NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - Education

Two Ideas for SEKN - The Social Enterprise Knowledge Network

Francisco Noguera — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:58:39 -0400

The Social Enterprise Knowledge Network (SEKN) brings together a number of Latin America academic institutions interested in exploring the concept of social enterprise and market-based solutions to poverty. Last week the network convened for a research colloquium in Harvard Business School to share the major findings of their upcoming publication titled Inclusive Business in Iberoamerica: Challenges and Opportunities.

It was an interesting venue in which I had the opportunity to learn about thriving BoP business models in Latin America like Cruzsalud in Venezuela, which is bringing high-quality healthcare services to the poor of Caracas. It was also exciting to meet and talk to very interesting people like Nancy Barry and Michael Chu, surely two of the most influential characters of the microfinance revolution. Interestingly, both have moved on from microfinance to engage in the broader BoP/ Social Enterprise space. Stay tuned for upcoming posts in which I'll summarize my conversations with both of them and their current ventures.

I would like to use the rest of this post to present two simple ideas that I believe could be of use to SEKN, as it enters its new research cycle. In particular, I see great opportunities for the network to more effectively deliver its messages and findings while also turning their academic research into action, by further engaging with students and practitioners in the countries where the network is present.

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Doing Business with the Poor

Joseph Bornstein — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:26:22 -0400

In the race to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, it is critical to examine all tools at our disposal to alleviate poverty. The greatest untapped resource is the enormous potential, in the form of investment and innovation, of the private sector. And the success of any private enterprise with the poor depends on a dialogue and often collaboration with governments.

United Nations Development Programme's new report Creating Value for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor offers suggestions for governments and the private sector to better develop markets that engage the poor on the demand side as clients and customers, and on the supply side as producers, employees and business owners. Its heart lies in 50 commissioned case studies by researchers largely from developing countries, including three cases from India. These studies examine businesses that have often worked with governments to successfully include the poor.

Countries such as India can take concrete steps to facilitate more inclusive business models - from raising awareness about the opportunities of doing business with the poor to removing constraints in the market environment. Moreover, governments can strengthen their own capacity to collaborate with the private sector, and combine traditional aid and subsidies with private sector approaches so that the poorest of the poor can ultimately become integrated into the formal financial and other sectors.

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Youth Entrepreneurship: Business Development Beyond 2010

Joseph Bornstein — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:02:06 -0400

Entrepreneurs in South Africa have been encouraged to look for business opportunities for 2010 and beyond.

Malose Kekana, chief executive officer of Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF) said entrepreneurs need to be educated and informed about businesses they venture into. Kekana was speaking at the 5^th Annual Entrepreneurship Development Conference (EDC) and Business Development Exhibition held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre last week.

This year's theme: "Youth Entrepreneurship for 2010 and beyond: Unlocking, unleashing and Empowerment" is an active campaign to promote entrepreneurship among the youth. He said last year's conference was aimed at identifying opportunities created by the 2010 FIFA World Cup platform's programmes and projects.

"The 2010 World Cup is the place to be at for entrepreneurs particularly in the catering, information technology and transportation sectors," said Kekana. Kekana said the conference was both a learning experience and platform to exchange ideas.

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The Need for Academic Entrepreneurship

Joseph Bornstein — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:49:22 -0400

The development of science and technology (S&T) in Malaysia has been policy-driven and strategically triggered by the government. This is not an anomaly in any developing economy; however, based on findings of the National Survey of Research and Development conducted by the Malaysian Science and Technology Information Centre, Malaysia seems slow in the S&T development process compared to its East Asian counterparts such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China and India.

Perhaps, one of the differentiating factors between Malaysia and other East Asian countries is the level of academic entrepreneurship in the national innovation system. The fact is, even the development of the national innovation system has been policy-driven.

How has this policy-driven approach been effective in enhancing academic entrepreneurship in higher education institutions and the national innovation system?

In the last two decades, various programmes and initiatives were undertaken to facilitate the nation's transition from a production-based to an innovation-based economy, beginning with the transformation towards becoming a developed society through Vision 2020 in 1991 and the re-focusing of efforts on the development of a knowledge-based economy after the Asian financial crisis.

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EcoTourism's New Wave

Joseph Bornstein — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:12:26 -0400

David Aabo is en route from Peru to New York City after having spent much of the last few years in the South American country investigating opportunities for development that might help local entrepreneurs build a sustainable regional economy.

Like many dedicated surfers, Aabo views the world through the prism of a surfboard stoked on visions of exotic destinations and epic waves. So single-minded, this breed has sometimes derisively been dubbed "surf colonialists" -- following an all too familiar pattern of discovering a wave, declaring ownership and moving on, bringing waves of tourists behind them.

During his own travels as a U.S. Peace Corps worker, Aabo observed surfers passing through the fishing town of Lobitos in northern Peru without contributing much to the local economy other than to stop for gas and perhaps buy lunch. Aabo had an epiphany: Why not create a surf camp for surfers with a conscience?

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Chennai's School for Entrepreneurs

Joseph Bornstein — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:09:40 -0400

Sustainability of projects is important for social service sector organisations to work efficiently. And, with the management of the sector becoming more complex each day, the Centre for Social Initiative and Management (CSIM), started in 2001, has been providing training for would-be ‘social entrepreneurs'.

The philosophy is simple enough as the co-ordinator of CSIM at Chennai, Latha Suresh, explains: "There are many NGOs doing good work in many areas. But they do not manage to tap the resources available from government and industry. Leadership training and management skills are essential for these NGOs to serve a larger group of people."

Many workers in the social sector are taking this seriously. Buzzwords like ‘soft skills', ‘stakeholder management', etc., are getting heard not just in corporate boardrooms as NGOs are seeking means to expand beyond their current capacities to ensure they have a larger impact.

"It is not a ‘scaling up'. I would call it a ‘scaling out' as NGOs want to replicate their successful models in other pockets. We help them achieve this by training them on the essentials of social management," Ms. Suresh says.

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Warning: Habits May Be Good for You

Joseph Bornstein — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:06:04 -0400

A FEW years ago, a self-described "militant liberal" named Val Curtis decided that it was time to save millions of children from death and disease. So Dr. Curtis, an anthropologist then living in the African nation of Burkina Faso, contacted some of the largest multinational corporations and asked them, in effect, to teach her how to manipulate consumer habits worldwide.

Dr. Curtis, now the director of the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, had spent years trying to persuade people in the developing world to wash their hands habitually with soap. Diseases and disorders caused by dirty hands - like diarrhea - kill a child somewhere in the world about every 15 seconds, and about half those deaths could be prevented with the regular use of soap, studies indicate.

But getting people into a soap habit, it turns out, is surprisingly hard.

To overcome this hurdle, Dr. Curtis called on three top consumer goods companies to find out how to sell hand-washing the same way they sell Speed Stick deodorant and Pringles potato chips.

She knew that over the past decade, many companies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors - habits - among consumers. These habits have helped companies earn billions of dollars when customers eat snacks, apply lotions and wipe counters almost without thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set of daily cues.

"There are fundamental public health problems, like hand washing with soap, that remain killers only because we can't figure out how to change people's habits," Dr. Curtis said. "We wanted to learn from private industry how to create new behaviors that happen automatically."

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Confederation of Indian Industry focuses on Skill Development

Joseph Bornstein — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:09:18 -0400

Prof. Prahalad is certain about the potential for India to be the home for at least 30 of the Fortune 100 firms; to increase the country's share in global trade; become a source of global innovations with new businesses, technologies and business models; and become the world's benchmark on how to cope with diversity.

Advocating entrepreneurial transformation, the document insists that folding the future in rather than extrapolating the past is fundamental.
Taking small and clear steps - some of them may be experimental - with a sense of urgency and purpose is essential, it states.

As regards the vision itself for India, the six elements that Prof. Prahalad proposes are: shift from abject poverty to income inequality; shift from income levels to life style measurement; changing the price-performance envelope; shift from low tech solution to universal access to high technology solutions; provisioning of products and jobs for ecological vitality; and focus on good governance.

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Widow Entrepreneurs of Gujarat Working to Earn a Decent Living

Joseph Bornstein — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:26:57 -0400

Around 2,000 women meeting on the city's outskirts had something in common: poverty, business plans, widowhood. And an unfounded fear of earning big. When Hina Shah, director of the International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Career Development, or ICECD, asked how many wanted to earn more than Rs25,000 a month, none raised a hand. "My first priority is to make a decent living," says Ameenaben. "We are poor people.

How can we hope to make so much money?" That's exactly what ICECD hopes to make them do. The centre has been organizing training programmes in entrepreneurship for poor women and youngsters from rural areas since 1986, in India and 62 other developing nations. Over the past three years, it has trained more than 7,000 widows in Gujarat. On Friday, it organized what it calls the first ever meet of "widow entrepreneurs".

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Bridging The Global Digital Divide, One Laptop At A Time

Joseph Bornstein — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:52:02 -0400

On May 20, the non-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program unveiled the second version of its XO laptop, which is designed to bring affordable, modern technology to children in developing countries. In April, Intel announced its next-generation Classmate PC, which targets the same market. Meanwhile, Microsoft has been tweaking its Windows XP operating system for these educational devices, which also run on the open source Linux operating system. Experts at Wharton say that the focus on third world countries is promising, but they question whether these efforts will be effective.

One thing is certain, however: The third world is the next frontier for technology companies and non-profit organizations alike. The goal: Bridge the global digital divide that separates wealthy and poor countries. Non-profits such as One Laptop per Child see technology as a way to improve education. Meanwhile, technology companies see a good cause and billions of potential customers. But questions abound. Are laptops more important than other needs, such as clean water? At what price are these laptops "affordable" in the developing world? What are the total costs associated with supporting these devices and connecting them to the Internet? And do these devices improve learning?