Many of you have noticed that Professor Aneel Karnani's post, Mirage at the Bottom of the Pyramid, has remained at the top of NextBillion.net's home page for the last 48 hours or so. This is no technical glitch - the moderators made an editorial decision to let it stick there for a day or two, since it was one of the first times a serious BOP critic has made his or her case on NextBillion.

I first caught wind of Professor Karnani's paper a few weeks ago, when it was in draft (read: not bloggable) form. I read it with great interest, and found myself agreeing with him on many points but disagreeing on many others. My boss and known BOP expert Al Hammond will post to this space later this week with an "official" response.

In the meantime, you can still read and comment on Karnani's paper - and I would highly encourage anyone truly interested in the BOP hypothesis to do so. As an idea becomes a movement, disagreement grows over the movement's direction and purpose. Perhaps that's where the BOP hypothesis is trending. For those of us interested in the BOP - from an academic, professional, or casual point of view - Karnani's paper is required reading. Not only that, it's only available via NextBillion. So get in on the ground floor now, and decide where you stand on Karnani's points. Comments remain open - tell us what you think.

Next year microfinance celebrates its 30th birthday (Of course, that depends on who you ask). Beginning when Dr. Muhammad Yunus, an American trained economist from Bangladesh, experimented by lending money to 42 women so that they could buy bamboo for making and selling stools, microfinance has transformed throughout the decades, becoming a global industry and a pillar of international development. According to the Microcredit Summit Campaign, a whopping 92 million people have received microloans, a number that has attracted significant attention from more than just the do-gooders involved in international development. So it should have come as no surprise when The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that a new player has entered the arena of microfinance: the microfinance fund. Funding for microfinance has traditionally come from charities and government-aid organizations, the Journal notes. “Now, an increasing number of private funds are steering capital to microfinance -- and demanding a return, albeit a modest one in single digits, on their investments. By doing so, the funds hope to boost microfinance's reach and efficiency, while also drawing more capital from investors.”

Is it my imagination or are targeted remittances the next leap in private sector-led development? Enterprises large and small like SMART Communications and FirstMile Solutions have considered implementing programs to tap into this over $170 billion a year industry. But one local NGO, PEOPLink, has already launched a preliminary version of this service- Paramipueblo.com - that takes advantage of this growing field of possibilities. I had a chance to interview the organization's founder, Daniel Salcedo, earlier this summer for a great discussion on his remittance site, the philosophy behind the innovative CatGen software and where the worlds of the ICT sector and the BOP collide.