items sorted by publication date
Evidence of Microfinance’s Contribution to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals 
By Christopher Dunford, Freedom from Hunger, November 12, 2006
Can sustainable microfinance increase outreach and impact large number of poor?
>> More Details | created on: 10/27/2006
A Dime a Day: The Possibilities and Limits of Private Schooling in Pakistan
By TAHIR ANDRABI, JISHNU DAS & ASIM IJAZ KHWAJA , World Bank, November 1, 2006
This paper looks at the private schooling sector in Pakistan, a country that is seriously behind schedule in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Using new data, the authors document the phenomenal rise of the private sector in Pakistan and show that an increasing segment of children enrolled in private schools are from rural areas and from middle-class and poorer families.
>> More Details | created on: 12/07/2006
Microfinance as Business 
By David Roodman and Uzma Qureshi, Center for Global Development, October 13, 2006
CGD research fellow David Roodman and Uzma Qureshi analyze microfinance institutions (MFIs) as businesses, asking how some succeed in covering costs, earning returns, attracting capital, and scaling up.
>> More Details | created on: 11/10/2006
Microfinance as Business
By David Roodman and Uzma Qureshi, Center for Global Development, October 13, 2006
CGD research fellow David Roodman and Uzma Qureshi analyze microfinance institutions (MFIs) as businesses, asking how some succeed in covering costs, earning returns, attracting capital, and scaling up. They draw on existing literature and interviews with industry players and academics. Key microfinance business challenges include building volume, keeping loan repayment rates high, retaining customers, and minimizing scope for fraud.
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2007
The Innovation Sandbox
By C.K. Prahalad, Strategy+Business, October, 2006
To create an impossibly low-cost, high-quality new business model, start by cultivating constraints.
>> More Details | created on: 10/06/2006
A Theory of Fringe Stakeholder-Driven Innovation
By Stu Hart, September 22, 2006
Doing business at the base of the pyramid (BoP) burst onto the scene a few years back as the latest phenomenon. But where is the movement these days? What strides have been made? What have been the successes and failures - and why? Stu Hart provided an update on where the base of the pyramid movement stands to UM students and faculty at his talk Sept. 21 for the WDI Global Impact Speaker Series.
Link to ICOS Presentation
>> More Details | created on: 10/25/2006
Mirage at the Bottom of the Pyramid: How the private sector can help alleviate poverty
By Aneel Karnani, August, 2006
Poor people – at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) – represent a very attractive market opportunity. The ‘BOP proposition’ argues that selling to the poor can simultaneously be profitable and help eradicate poverty. This is at best a harmless illusion and potentially a dangerous delusion. This paper shows that the BOP argument is riddled with fallacies, and proposes an alternative perspective on how the private sector can help alleviate poverty. Rather than focusing on the poor as consumers, we need to view the poor as producers. The only way to alleviate poverty is to raise the real income of the poor.
>> More Details | created on: 08/17/2006
Targeting the Poorest in Microfinance: Poverty Outreach of BDP ultrapoor programme
By Proloy Barua & Munshi Sulaiman, BRAC Research and Evaluation Division and Aga Khan Foundation Canada, August, 2006
Despite the general consensus that microfinance does not reach the poorest; recent evidence suggests that nearly 15% of microfinance clients in Bangladesh are among the poorest. So, BDP ultra poor are those struggling members of existing village organization (VO) or very poor households in a village who with some additional support can more fully participate and benefit from microfinance services. This study attempts to assess the targeting effectiveness of the BDP ultra poor programme by measuring relative poverty of BDP ultra poor.
>> More Details | created on: 10/20/2006
Working Papers: China's BOP Energy and Telecom Markets
By Changming Yan, NextBillion.net, August 1, 2006
Changming Yan, the Cameron Speth Intern at WRI in 2006, produced two working papers on China. The first details how methane generating pits might make a good BOP businesses, while the second examines BOP cell phone markets. Both are working papers, and the author invites comments, questions, suggestions, and criticism.
>> More Details | created on: 02/19/2008
From Poverty, Opportunity: Putting the Market to Work for Lower Income Families
The Brookings Institution, July 31, 2006
This report describes how public and private leaders have a substantial, and widely overlooked, opportunity today to help lower income families get ahead by bringing down the inflated prices they pay for basic necessities, such as food and housing.
>> More Details | created on: 07/31/2006
Technologies and Business Models that work in developing countries
By James Koch, May 26, 2006
The innovative adaption of advanced and "appropriate technologies" in developing countries offers valuable insight into the need for new design parameters to increase the diffusion of technological innovations to the poor. This adoption process also highlights how the challenges of infrastructure and distribution can be overcome, as well as how prevailing business models can be adapted to foster market creation at the bottom of the pyramid.
>> More Details | created on: 06/13/2006
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
Hybrid Value Chains: Social Innovations and the Development of the Small Farmer Irrigation Market in Mexico New Entry
By Valeria Budinich & Kimberly Manno Reott, Social Science Research Network, March 1, 2006
The 'Hybrid Value Chain' model is systematically transforming the relationships between the business and citizen sectors. At the core of this approach is the assumption that many social innovations are relevant to pioneering businesses at the 'Base of the Pyramid' and that the social entrepreneurs who have developed these innovations are natural partners for these businesses.
>> More Details | created on: 05/14/2007
A grassroots approach to emerging-market consumers
By Christopher P. Beshouri, The McKinsey Quarterly, 2006
By tapping into local networks, companies can serve low-income markets profitably, delivering significant value to shareholders while creating the essential market infrastructure for economic development in the neediest communities.
>> More Details | created on: 07/17/2007
Building Linkages for Competitive and Responsible Entrepreneurship
By Jane Nelson, January 1, 2006
This paper provides a framework for categorizing six different models of multi-sector partnership and collective corporate action. It illustrates examples of existing initiatives and offers recommendations for increasing their scale and effectiveness.
>> More Details | created on: 10/31/2007
Governance and getting the private sector to provide better water and sanitation services to the urban poor
By GORDON MCGRANAHAN & DAVID SATTERTHWAITE, Human Settlements Programme, 2006
The paper finds that the principles and governance tools required to get private providers to improve provision to the urban poor are very similar to those needed to improve public provision. While there is no single model of good water and sanitation governance, and no reason to favour private providers, good local governance is critical to getting the best out of private as well as public providers.
>> More Details | created on: 01/12/2007
Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy in Central Asian Transition Economies: Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis
By Fred Luthans & Elina S. Ibrayeva, Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1, January, 2006
In both quantitative and qualitative field studies, the self-efficacy of entrepreneurs in the transition economies of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is examined. Using a social cognitive framework, the complex interaction among these entrepreneurs' personal characteristics, environment, and self-efficacy is analyzed by structural equation modeling.
>> More Details | created on: 02/02/2006