Guest blogger Bill Kramer was, until recently, WRI’s Director of Education and Training for the Markets & Enterprise Program, and  Deputy Director of Development Through Enterprise.  He now runs Global Challenge Network, an executive education and training company. His email is wkramer@globalchallengenetwork.com.

By Bill Kramer

Michael Jensen, director of strategic web communications for the National Academies, wrote an interesting piece published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority.  While Jensen focuses on the granting of scholarly authority, his argument is equally applicable to virtually all new knowledge - practical as well as scholarly - and thus, relevant to the world of business and development.

His main point is well summarized in this, his final sentence:

(I)f scholarly output is locked away behind fire walls, or on hard drives, or in print only, it risks becoming invisible to the automated Web crawlers, indexers, and authority-interpreters that are being developed. Scholarly invisibility is rarely the path to scholarly authority.

Jensen argues that the old authority model is based on content and authority scarcity, and that led to the publishing model of the past – expensive, specialized, making the most of scarce resources.  Web 1.0 was based on organizing “king content” using “old” models, such as subscription, which assumed value in the scarcity.  Web 2.0 – Google, Flickr, YouTube, all the social networking sites – recognizes the shift from scarcity to abundance, and is thus focused on organizing and making it coherent, often through collective intelligence – cross-reference rankings, voting, linking, etc.  NextBillion.net is one such response.  

Web 3.0, he argues, will likely involve a much more robust and complex set of “reputation and authority metrics” that weave personal and institutional factors with deep sharing mechanisms, current and historical ranking of other work, and other factors into a fabric that confers authority.  

Without benefit here of extended argument, I will simply assert that our ability to solve deep-rooted issues – economic growth that is environmentally sustainable, equitable and inclusive – is similarly dependent on that authority conferred, not by exclusivity and erection of access barriers, but rather by broad, deep, and effective application of new knowledge.  In other words, by sharing and not hoarding.  Smart companies will quickly learn that their competitive advantage is derived from success in doing and not just owning.  And the doing demands learning and sharing in new ways that, while easy to understand intellectually, are stubbornly difficult to achieve in the real world.

Guest blogger Bill Kramer was, until recently, WRI’s Director of Education and Training for the Markets & Enterprise Program, and Deputy Director of Development Through Enterprise. He now runs Global Challenge Network, an executive education and training company. His email is wkramer@globalchallengenetwork.com.
By Bill Kramer

It should be a source of considerable satisfaction to WRI's Markets and Enterprise team and to the NextBillion community in general that the ideas we have all been exploring these last several years are being used as a frame of reference by senior business executives. I write this blog entry from Fontainebleau, France, at the conclusion of a one-day conference called "Understanding and Responding to Societal Expectations on Corporate Responsibility." This event launched the final Project Response report of EABIS, the European Academy of Business in Society -- a 5 year effort of multiple companies and universities, with support by the European Commission.

In a plenary session, Jean-Philippe Courtois, President, Microsoft International, and Sandy Ogg, Chief HR Officer and Member of Global Executive Committee, Unilever, both defined their companies' contributions to corporate responsibility in the framework of real business enterprises directed to low-income customers -- the next billions to benefit from business engagement that delivers accessibility to quality products, affordably (my emphasis). Both mentioned how they had to develop new products and services, and to adopt new business models to succeed.

This conference brought together EU officials, academics, and businesspeople from all over Europe. The report itself makes interesting reading, and I commend the executive summary to you. I will report a bit more on its findings in a future blog.

Yesterday, I attended "Unlimited Potential: Connecting the Next Five Billion," a presentation organized by SID-Washington's Corporate Responsibility Workgroup, USAID's Global Development Alliance, DAI and Georgetown University's Mortara Center for International Studies. The presentation featured Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Group and was hosted at the Academy for Educational Development (AED). In short, it was a brief on Microsoft's strategy for addressing the BoP and it was very insightful.

Michael Rawding, Vice President of MS's Unlimited Potential Group, delivered the speech. He explained in detail about Microsoft’s BoP strategy. I found interesting that the Unlimited Potential group is not part of the company's corporate social responsibility department, but rather a for profit division committed to delivering relevant, accessible and affordable software to the BoP. This is exactly what the BoP discourse is trying to do - get corporations to engage through their business units, not just CSR departments.

Rawding discussed how Unlimited Potential is finding avenues to foster social and economic opportunity while at the same time bringing innovative technologies such as the Classroom Computer to people living in developing countries. He acknowledged the challenges of addressing BoP markets, especially since Microsoft historically has produced software and technology for the billion people at the top of the economic pyramid.

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