But tapping it will require tweaking the model to suit the unique requirements of China's retail landscape.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Sustainable Development and the Sustainability of Competitive Advantage: A Dynamic Sustainable View of the Firm
By Miguel A. Rodriquez & Joan E. Ricart, et al, Sustainable Development and Competitive Advantage, September, 2002 (Vol. 11 No. 3 Sept 2002)
The paper presents a proposal for a dynamic and sustainable view of the firm. It illustrates how the changes introduced into the competitive landscape by sustainable development influences the way in which companies develop their resources, capabilities,
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Do Retail Brands Travel?
By Peter N. Child & Suzanne Heywood, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 2002 (Subscription Required)
Retail chains have found that while they can hang out their signs anywhere, consumers respond differently in every country. Understanding those differences is the key to building a successful retail brand across borders. A survey of 40 retail grocery and clothing brands in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom shows the importance of tailoring a brand's image to each national market.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
By C.K. Prahalad & Stuart L. Hart, Strategy+Business, January, 2002 (Issue 26, First Quarter 2002)
Dispells some of the assumptions regarding selling to the poor and discusses how companies can both maximize their profits and help the poor
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Vaccines Where They're Needed
By Amie Batson & Matthias M. Bekier, McKinsey Quarterly, 2001 (Subscription Required )
The development of vaccines for these diseases is usually a risky and unprofitable enterprise for pharmaceuticals companies. Thus, by assuming some of the risks borne by the makers of vaccines, governments and international organizations could reduce the cost of bringing them to market.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
India as a Source of Innovations
By C.K. Prahalad, 2000
Analyzes and the old mindset of the poor as an intractable problem and shows how currently there has been a shift in this mindset to one of the poor as an active market and the Bottom of the Pyramid as a source of innovation for this market.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Bagging Europe's Groceries
By Pierre Gurdjian & George Kerschbaumer, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 2000 (Subscription Required )
To make it into the champions’ league, Europe’s leading food retailers will need to acquire a different skill set that enables them to extract value on a multinational playing field
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
India's Retailing Comes of Age
By Michael Fernandes & Chandrika Gadi, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 2000 (Subscription Required )
As citizens of the world’s largest democracy, Indians are trusted to choose their own government. But, until recently, they were not free to choose what they wanted to buy. A paternalistic regime of control manifested itself in licensing laws that restricted the production of consumer goods
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Gold from Noodles
By James Hexter & Javier Perez, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 1998 (Subscription Required )
In 1998, packaged food will account for 20 percent of China's $200 billion food and beverage sales, or $40 billion. Sales of some items, such as milk powder, instant noodles, biscuits, and soft drinks, have already topped $2 billion.
Yet despite this potential, most foreign food and beverage companies are find-ing it difficult to attain even modest profitability in China.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Food for West Africa
By Claudio Aspesi & Bernard Loyd, et al, McKinsey Quarterly, 1998 (Subscription Required )
West Africa uses scarce resources to import food. Western companies can now play a big role either through direct investment or via alliances. A market of 225 million people.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
India's Sleeping Giant: Food
By Kito De Boer & Amitabh Pandey, McKinsey Quarterly, 1997 (Subscription Required )
India serves as an example why food producers should worry less about elite consumers
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Developing Customers Before Products
By Robert J. Davis & Shinichi Ueyama, McKinsey Quarterly, 1996 (Subscription Required )
To increase their sales growth and profitability, some companies are beginning to develop customers before products. Adept at identifying and meeting unmet as well as latent demand, these companies can almost guarantee a profitable market prior to making substantial investments in a new product.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Cases
Procter & Gamble: Treating water at its point of use
WBCSD, October 17, 2006
Did you know that Procter & Gamble, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and governments, is working in developing countries to provide safe drinking water to people directly in their homes?
>> More Details | created on: 10/20/2006
Unilever in Brazil:Marketing Strategies for Low Income Consumers
By P. Chandon & P. Pacheco Guimaraes, INSEAD, January 1, 2006
Unilever is a solid leader in the Brazilian detergent powder market with an 81% market share. Laercio Cardoso must decide: (1) whether Unilever should divert money from its premium brands to target the lower- margin segment of low-income consumers; (2) whether Unilever can reposition or extend one of its existing brands to avoid launching a new brand; and (3) what price, product, promotion, and distribution strategy would allow Unilever to deliver value to low-income consumers without cannibalising its own premium brands too heavily. This case deals with the question of whether marketing and branding create value for really poor consumers.
>> More Details | created on: 04/18/2006
Thamel.com: Diaspora-enabled Development (Nepal)
By John Paul, World Resources Institute, December, 2005
Thamel.com is a Nepal-based marketing and development company that has tapped the resources of the diaspora to create new opportunities for Nepalese workers, generate cultural value, and help move local businesses in a new direction. The company’s unique combination of e-commerce, remittance, and business development services demonstrate how combining the power of IT and diasporas can create opportunities at the base of the pyramid.
>> More Details | created on: 03/15/2006
Fighting disease clean-handed: Unilever
WBCSD, November 16, 2005
Diarrhea causes over three million deaths a year worldwide, mostly among children. At a rate of one child every ten seconds, mortality from diarrheal diseases represents one-third of all deaths of children under the age of five in developing countries. Yet a World Bank study estimates that hand washing with soap and water can reduce diarrheal diseases by up to 48%, preventing over one and a half million children from dying each year.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
First Mile Solutions Daknet Takes Rural Communities Online
By Carol Chyau & Jean-Francois Raymond, World Resources Institute, October 1, 2005
First Mile Solutions (FMS) counters the problem of increasing technological access to rural areas by providing telecommunications equipment that can cheaply connect rural and remote populations to the Internet through an innovative technology: DakNet. DakNet leverages short- range wireless technology in tandem with traditional telecommunication and physical transportation infrastructures.
>> More Details | created on: 02/23/2006
Shell - Searching for sustainable solutions to indoor air pollution
WBCSD, August 15, 2005
Because Indoor air pollution (IAP) is the most serious energy and poverty-related health problem, the Shell Foundation has committed US$ 10 million to tackle IAP through its Household Energy and Health Programme, branded as “Breathing Space”. Breathing Space’s approach is to identify, test and then ideally diffuse “market-based” schemes for getting killer smoke out of very large numbers of very poor people’s kitchens. Under this program supply- and demand-side interventions based on business and market principles are being piloted in eight developing countries.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
Narayana Murthy and Compassionate Capitalism
By Bill George, Shailendra J. Singh & Andrew N. McLean, Harvard Business School, July 22, 2005
Narayana Murthy's roles at Infosys Technologies--as a co-founder, longtime CEO, and nonexecutive chairman and chief mentor--has been marked by explosive growth, demanding management challenges, and widely lauded company leadership. His personal leadership philosophy has been articulated through and driven by his philosophy of "compassionate capitalism." Profiles Murthy's philosophy and leadership principles. Traces the development of Murthy as a child, scholar, businessman, and political and social activist. Traces the links between Murthy's principles and the business practices that repeatedly brought Infosys Technologies recognition as one of India's most admired and best managed companies. Raises questions in his mind about the place of philanthropic principles in the management of a business enterprise.
>> More Details | created on: 04/03/2006
The Mogalakwena HP i-community: Hewlett-Packard
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, July 5, 2005
Despite the enormous worldwide impact of the Internet, more than 90% of the world’s population has never used the technology and the “digital divide” between the developed and developing nations is growing. Hewlett-Packard's Mogalakwena i-community in South Africa seeks to bridge that divide.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Electrifying rural Moroccan households: Electricité de France (EDF), Tenesol, Total
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, June 2, 2005
Through a unique program developed by Morocco’s National Electricity Office (ONE), EDF, Total and Tenesol (previously Total Energie) are helping remote Moroccan villages access electricity through solar power installations.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
The Kuppam HP i-community: Hewlett-Packard
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, May 2, 2005
Hewlett-Packard's Kuppam i-community aims to provide people with access to greater social and economic opportunities by closing the gap between technology-empowered and technology-excluded communities.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
Mobile sales contribute to poverty reduction: GrupoNueva's Amanco
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, January 1, 2005
AMANCO is a Latin American leader in the production and marketing of integrated solutions for the construction, infrastructure and irrigation industries. AMANCO is part of GrupoNueva, a holding company operating throughout Latin America for more than 60 years, with more than 30 firms and factories located in 13 countries and some 7,000 employees.
AMANCO bases its leadership on the quality of its products, service excellence and a firm commitment to sustainable development within a profit-oriented framework.
>> More Details | created on: 04/11/2006
Serving the Poor: Do Embedded Ties Matter?
By Pablo Sánchez, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez & Joan Enric Ricart , IESE Business School, January 1, 2005
In the past, the 4.6 billion people living in poverty were considered anything but a market. Recently, however, several authors have suggested that by stimulating commerce and development in low-income segments, multinationals could radically improve the lives of billions of people and help create a more stable and inclusive world. In order to succeed at this challenging goal, companies need not only to innovate strategies, business models and products, but also to better understand the market and local customer needs.
>> More Details | created on: 04/18/2006
Eskom and the South African Electrification Program D
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0165-SSRN , 2005
The D case concerns Eskom's commitment to provide employment in rural areas by training residents to work on local electrification projects. The company discovers, however, that its employees, for a small fee, often help customers make illegal connections to power lines, thus avoiding payment for service. In some communities, as much as 80 percent of the electricity is illegally obtained. How should Eskom deal with this problem? See also the A, B, C, and E cases (E-0162, E-0163, E-0164, and E-0166).
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Eskom and the South African Electrification Program E
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0166-SSRN , 2005
Eskom produces the world's cheapest electricity by using coal-fired plants, most of which have not been retrofitted to meet World Bank standards. Moreover, most South Africans without electricity burn wood, which creates even more air pollution than coal. Should Eskom retrofit its coal-fired facilities and raise the price of electricity or continue to expand its inexpensive electrification program? See also the A, B, C, and D cases (E-0162, E-0163, E-0164, and E-0165).
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
The Volta River Project
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0161-SSRN, 2005
In 1998, Ghana was considering new ways to generate electricity to solve the recurring problem of power shortages due to droughts. This case discusses the Volta River Project, which was conceived by Kwame Nkrumah, the founder of Ghana. Built in 1963, the Volta River Dam was a joint project between Ghana and Valco, a multinational aluminum company that was to be the largest consumer of the dam's electricity. Various difficulties, including repeated droughts and a long-term low negotiated price for Valco's electricity, have created a shortage of electricity in Ghana. The case poses the following question for students: What is the best long-term solution - should Ghana build another dam or develop other solutions to this recurring problem?
>> More Details | created on: 01/20/2006
Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) and Project STING A
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0266-SSRN, 2005
This series of cases concerns the attempts by the Unilever division Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) to create, market, and distribute a detergent for India's rural poor. In this war of laundry powders, HLL must revise its traditional practices in manufacturing, marketing, and distribution pursuant to C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's theory of the worldwide four-tiered market, in which the bottom of the pyramid is an untapped and potentially lucrative market.
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Eskom and the South African Electrification Program A
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0162-SSRN , 2005
Eskom, a South African electric-utility company, is currently spending $400 million annually (roughly 30 percent of its annual profits) to implement a national social-initiative project. This project is a countrywide infrastructure-development program to provide electricity to the citizens of South Africa, who were often denied access to basic services under apartheid; thus, the company is hoping to fulfill its goal of becoming a "model corporate citizen."
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Eskom and the South African Electrification Program B
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0163-SSRN , 2005
After Eskom implemented a viable plan for providing electricity to more than 1.75 million South African households, many of its customers failed to pay for service, which resulted in a debt of approximately $400 million by 1997. This negative consumer behavior, however, was not necessarily unjustified, as South Africa's black citizens had historically used consumer boycotts as a means of protest against the apartheid state. Consequently, the country's consumer base had evolved in an environment where nonpayment was often seen as a social norm rather than negative behavior. Recognizing that consumers' behavior was the result of living under an oppressive regime, Eskom needed to address this seemingly intractable situation. See also the A, C, D, and E cases (E-0162, E-0164, E-0165, and E-0166).
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Eskom and the South African Electrification Program C
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0164-SSRN , 2005
Eskom had committed to spending approximately $400 million annually to provide 1.75 million South African households with electricity by 2000. The company had to forfeit an additional $300 million because of consumers' nonpayment for service. Moreover, the company also faced rising operational costs as a result of consumers' illegally tampering with their electrical connections. In fact, these costs had increased to such an extent that annual costs were higher than annual sales in many of the areas Eskom served. This illegal behavior, however, had evolved under an oppressive regime that forced many consumers to steal from the existing infrastructure in order to access basic services. Following the end of apartheid, Eskom hoped to receive an adequate return on its investments in the electrification program. See also the A, B, D, and E cases (E-0162, E-0163, E-0165, and E-0166).
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Helping small-scale pyrethrum farmers in Kenya: SC Johnson
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, December 15, 2004
A unique partnership between SC Johnson, the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya and ApproTEC is helping Kenyan farmers to improve their livelihoods by efficiently farming pyrethrum, a unique daisy that is the source of a naturally occuring insecticide.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) and Project STING
By Werhane, Patricia H. & Gorman, Michael E., et al, December 7, 2004
This series of cases concerns the attempts by the Unilever division Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) to create, market, and distribute a detergent for India's rural poor. In this war of laundry powders, HLL must revise its traditional practices in manufactur
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Partnering for mutual success: DaimlerChrysler – POEMAtec Alliance
By Yerina Mugica, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, November 10, 2004
DaimlerChrysler formed an alliance with the Poverty and Environment in Amazonia Research and Development project (POEMA) to reforest previously cleared land to produce continuous yields year-round and process these harvests within the region.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Concrete Innovation with Mi Casa: Holcim Apasco
World Business Council for Sustainable Development, October 12, 2004
Holcim Apasco helps people self-build concrete homes to an acceptable standard and improve the availability of affordable construction materials through its Mi Casa distribution centers.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Combating "Hidden Hunger": Procter & Gamble takes up the fight
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, June 11, 2004
Procter and Gamble is taking up the fight against "hidden hunger" with NutriStar, a low cost powdered drink mix containing all the vital micronutrients growing children need.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
The forestry partners program: Aracruz Celulose
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, May 11, 2004
Aracruz's partnerships with local farmers to develop new, sustainable timber plantations that provide alternative planted sources of timber for the company’s pulp mill, and a new source of income for the farmers and local communities.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Sustainable upstream development: BP Trinidad and Tobago
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, April 16, 2004
BP enables capability development among the local supplier community in a way that enhances their ability to support its growth agenda and enlisting the support of other operators, suppliers, state agencies, financial and learning institutions to create maximum socio-economic impact.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Insuring fair prices for farmers in developing countries: Rabobank International
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, April 16, 2004
This partnership between private and public sector organizations explores new market-based approaches for assisting small-scale producers in developing countries to better manage their vulnerability to commodity price fluctuations.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Shell Solar in Sri Lanka: Improving lives with the flick of a switch
World Business Council on Sustainable Development, April 1, 2004
Shell Solar Lanka, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch/Shell, intends to target these market segments where potential customers will be able to save money over the lifetime of a solar home system by moving away from the inconvenience and recurring cost of kerosene lanterns and battery charging, while receiving better service.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Vodacom: Extending telecom services to South Africa’s poor
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, February 2, 2004
Vodacom has confronted the enormous challenge of providing subsidized public cellular telephones in under-serviced and rural areas by seting up stationary phone shops or kiosks with multiple lines, all connected to Vodacom's existing infrastructure through a wireless link.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Businesses Are Helping to Overcome Global Poverty
By Stern N, Richard Ivey Business School, January 1, 2004
The facts today point to a decline in global poverty and to the reality that global economic development is working. These positive developments are due to policies pursued by both public organizations and the international business community. But as the Chief Economist of the World Banks says, business can do even more to help the world's poorest countries.
>> More Details | created on: 04/18/2006
Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) and Project STING B
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0267-SSRN, 2004
Set in India in the 1980s and '90s, this series of cases concerns the attempts by the Unilever division Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) to create, market, and distribute a detergent for India's rural poor. The upstart, low-priced Nirma detergent, manufactured by a former chemist, has overtaken HLL in the detergent market primarily because Nirma is being distributed and sold to this previously ignored segment of India's population. In this war of laundry powders, HLL must revise its traditional practices in manufacturing, marketing, and distribution pursuant to C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's theory of the worldwide four-tiered market, in which the bottom of the pyramid is an untapped and potentially lucrative market.
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) and Project STING D
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0269-SSRN, 2004
Set in India in the 1980s and '90s, this series of cases concerns the attempts by the Unilever division Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) to create, market, and distribute a detergent for India's rural poor. The upstart, low-priced Nirma detergent, manufactured by a former chemist, has overtaken HLL in the detergent market primarily because Nirma is being distributed and sold to this previously ignored segment of India's population. In this war of laundry powders, HLL must revise its traditional practices in manufacturing, marketing, and distribution pursuant to C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's theory of the worldwide four-tiered market, in which the "bottom of the pyramid" is an untapped and potentially lucrative market.
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) and Project STING C
By Patricia H. Werhane & Michael E. Gorman, Darden Case No.: UVA-E-0268-SSRN, 2004
Set in India in the 1980s and '90s, this series of cases concerns the attempts by the Unilever division Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) to create, market, and distribute a detergent for India's rural poor. The upstart, low-priced Nirma detergent, manufactured by a former chemist, has overtaken HLL in the detergent market primarily because Nirma is being distributed and sold to this previously ignored segment of India's population. In this war of laundry powders, HLL must revise its traditional practices in manufacturing, marketing, and distribution pursuant to C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's theory of the worldwide four-tiered market, in which the "bottom of the pyramid" is an untapped and potentially lucrative market.
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
Suez aims to bring water to all in Brazil
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, December 2, 2003
Suez’s subsidiary Aguas do Amazonas has successfully teamed up with French development NGO ESSOR and Brazilian NGO ADEIS to put in place the “Water for All” pilot project, demonstrating that Suez can serve poor communities and grow its formal customer base at the same time.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Procter & Gamble – PuR Water Purification Sachets
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, October 21, 2003
A complementary approach to providing piped-treated water is through treatment of drinking water directly in people’s homes. This point of use (POU) model has the advantages of cost, immediate availability and ease of distribution to reach rural areas
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Coca-Cola: The entrepreneur development program
World Business Council on Sustainble Development, March 20, 2003
Coca-Cola’s Southern Africa division, in conjunction with local bottling companies, have developed the Entrepreneur Development Program in South Africa to help new entrepreneurs enter the supply chain and profit from new sustainable business ventures.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Expanding the Playing Field: Nike's World Shoe Project, Asia
By Ted London & Heather McDonald, World Resources Institute, 2002
The case analyzes Nike's international expansion and highlights strategic and internal challenges faced by multinational companies attempting to create a foothold in emerging markets, and investigates the sustainability issues surrounding market entry into the bottom of the pyramid.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
ViaSebrae , Brazil
By Jason P. Hekel & Carlos Waack, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, June 1, 2001
ViaSebrae e-commerce model subsidizes the business to consumer segment with the profits from the businesses to business segment providing the business to consumer segment with e-commerce they could not otherwise afford.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Corpomedina: Social and Economic Development, Venezuela
By Luis Sanz & Lawrence Pratt, World Resources Institute, 2000
As part of its strategy to develop tourism in an economically depressed zone of Venezuela, Corpomedina formed an independent foundation aimed at improving the quality of life for the local population through health, cultural, and educational programs, and through the creation of micro-enterprises.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Books
From Challenge to Opportunity. The role of business in tomorrow's society
By World Business Council for Sustainable Development, February 20, 2006
Companies able to tackle issues such as poverty, climate change and population shifts are those most likely to succeed in the future. This is a view shared by eight global business leaders in a major new publication from the WBCSD. From Challenge to Opportunity sets out a "manifesto for tomorrow's global business" as defined by the Tomorrow's Leaders group of the WBCSD. It also discusses why and how four key areas of business and sustainable development need to be profitable in order to be effective.
>> More Details | created on: 06/15/2006
Multinational Corporations: A Key to Global Poverty Reduction
Global Envision, 2006
MNCs have the unmatched power and competence to reduce global poverty. Increasingly, world opinion, as well as the inclinations of their own managers and staff, urges MNCs to use that power more effectively. But MNCs lack a vehicle to make that transition in a sustainable and legitimate way.
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006
The 86% Solution: How to Succeed in the Biggest Market Opportunity of the Next 50 Years
By Vijay Mahajan & Kamini Banga, Wharton School Publishing, 2006
“The 86 percent” here is an estimate of people living in countries with per capita gross national product of less than $10,000. Of the world’s six billion-plus inhabitants, only 14 percent live in countries where this measure is over $10,000. According to Vijay Mahajan and Kamini Banga, companies can no longer afford to not pay attention to emerging economies.
>> More Details | created on: 02/07/2006
Private Sector Strategies for Providing Healthcare at the Base of the Pyramid
By John Paul, World Resources Institute, November, 2005
The report highlights a number of innovative enterprises that leverage cross-sector partnerships to provide affordable healthcare to the poor.
>> More Details | created on: 02/03/2006
Marrying Jekyll with Hyde? Transnational Enterprises, Pro-Poor Development and Sustainable Ethical Learning
By Linda Mayoux, Discussion Draft, April, 2005
Transnational Enterprises (TNEs) are an important source of direct and indirect employment creation in the global economy. Largely in response to external pressures by NGOs and consumers, there has been a growing number of Guidelines and Codes for Corporate Social Responsibility being adopted by such companies. Now, TNEs are beginning to understand that corporate social and environmental responsibility can also increase their profits and sustainability. This paper focuses on recent innovations which can contribute to a key element in seeking constructive ways forward towards this 'win-win' business case: the building of a participatory ethical learning process which can increase trust, transparency and mutual accountability.
>> More Details | created on: 02/06/2006
Capitalism at the Crossroads
By Stuart L. Hart, Wharton School Publishing, March 30, 2005
Global capitalism stands at a crossroads—facing international terrorism, worldwide environmental change, and an accelerating backlash against globalization. Today's global companies are at a crossroads, too: finding new strategies for profitable growth has never been more challenging. Both sets of problems are intimately linked, says Stuart L. Hart—and so are the solutions.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Agricultural Investment Sourcebook: Agriculture and Rural Development (Trade and Development)
World Bank, January 1, 2005
Investing to promote agricultural growth and poverty reduction is a central pillar of the World Bank’s current rural strategy, Reaching the Rural Poor (2003). One major thrust of the strategy outlines the priorities and the approaches that the public sector, private sector, and civil society can employ to enhance productivity and competitiveness of the agricultural sector in ways that reduce rural poverty and sustain the natural resource base. These actions involve a rich mixture of science, technology, people, communication, management, learning, research, capacity building, institutional development, and grassroots participation.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
DFID and the Private Sector: Working with the Private Sector to Eliminate Poverty
By International Financial Institutions Department and Policy Division's Growth & Investment Group, 2005
This booklet demonstrates the variety of DFID work in areas such as infrastructure, investment climate reform, international trade, and increasing the access of the poor to business, financial, and social services.
>> More Details | created on: 02/03/2006
Aid Reform and the Role of Enterprise
By Kurt Hoffman, Shell Foundation, 2005
In its second major report of 2005, the Shell Foundation shows how the aid industry can finally put poor country entrepreneurs at the centre of the fight against poverty. The report makes the case for reforming the aid industry by applying fundamental business principles to enhance its performance and accountability. It calls on the aid community to give poor people real choice when delivering development, which in turn can be measured against tangible targets such as the number of pro-poor enterprises supported and jobs created.
>> More Details | created on: 02/03/2006
Business Action for the MDGs: Private Sector Involvement as a Vital Factor in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals
World Bank Institute, 2005
Discusses which businesses have been involved in poverty reduction, why, how business work with the private sector, and how other business can be involved
>> More Details | created on: 02/06/2006
Enterprise Solutions to Poverty
By Kurt Hoffman & Chris West, The Shell Foundation, 2005
The report argues that enterprise and business thinking must be placed at the heart of the war on poverty if we are really going to "Make Poverty History" in 2005. The report contains the latest information about Shell Foundation pilots across the developing world and shows how the value-creating financial assets of companies such as Shell can be harnessed to provide greater social returns on investment.
>> More Details | created on: 02/07/2006
Profits with Principles: Seven Strategies for Delivering Value with Values
By Ira Jackson & Jane Nelson, Currency, June 29, 2004
At a time when unethical business practices continue to dominate the business press, PROFITS WITH PRINCIPLES offers persuasive proof that when businesses combine profit making with a concern for values and the greater good, they do better in the marketplace than those that concentrate only on the bottom line.
>> More Details | created on: 02/14/2008
Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor
By Elizabeth Dunn, Cornell University Press, June 1, 2004
The transition from socialism in Eastern Europe is not an isolated event, but part of a larger shift in world capitalism: the transition from Fordism to flexible (or neoliberal) capitalism. Using a blend of ethnography and economic geography, Elizabeth C. Dunn shows how management technologies like niche marketing, accounting, audit, and standardization make up flexible capitalismâs unique form of labor discipline. This new form of management constitutes some workers as self-auditing, self-regulating actors who are disembedded from a social context while defining others as too entwined in social relations and unable to self-manage.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty and the Threat to Global Stability
By William Lewis, University of Chicago Press, April 16, 2004
The disparity between rich and poor countries is the most serious, intractable problem facing the world today. The chronic poverty of many nations affects more than the citizens and economies of those nations; it threatens global stability as the pressures of immigration become unsustainable and rogue nations seek power and influence through extreme political and terrorist acts. To address this tenacious poverty, a vast array of international institutions has pumped billions of dollars into these nations in recent decades, yet despite this infusion of capital and attention, roughly five billion of the world's six billion people continue to live in poor countries. What isn't working? And how can we fix it?
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Unleashing Enrepreneurship: Making Business Work for the Poor
UNDP-Commission on the Private Sector and Development, 2004
In this report to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Commission on the Private Sector and Development focuses on how business can create domestic employment and wealth, free local entrepreneurial energies, and help achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
>> View Article | created on: 11/30/2005
Raising the Bar: Creating Value with the United Nations Global Compact
By Claude Fussler (editor) & Aron Cramer, et al, Greenleaf Publishing, 2004
Raising the Bar, produced by a unique team of business experts and UN agencies, is designed to fill a critical vide - poches the support of more than 1,000 organisations for the globally recognised Principles of the United Nations Global Compact and the need for this support to be translated into the day-to-day running of business to create value and improve performance.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Reaching the Rural Poor: A renewed Strategy for Rural Development
By Csaba Csaki & C. De Haan, The World Bank, 2003
Today the fight against poverty will be won or lost in rural areas, home to about 70% of the world's poor. The likelihood of achieving the Millennium Development Goals without a focus on improving the livelihoods and service accessibility of rural dwellers is low.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Building Partnerships: Collaboration Between the UN and Business
The International Business Leaders Forum, June 1, 2002
This book, a joint venture of the UN Global Compact and the UN Department of Public Information in cooperation with The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF), provides a comprehensive overview of a very significant, but not widely reported, trend occurring at the United Nations: the opening up of the organization to new types of partnerships with business.
>> View Article | created on: 11/30/2005
Development as Freedom
By Amartya Sen, Anchor Books, August 15, 2000
Development as Freedom is a general exposition of the economic ideas and analyses of Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. This brilliant and indispensable treatise compellingly analyzes the nature of contemporary economic development from the perspective of human freedom. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once the ultimate goal of economic life and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. It is a good to be enjoyed by the world's entire population. Drawing on moral and political philosophy and technical economic analysis, this work gives the nonspecialist reader powerful access to Sen's paradigm-altering vision and vividly shows how he, in the words of the Nobel Prize committee, has both "restored an ethical dimension to the discussion of economic problems" and "opened up new fields of study for subsequent generations of researchers."
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
The Nonprofit Sector and the Market: Opportunities and Challenges
Aspen Institute, August 14, 1999
The report identifies steps that could be taken to promote and guide the future evolution of business-nonprofit partnerships.
>> View Article | created on: 11/30/2005
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
By Paul Hawken & Amory Lovins, et al, Rocky Mountain Institute, 1999
For decades, environmentalists have been warning that human economic activity is exceeding the planet's limits. Of course we keep pushing those limits back with clever new technologies; yet living systems are undeniably in decline. These trends need not be in conflict—in fact, there are fortunes to be made in reconciling them. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, is the first book to explore the lucrative opportunities for businesses in an era of approaching environmental limits.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Business as Partners in Development: Creating Wealth for Countries, Companies, and Communities
The International Business Leaders Forum, 1996
Published in collaboration with the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, this publication is aimed at every level of an organisation, and seeks to stimulate consideration of the new way of doing business. In the context of three billion people rapidly taking their place in market economies, the private sector has become the principal motor of development and a growth-test of economic strength.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability
By Paul Hawken, HarperCollins Publishers, June 1, 1994
Paul Hawken, the entrepreneur behind the Smith & Hawken gardening supplies empire, is no ordinary capitalist. Hawken is on a one-man crusade to reform our economic system by demanding that First World businesses reduce their consumption of energy and resources by 80 percent in the next 50 years. As if that weren't enough, Hawken argues that business goals should be redefined to embrace such fuzzy categories as whether the work is aesthetically pleasing and the employees are having fun; this applies to corporate giants and mom-and-pop operations alike. He proposes a culture of business in which the real world, the natural world, is allowed to flourish as well, and in which the planet's needs are addressed.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005