On the shameless self-promotion front, I want to mention that we're co-hosting a book launch and networking event with Worldchanging here at WRI on Friday.  Full details of the event are on the World Resources Institute web site; the basic gist is that we'll have presentations from WRI and Worldchanging staff, including one from Worldchanging co-founder Alex Steffen that's gotten good reviews elsewhere on their book tour.

NextBillion readers may or may not know that I also spend some time writing for Worldchanging, and that Al Hammond has been featured over there as well.  Our new book is a 608-page compendium of tools and ideas to change the world; one reviewer described it as "the Whole Earth Catalog for the digital generation."  Come by to meet the people behind the scenes at NextBillion.net and Worldchanging.com; we'll have plenty of beverages and an open space to facilitate networking.

I've been busy lately, partly because I'm trying track a slew of recent BOP news stories appearing in the mainstream media.  (For readers who subscribe to the main NextBillion RSS feed, you may want to consider subscribing to the News Feed for daily updates).  Four stories set themselves apart from the group for the depth and breadth of coverage:

Acumen's New Model for Third-World Aid: BusinessWeek innovation editor Jessi Hempel profiles the New York-based investment fund and its founder, Jacqueline Novogratz.  There’s a special focus on Drishtee, an Acumen portfolio investment that's launching entrepreneur-owned and -run kiosks in rural India.  

Chasing the 'Base of the Pyramid': Fortune senior writer Marc Gunther focuses on SC Johnson’s entry into the Kenyan BOP market by way of Stu Hart’s BOP Learning Lab and the six-person team they sent to Kenya last summer.  He reports that the team has seeded businesses operating in Kibera, Kenya that sell pest control, cleaning, and garbage collection services.  Inevitably, there have been bumps in the road, but Gunther reports that both SCJ and Hart have taken a long-term, strategic approach.

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