News
INCONHSA: Affordable housing in Honduras 
WBCSD, February 15, 2007
The Central American country of Honduras needs to build 600,000 houses to meet current demand and must construct 40,000 new houses a year to keep up with its growing population. Yet the country’s per capita GDP is US$ 2,900, and there is little credit available; so few Hondurans can afford to build or buy a home.
The Honduran firm INCONHSA recognized the challenge and turned it into a business opportunity by figuring out how to build affordable detached homes for about US$ 9,500 per unit in a development that includes paved roads, electricity, water and sanitation.
>> More Details | created on: 02/23/2007
Mexican insurers go for 'microinsurance'
Business Week, December 14, 2006
Just as Mexico's microfinance lenders have carved out a lucrative niche making tiny loans to some of the country's smallest entrepreneurs, a handful of insurers are proving that it can be profitable to sell life insurance to the country's working poor and lower-middle class.
"The issue isn't that the population doesn't have the economic capacity, disposable income, or an insurance culture, rather we as insurance companies need to adapt to their means," said Alfredo Honsberg, chief executive of insurance company Seguros Azteca, in an interview.
>> More Details | created on: 01/12/2007
In Mexico, Banco Wal-Mart
Business Week, November 20, 2006
For years, Wal-Mart has tried to get into banking in the U.S. But so far it has come up empty-handed as everyone from rival banks to unions rose up in opposition. South of the border, though, the world's biggest retailer may soon receive a banking license, paving the way for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to offer checking and savings accounts, loans, credit cards, and more across its network of 863 outlets in 130 Mexican cities.
>> More Details | created on: 11/21/2006
Migrant remittances from the United States to Latin America to reach $45 billion in 2006, says IDB
IDB, October 18, 2006
New study estimates 12.6 million immigrants are sending home more money more frequently
>> More Details | created on: 10/20/2006
Latin America remittances support investments
By Richard Lapper , Financial Times, October 18, 2006
Latin Americans working in the United States are sending back more money to their families and investing increasing amounts in homes and small businesses, according to a study commissioned by the Inter-American Development Bank.
>> More Details | created on: 10/20/2006
Exploring business solutions for development in Latin America
WBCSD, October 9, 2006
Over the past few months, the WBCSD’s Development Focus Area explored the potential of sustainable business opportunities that are good business and benefit low-income communities – and could open a route out of poverty for many. It organized over half a dozen dialogues under the theme "Exploring business solutions for development in Latin America" in collaboration with members of its Regional Network and the Netherlands Development Organisation SNV.
>> More Details | created on: 10/13/2006
Migrants' remittances: the good and the bad
By Andres Oppenheimer, Miami Herald, September 28, 2006
When mayors of about a dozen Latin American and Caribbean cities met in Miami this week to exchange ideas about their common problems, they touched on an issue that is seldom talked about: the possible link between migration, family remittances and Latin America's rising crime rates.
>> More Details | created on: 10/20/2006
Unitus Equity Fund L.P. Invests $1,000,000 in Credex
HipanicBusiness.com, September 6, 2006
The Unitus Equity Fund L.P., a private equity fund which invests in emerging microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Asia and Latin America, today announced an investment in Credex (Grupo Crediexpress S.A. de C.V.), an MFI in Mexico. The Fund's investment of $1,000,000, its first investment in Mexico, will support Credex's work to bring financial services to more of Mexico's poor. The Unitus Equity Fund is affiliated with Unitus, Inc., a leading microfinance organization based in Redmond, Washington. Co-investing with the Unitus Equity Fund in Credex are Controladora Project S.A. de C.V., a Mexican investment fund, and several individual Mexican investors.
>> More Details | created on: 09/08/2006
What works at the top doesn’t work at the base
By Charo Quesada, IDBAmerica, August 8, 2006
Hobbled by an inadequate and often incomplete basic education, low-income people in Latin America and the Caribbean are forced to take low-skill jobs that offer few opportunities for training or advancement. Obviously, they are also a distinct disadvantage when it comes to starting and running a business. As Alejandro Espinosa of Grupo Nueva of Chile put it at the IDB conference "Building Opportunities for the Majority, “successful businesses can’t happen in failed societies.”
>> More Details | created on: 08/08/2006
Peso power brings hope to poor
By Richard Lapper and Adam Thomson, Financial Times, June 29, 2006
Every weekend Hilario Amador makes the short journey to the city centre of Zacatecas where he deposits 120 pesos with Patrimonio Hoy, a self-help building scheme run by Cemex, Mexico’s largest cement company.
The money is equal to about 20 per cent of his weekly wage at a local abattoir and it has allowed the 38-year-old to receive regular supplies of the materials he needs to tile the floor, repair the roof and build two extra rooms at his modest single-storey home nearby.
>> More Details | created on: 07/20/2006
IDB launches initiative to generate economic opportunities for majority in Latin America and the Caribbean
IDB Website, June 6, 2006
Support for innovative projects to expand low-income people’s access to housing, microfinance, infrastructure, modern technologies
>> More Details | created on: 06/08/2006
Poisonous Tree Frog Could Bring Wealth to Tribe in Brazilian Amazon
By Paulo Prada, The New York Times, May 30, 2006
CAMPINAS INDIAN RESERVE, Brazil — Fernando Katukina is chief of an indigenous tribe that lives largely without running water, electricity, or links to the world outside this remote corner of the western Amazon.
>> More Details | created on: 06/06/2006
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
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
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
Nonprofits Pursue Private Investors
By Clay Holtzman , Puget Sound Business Journal, April 2, 2006
Redmond-based Unitus Inc. recently completed a $9 million initial close on a $20 million private equity fund meant to buy stock in its microfinance partners. The new money will provide additional resources for the nonprofit's eight microfinance partners, which are located abroad and backed by Unitus-facilitated grants and loans.
>> 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
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
The tin-can antenna: A boon for third world
By Elisabetta Povoledo , International Herald Tribune, February 28, 2006
A physics research institute here is using a low-cost but effective tool to bolster communications in developing countries: the tin-can antenna.
>> 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
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
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
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
A New Way to Do Well by Doing Good
By Rachel Emma Silverman, Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2006
Making tiny loans to poor entrepreneurs in developing countries has long been a popular charitable cause, but it is now gaining traction as an investment.
>> More Details | created on: 02/07/2006
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
A Proposition to Eradicate Poverty
By Jesse Moore, November 11, 2005
This article takes an in depth look at the pros and cons of eradicating poverty through profit. The author notes we need to rebuke the idea that we are playing a zero-sum game and embrace the possibility that growth and poverty reduction, done right, are mutually reinforcing pursuits.
>> More Details | created on: 12/21/2005
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
For the Poor, Help from MBAs
By Francesca DiMeglio , Business Week Online, August 1, 2005
This article discusses how many MBAs are bringing microfinancing, business development—and eventually a consumer economy—to many impoverished Third World areas.
>> More Details | created on: 01/05/2006
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
MIT Team Seeks to Seed Developing World with $100 Laptops
By Mark Jewell, The Detroit News, April 4, 2005
Addresses MIT's efforts to bridge the digital divide by bringing laptops to children in the developing world.
>> 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
PEOPLink and CatGen: Empowering a Global Network of Artisans
By Nia Ujamaa, Digital Divide Network, December 1, 2004
Discusses the success of PEOPLink and CatGen in empowering a global network of local artisans.
>> 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
eBusiness and Sustainable Development
Digital Europe, 2003
This article investigates the changing nature of business, society, and information technology.
>> 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
The Corporate Key: Using Big Business to Fight Global Poverty
By George C. Lodge, Foreign Affairs, July 1, 2002
The authors analyze a new approach to global development addressing a global corporate alliance that brings business know-how and profit motive into play.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Shanty Town Seamstresses Fuel the Fashion Industry
By Shannon Walbran, Changemakers.net, June 1, 2002
The article addresses the success of the Coopa-Roca sewing cooperative in bringing many women out of poverty.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Beating Doubts, Droughts & Debt: Re-shaping the Economic Landscape
By Shannon Walbran, Changemakers.net, May 1, 2002
Discusses the success of Orgape in alleviating poverty by providing financial services to low income people in Brazil.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
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
The Global Information Technology Report 2001-2002: Readiness for the Networked World
Center for International Development, 2002
A report on the current and future state of information and communication technology.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Information Communications Technology for Development
UNDP Evaluation Office, September 1, 2001
Addresses Information Communication technology as a key player in development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Information and Communication Technologies and Poverty
By Charles Kenny, World Bank, July 1, 2001
This article address the importance of "Digitally enabled Development" as one of the keys to third world development.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Revolution in a Coffee Cup: Waking the Sleeping Consumer Giant
By Kris Herbst, Changemakers.net, April 1, 2001
Dicusses how Trans-fair USA has worked with the Coffee Industry to help developing country coffee producers to build self-reliance, dignity, and control over their communities, while promoting sustainable production.
>> 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
The Great Divide in the Global Village
By Bruce R. Scott, Foreign Affairs, January 1, 2001
Robust growth depends on a strong state that can enforce laws, yet many impoverished countries lack effective governance. And by strictly limiting immigration, rich countries deny the world's poor a chance to vote with their feet.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Improving Health, Fighting Poverty: The Role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
The Exchange, 2001
Addresses the power of technology in alleviating poverty but the risk of marginalizing the poor through this process.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
After the W.T.O.: Creating Jobs for the Next Millenium
By Derek Brown, Changemakers.net, February 1, 2000
This article looks at how three social entrepreneurs – in Asia, Latin America and Central Europe – are helping these small producers compete in the global economy.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Alleviating Poverty Through Technology
By Muhammad Yunus, Science Magazine, October 1, 1998
This article discusses ways of alleviating poverty through the spread of technology to the developing worlds.
>> View Article | created on: 11/18/2005
Academic Research
Rethinking organizations that serve Latin America’s mass markets: a study of AES-EDC experience in Venezuela
By Henry Gómez-Samper & Patricia Márquez, May 24, 2006
The paper examines the experience of a privately-owned public utility as it undertook to turn poor consumers who obtained power from illegal connections, into paying customers. The methods used to focus on poor communities were shaped by visionary leadership when the company was acquired by a multinational corporation. Recommendations made by operating staff ushered the experience, and helped shaped a value proposition that benefited the company, appealed to poor consumers, and led to wide-ranging organizational change.
>> More Details | created on: 05/24/2006
Is Private Education Good for the Poor?
By James Tooley, Working Paper from University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (England), June 25, 2005
Private education is often assumed to be concerned only with serving the elite or middle classes, not the poor. And unregistered or unrecognised private schools are thought to be of the lowest.
>> More Details | created on: 11/23/2005
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
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
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
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
Microfinance and Poverty Alleviation in the Caribbean: A Strategic Overview
By Jonathan G. Lashley, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 6, No. 1; , June, 2004
The following paper highlights the main issues that emerged from the results of a recent study into microfinance in the Eastern Caribbean (Lashley & Lord, 2002), of which the primary aim was to make recommendations for the best practice for successful microfinance provision.
>> More Details | created on: 01/24/2006
Rural Finance, Poverty Alleviation, and Sustainable Land Use: The Role of Credit for the Adoption of Agroforestry Systems in Occidental Honduras
By Ruerd Ruben & Luud Clercx, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 6, No. 1; , June, 2004
This paper analyzes the relationship between financial services provided by different agents, the adoption of agroforestry systems, and the implications for food security and sustainable soil management. Attention is focused on the role of rural finance in reducing risk and stabilizing household income and yields. We conclude that credit provision performs critical functions for reinforcing the resilience of rural livelihoods in less favored areas. Rural development programs in the Occidental region of Honduras have been rather reluctant to provide rural financial services.
>> More Details | created on: 01/24/2006
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
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
Factors Influencing Women Entrepreneurs of NGOs in India
By Femida Handy & Meenaz Kassam, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, July 7, 2003 (Vol. 13, Issue 2)
This article examines women entrepreneurs in the nonprofit sector in India to determine which factors influence such self-selection.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
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
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
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
To Pay or Not to Pay: Local Institutional Difference and the Viability of Rural Credit in Nicaragua
By Johan Bastianensen & Ben D'Exelle, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 4, No. 2; , September, 2002
This analysis suggests that the evaluation of credit enterprise performance should take into account differences in local institutional environments and that efforts should be made to fine-tune standard financial technology to more adverse institutional conditions. If not, the microfinance industry may tend to exclude more difficult and poorer rural areas.
>> More Details | created on: 01/24/2006
The Great Leap: Driving Innovation from the Base of the Pyramid
By Hart, Stu & Christensen, Clayton, MIT Sloan Management Review, September, 2002 (Fall 2002)
The authors illustrate their point of how and when BOP can be successful with examples of companies that are already profitably disrupting such industries as telecommunications, consumer electronics and energy production.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Why do the Poor and the Less-Educated Pay More for Long-Distance Calls?
By Hausman, Jerry A. & Sidak, J. Gregory, January 25, 2002
The paper documents that poor and less-educated customers pay more for long-distance phone calls because these customers are more apt to pay the message toll service (MTS) rates and/or other higher rates.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
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
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
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
Do the Poor Pay More? An Empirical Investigation of Price Dispersion in Food Retailing
By Hayes, Lashawn Richburg, Princeton Dept of Econ., Industrial Relations Working Paper, November 7, 2000 (No. 446)
The paper gives mixed research on the question of whether prices are higher in poor, urban neighborhoods.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
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
The Microcredit Summit's Challenge: Working Toward Institutional Financial Self-Sufficiency While Maintaining a Commitment to Serving the Poorest Families
By David S. Gibbons & Jennifer W. Meehan, Journal of Microfinance, Vol. 1, No. 1; , September, 1999
Cost-effective identification of the poor and the poorest women is essential to maximizing the effectiveness and efficiency of providing microfinance services to them. If the service is not exclusively for the poor and the poorest, it should be operated separately for them to minimize leakage to the nonpoor.
>> More Details | created on: 01/25/2006
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
Using raw materials sustainably: Natura
WBCSD, January 8, 2007
The Brazil nut is appropriate for infant nutrition as a milk and is a source of selenium, an important anti-oxidant. It is used as a medicine to treat hepatitis; it also treats dry skin and hair, and can be eaten as an appetizer. Brazil-based Natura depends on the sustainable harvesting of the Brazil nut for its products.
The Brazil nut also has an important socio-economic function. As sustenance for many families, the nut is used as an appetizer, and Brazil nut meal, a byproduct rich in selenium, can be used in cereals and other foods. The locally processed oil is sold to cosmetics companies.
In 2000, Brazil-based Natura started its program to sustainably use raw materials from Brazilian biodiversity. For example, Natura uses the Brazil nut in products for dry skin and hair (the Ekos line).
>> More Details | created on: 01/12/2007
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
Focusing on the Triple Bottom Line: Natura
WBCSD, October 12, 2005
Brazil has a rich natural heritage, one-third of the world's remaining tropical forests, as is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world. Natura’s Ekos Challenge aims to create a model to allow the sustainable use of natural resources, generating good business opportunity and social development for traditional communities and for Natura and its partners.
>> More Details | created on: 07/13/2006
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
Natura
By Brazil BCSD, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2005
Natura’s Ekos Challenge aims to create a model to allow the sustainable use of natural resources, generating good business opportunity and social development for traditional communities and for Natura and its partners.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
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
Distributed solar energy in Brazil: Fabio Rosa’s approach to social entrepreneurship
By Yerina Mugica, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, August 2, 2004
Approximately 25 million people in Brazil do not have access to electricity. Fabio Rosa, a local social entrepreneur, is aiming to fill this need through innovative distributed solar energy systems.
In the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, for example, about 150,000 people remain isolated from the electric power networks. There are no plans in place to provide these people with access to conventional electrical services.
>> More Details | created on: 07/14/2006
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
A development bank’s success with micro-finance: Banco do Nordeste’s CrediAmigo
By Yerina Mugica, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, April 16, 2004
An estimated 15.7 million people in Brazil work in the informal economy as micro-entrepreneurs, outnumbering formal sector entrepreneurs by more than three to one. Of these informal micro-entrepreneurs, 93% run profitable businesses. However, 84% of these micro-entrepreneurs do not have access to credit.
In November 1996 at a meeting in Fortaleza, the World Bank and Banco do Nordeste, a development bank formed to support growth in northeastern Brazil, decided to initiate a collaborative process to jointly implement a local development program based on the idea of micro-credit. Motivated by the fact that small informal companies – family owned and small properties - were not being served by the Bank's financing activities due to the restrictive regulation of Brazil's Banking Systems, Banco do Nordeste and the World Bank decided to develop and launch a pilot low-income bank, targeting micro-entrepreneurs from informal sectors.
>> More Details | created on: 07/14/2006
ABN AMRO's Real Microcredito: A Multinational Bank’s Entry into the Micro-credit Market
By Yerina Mugica & Federico Moura , April 15, 2004
An estimated 15.7 million people in Brazil work in the informal economy as micro-entrepreneurs, outnumbering formal sector entrepreneurs by more than three to one. Of these informal micro-entrepreneurs 93% run profitable businesses, 84% of whom do not have access to credit. It is estimated that 50% of these micro-entrepreneurs would apply for a micro-credit loan if they had access to banking services. This figure represents a potential of US$ 3.7 billion per year in loans.
>> More Details | created on: 07/14/2006
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
CrediAmigo , Brazil
By Yerina Mugica, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, 2004
Highlights the overwhelming success of CrediAmigo at serving almost 70% of the rural and industrial loans in it region of Brazil.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Real Microcredito , Brazil
By Frederico Moura & Yerina Mugica, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2004
ABN AMRO Real Microcredito is providing self-sustaining micro-finance programs to help Brazil's poor:
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Solar Energy Distribution in Brazil
By Yerina Mugica, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, 2004
Approximately 25 million people in Brazil do not have access to electricity. Fabio Rosa, a local social entrepreneur, is aiming to fill this need through innovative distributed solar energy systems.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
E+Co's , Nicaragua
By Scott Baron & George Weinmann, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, December 12, 2003
Discusses the success of Technosol in providing clean and affordable energy to the poor in Nicaragua.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
Casas Bahia , Brazil
By Sami Foguel & Andrew Wilson, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, December 12, 2003
Through a unique business model, Casas Bahia has developed an innovative way to bring consumer products to the poor in Brazil.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
CEMEX , Mexico
By Ajit Sharma & Sharmilee Mohan, SidharthSingh, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, December 12, 2003
Discusses how Cemex profitably provides housing for the poor in Mexico.
>> View Article | created on: 11/22/2005
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
PRODEM FFP's Multilingual Smart ATMs for Microfinance , Bolivia
By Roberto Hernandez, World Resources Institute Digital Dividend, August 1, 2003
Discusses how PRODEM FFP is delivering financial services to rural populations in Bolivia.
>> 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
The Development Impact of Remittances in Latin America
By Pablo Fajnzylber and J. Humberto López, World Bank, November 2, 2006
The report analyzes the characteristics of households that are remittance recipients and how these characteristics affect the poverty-reducing impact of observed remittances flows. It also devotes significant attention to the macroeconomic impact of these flows, and explores policies and interventions aimed at enhancing the development impact of remittances in the region.
>> More Details | created on: 11/02/2006
Sending Money Home. Leveraging the Development Impact of Remittances
Inter-American Development Bank, October 18, 2006
Remittances sent to Latin America and the Caribbean from all parts of the world are expected to be more than $60 billion in 2006, surpassing both the amount of official development assistance and foreign direct investment to the region. Money transfer costs have been reduced by over 50 percent. Remittances constitute one of the broadest and most effective poverty alleviation programs in the world, reaching approximately 20 million households in the LAC region alone.
>> More Details | created on: 10/20/2006
The Market of the Majority: the BoP Opportunity Map of Latin America and the Caribbean
World Resources Institute, July 5, 2006
The majority of the world ’s people subsist on incomes which do not fully meet basic human needs. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the majority comprise 70%of the region ’s population, around 360 million people; they are the base of the economic pyramid (BOP). The BOP is far too large to be ignored —as a market, as a matter of equity,and as a potential threat to social stability.
>> More Details | created on: 07/05/2006
Building Opportunity for the Majority
By Inter-American Development Bank, May 30, 2006
The IDB's Building Opportunity for the Majority initiative focuses on improving conditions for low-income population in Latin America and the Caribbean by looking at that vast majority through a new lens. People living and working at the base of the region’s economic pyramid need to be seen as what they really are —consumers, producers, partners, creators of wealth.
In recent years, countries throughout the region have made significant advances in nurturing democracy, macro-economic stability, and legal and regulatory reform. Yet some 360 million people –70 percent of the region's population-- live on less than $300 a month, measured in purchasing power parity dollars. The benefits of growth need to reach the majority if the region is to progress on a stable and sustainable path.
>> More Details | created on: 06/16/2006
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
Inequality and Poverty in Africa in an Era of Globalization: Looking Beyond Income to Health and Education
By David E. Sahn & Stephen D. Younger, Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program Working Paper No. 194 , November 25, 2005
This paper describes changes over the past 15-20 years in non-income measures of wellbeing - education and health - in Africa.
>> More Details | created on: 03/20/2006
Agricultural Growth and the Poor: An Agenda for Development
World Bank, June 1, 2005
The majority of the world's poor depend directly or indirectly on agriculture. Despite the strong linkages between broad-based agricultural growth and poverty reduction, international support to agriculture sharply declined from the late 1980s. The need to raise agriculture's prominence in the development agenda has never been greater. This book seeks to articulate the World Bank's Rural Strategy on agriculture to the wider development community. It provides decision makers with the rationale for supporting agriculture by presenting the lessons learned on the policies, institutions, and priority investments that can sustain pro-poor agricultural growth.
>> View Article | created on: 11/30/2005
The Profile of Microfinance in Latin America in 10 Years: Vision and Characteristics
By María Otero and Beatriz Marulanda, Accion International, April, 2005
The study examines the state of the microfinance industry in Latin America today and looks at the challenges and opportunities in the coming decade. It also provides recommendations about the role of banks, specialized microfinance institutions, NGOs, regulators, donors and governments in assuring a healthy industry with an ever-broader outreach. These analyses are based on statistical data from approximately 100 MFIs and interviews with 28 microfinance players.
>> More Details | created on: 05/11/2006
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
Technology, Globalization and the Poor: Summary of the Global Knowledge for Development Virtual Conference
By John Paul, World Resources Institute, December 1, 2004
Can technology help make globalization work for the poor? Can the private sector use ICT to create, as CK Prahalad argues, "sustainable win-win scenarios where the poor are actively engaged and, at the same time, the companies providing products and services to them are profitable"? During four weeks in November and December 2004, GKD’s Technology, Globalization and the Poor online conference attempted to explore these questions. This PDF document is a searchable compilation of the discussion.
>> View Article | created on: 11/30/2005
Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists: Unleashing the Power of Financial Markets to Create Wealth and Spread Opportunity
By Raghuram Rajan & Luigi Zingales, Crown Business, October 1, 2004
Capitalism’s biggest problem is the executive in pinstripes who extols the virtues of competitive markets with every breath while attempting to extinguish them with every action.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
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
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
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
How to Change the World: Social Enrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas
By David Bornstein, Oxford University Press, December 1, 2003
What business entrepreneurs are to the economy, social entrepreneurs are to social change. They are, writes David Bornstein, the driven, creative individuals who question the status quo, exploit new opportunities, refuse to give up--and remake the world for the better.
>> 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
A New Financial System for Poverty Reduction and Growth
By Biagio Bossone & Abdourahmane Sarr, International Monetary Fund, October 1, 2002
The proposal draws on the premise that the availability of stable demand deposits for bank lending, in the process of which inside money is created, does not require any act of intentional saving. The authors argue that separating inside money creation from lending, and distributing it on a nonlending basis to depositors through specialized payment service institutions, could broaden access to financial resources, fuel non-inflationary, demand-led growth; and foster financial deepening, diversification, and stability.
>> More Details | created on: 02/07/2006
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
Rapid Assessment Process
By James Beebe, Rowman and Little, 2001
Rapid Assessment Process (RAP) has gone under many names but invariably uses the techniques of fieldwork and ethnography in a telescoped manner to provide solid, field-based research findings for use by policymakers and program planners. It uses an emic perspective, a team of researchers, triangulation of research findings, and iterative process to produce high-quality research in a fraction of the time taken by traditional ethnography.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Mainstreaming Microfinance: How Lending to the Poor Began, Grew and Came of Age in Bolivia
By Elisabeth Rhyne, ACCION, 2001
The history of the microfinance movement in Latin America is brought to life through the lens of the Bolivian experience in Mainstreaming Microfinance. Microcredit in Bolivia grew and became successful in only a decade, lifting an enormous segment of the country's population into the financial mainstream in the process. Drawing on participant interviews, Elisabeth Rhyne, details how Bolivia's special breed of social entrepreneurs found the keys to unlock the huge unmet demand of informal clients.
>> More Details | created on: 03/13/2006
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
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
Whose Reality Counts?: Putting the First Last
By Robert Chambers, ITDG Publishing, 1997
In this sequel to Rural Development: Putting the Last First Robert Chambers argues that central issues in development have been overlooked, and that many past errors have flowed from domination by those with power. Development professionals now need new approaches and methods for interacting, learning and knowing. Through analyzing experience – of past mistakes and myths, and of the continuing methodological revolution of PRA (participatory rural appraisal) – the author points towards solutions.In many countries, urban and rural people alike have shown an astonishing ability to express and analyze their local, complex and diverse realities that are often at odds with the top-down realities imposed by professionals.
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
2025: Scenarios of Us and Global Society Reshaped by Science and Technology
By Joseph Coates & John Mahaffie, et al, Oakhill Press, September 1, 1996
Tapping the worlds of science and technology, this penetrating look at the years ahead paints a fascinating picture you're sure to enjoy. Looking backward from the year 2025, fifteen scenarios reflect a well-focused view of what life will be like in the United States as well as other societies (both affluent and less prosperous).
>> More Details | created on: 11/30/2005
Access of the poor to health care in Ecuador: Experiences with User Fee Schemes
By David H. Collins & Mercy Balarezo, USAID Bur. for Africa Ofc. of Sustainable Development, March, 1996
>> View Article | created on: 02/13/2006
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
The New World of Microenterprise Finance: Building Healthy Financial Institutions for the Poor
By Maria Otero & Elisabeth Rhyne, ACCION , 1994
The new world of microfinance encourages institutions to achieve larger scale and reach economic self-sufficiency by linking to the formal financial sector. This book explores the major elements underlying this approach to microenterprise finance, and evaluates various methodologies to provide financial services to the poor. The final section is devoted to case studies of Bank Rakyat Indonesia, BancoSol (Bolivia), the Association of Solidarity Groups (Colombia) and the Kenya Rural Enterprise Program.
>> More Details | created on: 03/13/2006