NextBillion brings together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.
Fareed Zakaria.
Fareed Zakaria will host a conversation about business solutions for the base of the pyramid. Read about this event and more on this week's Friday Roundup.
As India struggles to provide cleaner and more reliable sources of energy to its rural poor, a growing number of innovative small companies, like SBA Hydro, are selling clean energy products and services directly to India's rural 'Base of the Pyramid' (BoP) population. This series introduces a new report that looks at this market in depth.
Bridge International Academies is a new for-profit primary school franchise with big plans. It aims to build and manage low-cost schools, the kind that cost $4 per kid per month. One thing Bridge International Academies co-founder Phil Frei doesn't want to handle is cash. Mobile payments have allowed this model to meet its growth goals.
Imagine if every business or individual in a country had a convenient way of making small payments instantly to anyone, anywhere in the country. Far-fetched? Not at all, remember that mobile operators have a version of that running in every country...
I recently had the opportunity to visit a micro entrepreneur in Peru whom I had made a loan to via Kiva. This post summarizes my experience.
Check out Ashoka's "A New Alliance for Global Change" article in the September, 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review, where Ashoka CEO Bill Drayton and Full Economic Citizenship's Chief Entrepreneur Valeria Budinich. Here's how you can get a complimentary copy.
From the District of Columbia, to Colombia and back to Columbia, my new home. This is the first of what will be a weekly, Friday column offering a summary of noteworthy events, articles and resources for all of us into the Next Billion idea. Read about an upcoming TEDx event focused on the Millenium Development Goals.
For the last month or so, we've covered the different types of microfranchises as they exist today. The series has also included interviews with researchers and practitioners. In this final post, we'll cover existing support for microfranchising.
This post is second to last in a series focused on microfranchising. It focuses on the recent insights from a study conducted for the Omidyar Network by Deborah Burand of the University of Michigan.
To date, this series has focused on the mechanics of microfranchising from the entrepreneurs' s point of view. This post, second to last in this series, looks at microfranchise from the perspective of the investor.
