In my last post, I put forth a definition on scaling a BoP venture: increasing business transactions that positively affect the lives of the poor. In this post I'd like to address the importance of scaling a BoP venture.

Apoovra Shah recently brought up the issue of BoP ventures partnering with governments as a means of scaling. I'd like to take a different spin on this. I'd like to suggest that scaling BoP ventures is critical in order to influence the way governments spend their money on aid. Why is this important? Because according to William Easterly's book, The White Man's Burden, governments have spent $2.3 trillion over the past five decades on foreign aid -- and with little to show for it.

Last month, I was able to spend a week in Indonesia working with a local business owner on a BoP scale-up strategy. Over dinner one night, our conversation drifted to the subject of government aid money. My friend said to me, "Do you think we'd ever get funding from a government agency? No. We don't fit the profile."

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What's big, red and innovative all over?  No, it's not Clifford's supremely creative cousin – it's Entrepreneurship@Cornell.  A university-wide initiative, Entrepreneurship@Cornell is unique in bringing together students, faculty, alumni and outside experts across a range of sectors (hospitality, biotech, real estate, venture capital, law and more were all represented at the event I attended last week).  Other universities could learn from Cornell's approach – a truly multidisciplinary program is hard to find in academia, so kudos to the Big Red for getting this one right.

I went to Ithaca last Thursday and Friday to participate in Entrepreneurship@Cornell’s annual celebration.  The 2 day event featured a gala dinner, entrepreneur expo and – of course – panel sessions.  Thankfully, the panel session in which I participated was well organized and expertly moderated.  (No coincidence here: the organizers – Steve Wang and Sara Standish – are Johnson School students and the moderator was Mark Milstein, a heavy hitter in the BoP space.)

I thought Sara and Steve did a particularly good job finding representatives from distinct stages of the BoP continuum.  First to speak was Fernando Lima, founder of Florestas and a New Ventures entrepreneur.  Fernando holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Barcelona and has worked for many years in finance – but his passion is personal care products.  Specifically, Fernando is all about certified-organic products whose ingredients are sourced from Brazilian cooperatives.  Florestas' new line – Ikove – just attained nationwide distribution through Whole Foods, which is the holy grail for any start-up company in the organics sector.

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