If you are currently located in/ can re-locate to Hyderabad, have a strong interest in the acceleration of sustainable SMEs and their role as a driver for sustainable development, or know someone who fulfills these characteristics, please read on and see the attached file for a full job description. Applications are due next September 19.     

Position Summary:  The World Resources Institute (WRI) and CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre (CII- Godrej GBC) is seeking an entrepreneurial and dynamic Country Director for its New Ventures India program with a background in business/finance and an interest in sustainable business and investment.

New Ventures is a business accelerator that works toward long-term, sustainable natural resource use by supporting environmentally- and socially-responsible enterprises in emerging economies. We identify profitable small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) that generate unique social and environmental benefits and provide them with business advisory services and access to capital. Additionally, we work with local and international investment communities and networks to help further develop capital resources available to these enterprises. Since its inception in 1999, New Ventures has supported 178 sustainable enterprises worldwide and helped facilitate over US $120 million in investment into these enterprises.  In collaboration with local partners, New Ventures operates non-profit centers of sustainable entrepreneurship in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, China, Indonesia and India.

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NextBillion ally and friend Kevin Jones passed along word that the Good Business Network is hosting an interesting event next week in San Francisco about social investing and low-income markets.  If you're in town, be sure to check it out.

Event posting: How Everyone Can Be a Social Investor.

From the post:

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Zipporah is one of the 16 entrepreneurs that took part in this year's Global Social Benefit Incubator, at Santa Clara University. Her project is a great example of how rural communities can be empowered and brought into the value chain of products that are key to the dignity, health, and productivity of poor women in Kenya.

Binti Africa Foundation creates microenterprises with women in rural Kenya to produce safe and affordable sanitary pads that are sold to schools and distributed to girls throughout the country. Thereby it fulfills the goals of empowering rural communities through enterprise and income generation, as well as girls in the poorer areas of the country who, thanks to Binti's sanitary pads and educational campaigns, no longer see significant changes in their routines and productivity during their menstrual periods.

Zipporah's primary objective while attending GSBI was to build a business plan to strengthen Binti's product development ability and expand it's operations into new markets like Sudan and Congo, among others.   

Stay tuned for more GSBI entrepreneurs this week as well as an upcoming post looking in retrospect at this visionary and highly impactful initiative.

Position: Research Associate / Consultant

Location: New York City, United States

Organization: Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative, United Nations Development Programme.  The new flagship UNDP multi-stakeholder Initiative on "Growing Inclusive Markets" is UNDP's most visible strategic and sustained global advocacy tool for the important role of the private sector in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

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The product is something people everywhere need, but is often costly or – for more than a billion people worldwide – simply unavailable. It has to be produced locally on a daily basis. And the market price, in rural India, is less than $20 per household per year. An impossible business? I say no; in fact, I'd argue that this is a classic base of the pyramid business opportunity: low-margin, high volume; leveraging advanced technology; scalable; and potentially very profitable.

I'm talking, of course, about clean water for drinking and cooking. And two of the businesses I've been mentoring at Santa Clara University's Global Social Benefit Incubator have already achieved proof of concept for this market. Environmental Planning Group Limited (EPGL) is a fully commercial entity operating in Gujarat state. The Naandi Foundation is an NGO that partners with the government but operates with business-like efficiency and is already starting to scale in several states outside its Andhra Pradesh base. Both deploy reverse osmosis water treatment plants, primarily in rural villages that do not now have access to clean water.

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Jocelyn Wyatt was.  So were David Lehr and Keely Stevenson.  John Tucker is.  Joel Montgomery is about to be.  Pablo Halkyard might have been; in fact, I might have been also.

What the heck am I talking about?  The Acumen Fund Fellows Program, of course.

(For the record, Pablo took himself out of the running when McKinsey offered him a job; as for me, I rescinded my application when I was offered a full-time gig here at Acumen Fund.  That should also serve as a full disclosure, but if not: I work for Acumen Fund.)

Back to the topic at hand...if you read this site regularly and care about market-based approaches to poverty alleviation, then this might be your dream job.  Seriously - how else can you spend a full year living and working at the nexus of development and enterprise, unless you're already doing it or on the verge of starting your own company.

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In my previous post about Anand Jaiswal’s article, Erik Simanis left a comment adding one more critique to the approach to BoP markets from a producer/consumer framework. In this critique he refers to “Beyond Basic Needs Business Strategies”, an article he recently co-authored with Stuart Hart and Duncan Duke.

The article offers a very good overview of the current approach that is being developed in their Base of the Pyramid Program and that, by extension, lays the groundwork for their BoP Protocol Initiative. It is written in a clear and concise language and I would  strongly suggest anyone interested in their work to take a look at it. (And for those who want to get a better feeling of what he means, do check out Robert Katz’s interview from last April).

In his article, Simanis et al. criticize the oversimplification of the BoP term, which has ended up reducing poverty alleviation and development to the managerial terms of customer needs and product development. The talk about a “BoP market” has falsely created an image of a homogeneous market, where there is no homogeneity and where, often, there is no market either.

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The goal: Create economic opportunity for Indian villagers so they can build sustainable livelihoods in their local settings, preserve their traditions and avoid the need to migrate to large urban centers. The means: Industree, a social enterprise that promotes locally owned and operated craft manufacturing enterprises, aggregates their production and then sells it through a proprietary retail network.

Industree operates under an interesting hybrid structure. The non-profit  organization plays the  role of building the production base, building capacity amongst and transferring critical skills to the craftsmen that own and operate the production units. The for-profit, on the other hand, plays the role of aggregating production and buiding the entire supply chain that ends in the shelves.

Neelam Chibber is the leader of Industree and was one of the 16 entrepreneurs taking part at this year's Global Social Benefit Incubator, at Santa Clara University. Her vision and drive are admirable. Her integrated and holistic approach is worth praising and replicating, especially in a world where social / economical pressures seem to push larger and larger populations into cities, but simply lacks the resources necessary to make this trend sustainable.

        

After a longer-than-anticipated delay, I am pleased to bring you the third installment in the series of interviews about Lapdesk, an Endeavor company based in South Africa that provides portable desks to school children who need them, all 4.2 million to be exact.

If you'll recall, I had a great conversation with Harvard Business School Professor Dan Isenberg back in February about what inspired him to write a case about Lapdesk (this is the first case that HBS MBAs encounter). After chatting Professor Isenberg, I probed Lapdesk founder Shane Immelman about the birth and evolution of the company. Now, after a number of near misses, I am happy to share the Lapdesk story from the perspective of Greg Durst, the Managing Director of Endeavor South Africa. How's that for 360 degrees of coverage? Anderson Cooper, eat your heart out.

So, let's get to it.

Tayo Akinyemi, NextBillion.net: 
What made you select Lapdesk as an Endeavor company and Shane Immelman as an Endeavor entrepreneur?

Greg Durst, Managing Director, Endeavor South Africa:
Lapdesk has an innovative business model with powerful social applications. We particularly appreciate Shane's belief that it is critical for the business to be profitable while preserving its social mission.

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Want to lull me to sleep?  First, start your event at 6:30 and go until 8:00 in the evening; I get to work early, so I'm often exhausted by the end of the day.  Second, draw the blinds to keep out natural light; exacerbate the soporific effect by dimming the lights (so I can see the PowerPoint slides, sure).  Third, serve food – especially heavy, rich food like meat and cheese – before the presentation starts.  Between these three, you're guaranteed to have me – and at least 75 percent of your audience – asleep by the 20 minute mark.

Or not.  To my surprise, there's an antidote to this sedative trio – and his name is Nachiket Mor.  Last night, along with 150 or so others, I sat in rapt attention while Nachiket described his latest thinking on banking at the base of the pyramid in a talk entitled The Next Big Step: Revolutionizing Financial Services Distribution in Rural India.  Yes, the event started at 6:30, and they served delicious (but heavy) hors d'oeuvres.  And since the auditorium was bright in the late-day sun, the organizers drew the blinds and dimmed the lights.  But for the duration of Nachiket's presentation and through the Q&A, the entire audience sat and stood at attention.  It was that good.

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"Open sourcing social solutions". I loved it since I first heard of it about 18 months ago while I was booking tickets, packing bags and spending long hours understanding "who was who" in this fascinating and rapidly changing base of the pyramid space.

I learned about it from Changemakers (most likely via NextBillion.net), an initiative of Ashoka whose idea competitions open the door for a very interesting dynamic of feedback and model refining between different stakeholders involved in this space.

After hosting competitions in areas as diverse as healthcare, water and tourism, Changemakers.net has naturally become an obliged stop for anyone interested in identifying, learning about and getting in contact with innovative and entrepreneurial solutions to social challenges. Previous competitions have been highlighted in NextBillion.net in the past, and this year's "Banking on Social Change - Seeking Financial Solutions for All" competition is no exception. Following is Changemakers and Citi's introduction to the competition.

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Talent management is arguably the greatest challenge today for social ventures trying to scale-up in their overall impact.  I recently spoke with Deepti Doshi, Talent Manager at Acumen Fund on the subject and she commented, "We have realized that recruiting and retaining quality local talent is one of the greatest hindrances to growth and scale for enterprises serving the poor."

In the next few posts, I'm going to write about talent challenges at the BoP in the effort to spur discussion and brainstorm solutions.  In this post, I'd like to open up a discussion on recruiting.  The following scenario sets up one of the main issues:

There's an open position within your social venture and it has been very hard to fill.  One of the primary reasons for this is that there is such as small pool of qualified local people - people with the right skill and will - from which to pull from.  The country's educational system is not strong and the most qualified people end up migrating to greener pastures.  You eventually stumble across two potential hires: one has the right skill for the position, but doesn't have the will - the value and drive to build a social venture.  The other person has the will, but not the skill.  The position is considered key within the organization.  What do you do?  

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Position: Executive Director, Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs

Location: Washington, D.C.

Organization: The Aspen Institute, founded in 1950, is an international nonprofit organization.  Its mission is twofold: to foster values-based leadership, encouraging individuals to reflect on the ideals and ideas that define a good society, and to provide a neutral and balanced venue for discussing and acting on critical issues. The Institute is headquartered in Washington, DC, and has campuses in Aspen, Colorado and on the Wye River near the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland.  Its international network includes partner Aspen Institutes in Berlin, Rome, Lyon, Tokyo, New Delhi and Bucharest, plus an array of leadership initiatives in Africa, Central America, India and the United States.

Job Description: The Aspen Institute is launching a new program - the Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs.  We are looking for an entrepreneurial leader to serve as Executive Director of this strategy group and practitioner association for organizations that support 'Small and Growing Businesses' (SGBs) in emerging markets. The ideal candidate brings a strong track record of working in entrepreneurial environments to launch and fund new initiatives; has experience and appreciation for the challenges faced by small businesses in emerging markets; and, can work to foster relationships and collaboration across public, private and nongovernmental sectors.

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I have always looked forward to receiving my quarterly copy of the Stanford Social Innovation Review in the mail. Without exception, I find what I am looking for: engaging and thought provoking articles, a rich discussion on trends and ideas in this space, great book reviews like the recent one of Out of Poverty by Paul Hudnut ... the list could go on and on.

I had no complaints. Like I said, I constantly look forward to it! I was getting good and relevant content on the topic I am most passionate about. I was grateful for that and it kept me motivated to renew my subscription on time.

But who doesn't like surprises? This fall, my "SSIR experience" took a drastic shift -a very positive one indeed, as I opened my mailbox and found a beautiful, clean and very crisp looking fall issue of the journal. This new look is the result of an effort that began about a year ago and aimed at making a great journal even greater. A tough and risky endeavour, no doubt. After all, there are many out there that keep suggesting, if it ain't broken, don't fix it, right? Well, here is my personal take: SSIR was already a great journal and it figured out how to become much better even. The result of this effort is frankly exceptional.

The journal is now more inviting and much easier to navigate. I was able to find what I was looking for very quickly and enjoyed browsing each and everyone of its new and very clean-looking pages. But the new SSIR is not just about better looks; it also brings along new sections like the interesting What's Next. 

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CraftNetwork is opening the doors of fair trade and global markets to artisans around the globe. Christopher Benz, its founder and managing director, was part of this year's Global Social Benefit Incubator at Santa Clara University. 

This project is, in many ways, unique among similar e-commerce platforms. It provides enterprise development services to its artisans, helping them build managerial capacity and make the most out of their skills, and also allows buyers and visitors to learn about the men and women behind the crafts, those you are supporting by purchasing through the site. This Kiva-like connection that has tremendous value for parties at both ends of the transaction. 

So here is Chris, whom I was able to catch on video during a short break between classes. I encourage you to visit CraftNetwork. You will certainly be delighted by the beauty of its products, maybe coming up with a couple of gift ideas. But, most importantly, you will contribute to the growth of a project that has great potential to expand from its current home in south east Asia, to supporting thousands of artisans living at the base of the pyramid all over the world.