The traditional talent support approach for base of the pyramid (BoP) projects has been a sending model: workers/professionals from the developed world are sent by an organization to a developing country to manage a local project.

The American Peace Corps was established with the intent of sending American volunteers in "helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women." Large multinational corporations have for decades sent their professionals from the developed world to start/manage local offices in developing countries.

However, the sending model can be very costly and be met with significant challenges. Studies have shown that international assignments can cost three to five times an assignee's host country salary per year. This is primarily due to cost of travel, relocation, and cost of living allowances. Outside of cost, there are also a number of other challenges for expatriates working at the BoP.

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Not yet.  That was the first message I heard at Social Capital Markets today, as I approached the registration table; they weren’t ready for me yet.  In fact, they weren’t ready for me, nor were they ready for the 20 other people who had queued up early.  If there’s any indication of interest in a conference or event, it’s usually the line of people arriving 2 or 3 hours early.  (No, they weren’t giving away iPhones.)  Read my SoCap08 conference preview here for some context.

When the table finally opened, I was greeted by a familiar face – Meredith Lobel, now a second year MBA student at Harvard Business School and formerly a tried-and-true changemaker with Ashoka.  She’s volunteering here at SoCap08.

Two hours later, the excitement hasn’t died down; in fact, it has steamrolled.  Thus far, I’ve run into other base of the pyramid and social enterprise veterans including Jocelyn Wyatt of IDEO, Margot Brandenburg of Rockefeller Foundation, Dev Appanah from ChangeFusion, Pradeep Suthram from the Social Stock Exchange and Ray Cheung from New Ventures.  I’m sure more will be filing in as the day continues.  (In fact, as I wrote that sentence, David Auerbach and Elmira Bayrasli from Endeavor took seats behind me, and I noticed Ted London across the room.)

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Monday afternoon sessions just kicked off with the panels on each of the three tracks here at SoCap08. The "Social Entrepreneur Track" is of special interest to me, as it concernes the tools and skills needed to turn social entrepreneurs into sustainable and scalable organizations that can scale and successfully serve the poor.

Paraphrasing Moses Lee in one of his recent posts, the questions is how to turn will to serve the poor into business skills to do so in a sustainable and scalable manner.

The first panel in this track was on "Building a Business Plan", featuring panelists Kevin Braithwaite, from RootSpace, a business incubator based out of Lebanon and Kirsten Gagnaire, an advisor with the Social Enterprise Group.

A quick raise of hands at the start of the panel shows what could be an accurate diagnostic of this sector: When asked how many in the room were "early stage social entrepreneurs", around 80% of the room rose hands. A few minutes later Kirsten asked how many were currently functioning organizations and only a third of the initial hands went up this time.

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