Guest blogger Paul Hudnut is an entrepreneur, advisor and teacher. He helped start EnviroFit International, and teaches at Colorado State University. Hudnut writes a blog, What's a BOPreneur?, where this post first appeared.

By Paul Hudnut

Allen Hammond recently hosted a blog series on scaling BOP businesses on NextBillion. In it, he proposed that extra effort is needed to scale social enterprises. It is worth reading. Hammond admits that the "numbers haunt"him when it comes to scaling BOP enterprises. Participation by a few well-intentioned, experimental MNC's, social entrepreneurs and investors is not going to be enough to change the world. Pace is a problem. What is needed, Hammond says, is strategies to transform entire sectors (health care, telecom, etc.).

Derek Newberry had asked me to join the other bloggers in commenting on this series of posts, but I was unable to do so at the requested time. He got some diverse input from others, and I will try not to repeat what they have already said. It is an important, perhaps watershed discussion. So here goes with three points that may be useful in thinking about this challenge of scalability.

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A dear friend recently brought up an interesting point when commenting a book we had both read about Afghanistan. She pointed out to me, with some disappointment, a passage that read "the reconstruction of this country has more to do with the fear of the west than with solidarity to our own species."

My father has a similar point of view. I remember him talking to his friends and students saying that "the Colombian society, not just its government, must think seriously about ways to fight poverty, and must do it for whatever reason is most appealing. Even if you don't care about the poor, roll up your sleeves and help them, out of selfishness if you like... because any business will be at peril unless they see that there are ways different than holding weapons to claim their rights."

Their words came to mind when I listened to Paul Collier's talk on the 2008 TED Conference. Along the same lines, says Mr. Collier:

"How can we provide credible hope to the billion people living at the bottom? ... I'm going to offer you a combination of the two forces that change the world for good, which is the alliance of compassion and enlightened self interest ... We need compassion to get ourselves started and enlightened self interest to get ourselves serious."

So what does it take to actually get serious and end the strife of the bottom billion? Collier's thesis lies on four pillars (aid, trade liberalization, sound security policies and good governance) which are explained in depth in his book. His TED talk, however, focuses on recommendations to tackle the governance issue.

The talk was timely, as I have been reading "Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World" by Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart. I found myself thinking a bit about the parallels between Collier's arguments and those presented by the authors.

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