Guest blogger Bill Kramer is principal of The Global Challenge Network, LLC, an executive education and training company. From 2001 through mid-2007, he worked on pro-poor business strategies with WRI. Previously, Bill founded a non-profit focusing on the relationship of knowledge to economic development and enjoyed a long career in the private sector, founding a dozen companies, most of which were in the book business.

By Bill Kramer

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the Lemelson Foundation announced the first winners of their Leapfrog Fund competition at the annual summit of Schwab social entrepreneurs on January 22 in Zurich, Switzerland. 

The Leapfrog Fund supports the transfer and adaptation of technological innovations developed by social entrepreneurs.  Rob Katz discussed the Leapfrog Fund as part of his review of The Power of Unreasonable People, and asked me to look into the details on behalf of NextBillion.net.  This year's winners are:

• Ashok Khosla, TARA India
• Sewa Lanka, Sri Lanka
• Fabio Rosa, IDEAAS, Brazil
• Carlos Simão, Instituto Sertão Vivo, Brazil
• Joe Madiath, Gram Vikas, India
• Dr. RS Arole, Comprehensive Rural Health Project, Jamkhed, India
• Maqsood Sinha & Iftekhar Enayetullah, Waste Concern, Bangladesh
• Tasneem Siddiqui, SAIBAN, Pakistan
• Thulasiraj Ravilla, Aravind Eye Hospital, India
• Martin Burt & Rainhald Deurksen, Fundación Paraguay & Fundación Visión, Paraguay

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“What Makes an Entrepreneur?” asks a World Bank study released last month. The authors found answers by conducting interviews with 400 Brazilian entrepreneurs, non-entrepreneurs and “failed” entrepreneurs on a variety of subjects that range from the obvious (Parents' level of education?) to the somewhat bizarre (Can you justify taking a bus ride without paying the fare?).

The results reveal some fascinating insights through a nature vs. nurture type lens. The authors claim that entrepreneurs tend to have better educated parents and more childhood friends/siblings that eventually became entrepreneurs. In other words, their personal influences and environment play a significant role (nurture).

The researchers also note that certain supposedly inherent traits play a role – that entrepreneurs proved to have greater cognitive abilities than non-entrepreneurs, for example. So entrepreneurship is also a product of a person’s very DNA (nature…. Although I would argue that not only is intelligence at least partially a product of one’s upbringing, but that there is a great deal of cultural bias in what even gets defined as “intelligence”).

Possibilities of an entrepreneurship gene aside, the authors do find compelling similarities between entrepreneurs in Brazil, and even failed entrepreneurs – apparently overconfidence is one common thread for the latter group. Some of the results scream wonky statistician – the study reports at one point that the entrepreneurs are on average one centimeter taller than non-entrepreneurs – but reading the paper got me thinking.

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I had an interesting meeting today, during which one of the people I was speaking with brought up a talk given by Jonathan Schwartz last August. Schwartz - the CEO of Sun Microsystems - delivers a fascinating talk over about 25 minutes during which he relates important demographic and development trends to Sun's need to develop and implement a "base of the pyramid" strategy.

(Full disclosure: during the speech, Schwartz mentions NextBillion writer and WRI Vice President Al Hammond by name, and cites data from The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid. What can I say - I'm proud that Fortune 500 CEOs are looking to Al and to our report in support of their emerging markets strategies.)