Tayo Akinyemi's blog

Lapdesk, Part II: An Interview with Shane Immelman

Tayo Akinyemi — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:08:47 -0400

Welcome to part II of the “Endeavor” series. You may recall that part I involved a rather interesting conversation with Dan Isenberg, a Harvard Business School professor who had written a case about Endeavor entrepreneur, Lapdesk. Given that dialogue, it seemed only natural to continue the dialogue with Shane Immelman, founder and CEO of Lapdesk. So with no further ado, let’s have a chat with Shane.

Tayo Akinyemi, NextBillion.net:
What inspired you to found Lapdesk?

Shane Immelman, Lapdesk:
Simply put - if we ever hope to meaningfully address global poverty, then the answer must be to provide children in emerging markets with quality education - by doing so we will at least ensure that these children will be equipped to participate effectively in the societies within which they live, and will then have the opportunity to create a better future for themselves. The Lapdesk Company was founded with this in mind, as tens of millions of children the world over lack basic infrastructural equipment that will contribute to their quality education - a classroom desk.

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The Truth about Lapdesk, A South African FOPSE: An Interview with Dan Isenberg, HBS Professor

Tayo Akinyemi — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:24:32 -0500

It has been increasingly clear to me that there is a large grain of truth to the not-so-old adage, “If you want to get something done, give it to a busy person.” As I navigated the handful of near misses with Harvard Business School Professor Dan Isenberg, I realized that I had much to learn about the “busyness” of business school. He surely wins the award for fastest turnaround time —ever. I suppose that explains how Professor Isenberg has time to conduct research, teach classes, write cases and field random interview requests from first year MBA students like me. In any event, I was eager to chat with Prof. Isenberg about the case he wrote about Lapdesk, a South African company that provides portable desks to school children who need them, all 4.2 million to be exact. (Isenberg, 5)

Lapdesk’s business model is unique because it capitalizes, literally, on the desks’ advertising real estate to attract company sponsorships. Companies buy the desks, which are then emblazoned with corporate branding, and given to the students of facilities-poor schools. Lapdesk CEO Shane Immelman has been well-recognized for his work, receiving the “Proudly South African New Business of the Year” award in 2005 and becoming an Endeavor entrepreneur in 2006.

When he is not moderating panels at conferences like: Controlling Our Destiny: Celebrating Africa’s Success, presented by the Africa Business Club at HBS, Prof. Isenberg finds time to write about super chickens, remittances in Latin America and FOPSEs (rhymes with oopsy) like Lapdesk. Confused? Then read on…

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Event: Africa Entrepreneurship Platform

Tayo Akinyemi — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:00:20 -0500

If you believe that Africa is indeed open for business, consider attending the launch of the Africa Entrepreneurship Platform at the Harvard Club of New York on Thursday, February 28th. The quarterly forum, supported by the Clinton Global Initiative and administered by the South African Chamber of Commerce (SACCA), aims to connect South African entrepreneurs with U.S. investors in the pursuit of "sustainable job creation and economic development."

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Innovate or Die

Tayo Akinyemi — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 15:54:07 -0500

'Innovate or die' is the challenge issued by the pedal-powered machine contest sponsored by Google and Specialized Bicycle Components. All 102 inventions are based on basic bicycle mechanics; entries range from a pedal-powered tennis ball launcher to the grand prize-winning invention, a self-described mobile filtration vehicle.

In simple terms, MFV is a modified bicycle that filters water as one rides it. All entries were evaluated based on "creativity, environmental impact, and design" as determined by its three judges: Mike Sinyard, Founder & President, Specialized Bicycle Components, Dan Reicher, Director, Climate Change & Energy Initiatives, Google and Rich Silverstein, Co-Chairman, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

The contest winners, who were on announced January 16th, were appropriately-compensated given the theme of the contest. The Mobile Filtration Vehicle team won $5000 and five new Globe bikes. Brand new bicycles were also awarded to the five finalists:

MIT cycling team, who used pedal power to run a computer analyzing data for research on clean nuclear power;
Pedal-powered snowplow, which is exactly what it sounds like;
Multi-use bike machine that acts as a corn husker, grinder, blender, tool sharpener, etc.;
Velocytraptor mobile cinema that enables spectators to watch a ten minute movie and then subsequently "pedal back" the electricity expended for the show;
Dual-purpose bicycle, which is a regular bicycle that doubles as rice thresher, peanut sheller, corn shucker, circular saw, or woodworking lathe;

I would encourage anyone with a healthy sense of imagination and a free afternoon to watch the brief YouTube profiles of the winning inventions and submitted entries. It’s an outstanding testament to man’s ingenuity and desire to create.

Nonetheless, a part of me wants to hold up a sign exclaiming, "Welcome to the land of the false dichotomy!" Innovate or Die? Really? Yes, perhaps. But what really exists along the continuum between innovation and death?

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What’s GOOD: Incubating, Disseminating and Commercializing Appropriate Technology at the BoP

Tayo Akinyemi — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:52:55 -0500

I am sure that few of you are strangers to Amy Smith’s work at MIT’s D-Lab. After all, the D-Lab has been profiled several times here at NextBillion, most recently in an article featured in the news room via GOOD magazine. The article aptly describes D-Lab’s current crop of appropriate technologies, developed with the needs and constraints of the end user in mind.

"Designs are more likely to be successful if they’re not complicated and requiring all sorts of support and infrastructure," says Smith. "But simple doesn’t mean easy. It’s a challenge to get to those ‘simple’ solutions."

(Read the full article)

The five innovations profiled: a water chlorination controller (to reliably regulate the addition of chlorine to a stored water supply), a screen-less hammermill (to churn grain into flour), low-cost water test (to test drinking water safety), phase change incubator (low-cost incubator), are definitely simple, rugged, cheap, and replicable. But are they scalable? The answer is "they could be."

"We’re not as well-equipped to do dissemination as we would like," says Smith, who notes that D-Lab only has about 30 students at any one time. "We’re interested in finding the right partners to move the technologies forward." Scale and dissemination determine where "the rubber meets the road" in a university-based system of innovation.

One has to wonder what the best mechanism for sharing these innovations is. Should development projects be built around them? Can they support small businesses like the ones conceived by the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group? Or might they spawn full scale enterprises, like d.light design, which grew out of the class project at Stanford? Regardless, I truly appreciate the notion of starting a "design revolution" that will encourage engineers to create strictly for challenging environments, and expand the field of appropriate technology design.

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Colorado State's Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise Program

Tayo Akinyemi — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 09:10:02 -0400

"If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”
-- Thomas Edison

If you haven't already, be sure to check out the Global Social Enterprise Program at Colorado State University's School of Business. When I applied to the Johnson School at Cornell, I assumed that I knew which schools had reputable programs in sustainable global enterprise. The Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, and the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC, were among these, but I still managed to find slightly “off the radar” programs like the MBA in Sustainable Management at the Presidio School of Management.

Nonetheless, it turns out that I made at least one serious omission: The Colorado State College of Business. The Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise Program at the Colorado State University College of Business is an 18-month MBA program that brings 25 students (50% U.S. and 50% international) together to build enterprises that address environmental, health and social problems in developing countries. CSU is committed to exploiting the opportunities that exist at the intersection between sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

The unique curriculum at Colorado State tailors traditional subjects to address the challenges of sustainable global enterprise, in courses such as marketing for global sustainable enterprise and accounting for global sustainable enterprise. It also offers cross-disciplinary courses, including social entrepreneurship, microfinance, and ecological perspectives for business.

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BoP, Geopolitics, and Giving the People What They Need

Tayo Akinyemi — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 02:12:27 -0400

Editor's note: Tayo Akinyemi will be starting the MBA program at Cornell University's Johnson School of Management this fall.

I’m leaving for business school today, so this will be my last post on NextBillion.net for awhile. Although I didn’t answer all of my twenty questions (and attempted to answer questions that I hadn’t posed originally), I truly enjoyed blogging and expanding my knowledge about all things BoP. Needless to say, I will take the remaining questions with me to business school; I have no doubt that I’ll gain valuable insight there. In the meantime, I’ll apply a very quick and dirty analysis to what remains. Also, in keeping with the inquisitive nature of this blog, I’ll throw out a few more questions and food for thought.

Is "Base of the Pyramid" just MNC neocolonialism all over again? Will MNCs behave differently in this space than they have in the past? Can power be successfully decentralized and distributed?

Potentially yes, but the concept of BoP as nouveau neocolonialism runs contrary to what BoP business development is about. Frameworks like the BoP protocol have been designed to view MNCs and BoP communities as partners co-creating mutually beneficial business opportunities. Additionally, systems and institutions are created and implemented by people, so naiveté notwithstanding; we can influence how these entities perform. As long as the basic principles are respected, it is possible that the worst case scenario may be avoided.

Must there be a trade-off between doing well and “doing good”?

How close does BoP come to closing that gap? Where does BoP fit along the public/private sector continuum?

Does CSR, Public-Private Partnership, social enterprise, social entrepreneurship, venture philanthropy = BOP?

Is this really about devising a hybrid system that works better for everyone?

Certainly there are trade-offs, but it appears that the gap is closing. Pushing that boundary is the reason why I’ve chosen to focus on BoP and pursue a business degree. To me, BoP is the counterpoint in the balance between social and financial profit and promotes the notion that the pursuit of social good can be a core, not ancillary, function of business. Superficially speaking, social enterprise, social entrepreneurship, and venture philanthropy seem to focus on “entrepreneurializing” socially-focused organizations and pursuits; while corporate social responsibility (CSR), public private partnerships and BoP aim to leverage private enterprise for social good. Clearly, these are only the broad strokes, and don’t capture the complexity of the similarities and differences.

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Two New African Venture Funds

Tayo Akinyemi — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 10:07:55 -0400

Two new funds to facilitate private sector development in Africa are being raised as we speak.

The first, the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund, is the result of a Commission for Africa recommendation. It seeks to “catalyze the private sector to innovate and find profitable ways of improving market access for the poor — especially in rural areas. The ACF will focus on stimulating innovation in agricultural markets and deepening access to financial services.” (AECF concept summary, http://www.dfid.gov.uk/news/files/aecf-pcn.pdf)

The Fund will assemble a portfolio of sixty ventures and grant $150,000 to $1.5 million in investment that will be complemented by a matching contribution by the applicant. Donors who have signed on include the UK’s Department for Development (DFID), African Development Bank, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The fund will be up and running in 2008. (http://www.dfid.gov.uk/news/files/pressreleases/aecf-launch.asp)

Next up is the Overseas Private Investment Company’s (OPIC) African Social Development Fund. “The OPIC is inviting proposals from experienced private equity fund managers for the formation and management of one or more investment funds that will invest in Africa. OPIC will provide financing for funds generally ranging between $25 million and $150 million in total capital. More info here.

The dual goal of the fund is to generate social returns for Africans and financial returns for investors. The ASDF will support proposals involving SMEs, enterprises that foster “social development, provide access to energy, and provide goods and services to rural or underserved markets.”

The deadline for proposal submission is 5 p.m. EST August 8, 2007.

Upending the Pyramid: Measuring Success at the BoP

Tayo Akinyemi — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 10:22:42 -0400

I just finished reading Freakonomics, the NY Times Bestseller written by “rogue economist” Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner. It’s about using economic thinking and data analysis to answer practical questions and challenge conventional wisdom. Truly, there is nothing I love more than folks who consciously and skillfully upend easy assumptions. Except perhaps, those who find ways to prove what works using hard data. In the words of the recently-liberated Paris Hilton, “that’s hot.”

As a result, I suppose that it’s not surprising that Freakonomics has inspired me to tackle two of the most difficult questions on my list of twenty:

How do you define success at the BoP?
How do you quantify it?

Well, fortunately for me, WRI and the IFC have gone a long away toward answering question #2 by publishing the report, “The Next Four Billion.” We now have a very good idea of just how large these markets are. As we all know, assessing the size of the market is a key element of business planning and finance solicitation. We also know that the sizeable profit that accompanies sizeable markets is a great motivator for business development.

However, there is no consensus about how to define and quantify the social benefits derived from building BoP businesses. For example, does success result when the market shrinks, as previously unmet needs are met, or when it expands, indicating that more people are soliciting more services? Moreover, do products consumed and services rendered enhance their beneficiaries’ quality of life, yield a higher GDP per capita, reduce disease prevalence, or create some other desirable socioeconomic benefit? If so, how do we know?

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Entrepreneurialization of Government

Tayo Akinyemi — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:35:40 -0400

Something that has consistently bothered me since I began exploring the "business for social good" continuum is the notion (implied, but not often stated), that the government has been usurped as the primary provider of public goods. Government has failed and private enterprise must take over. Conventional wisdom dictates that government bureaucracies aren’t facile enough to meet the dynamic needs of the populace. In the words of David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas:

Today, many people do not believe that we can alleviate poverty, or fix the education system, or improve the government, or find better ways to deal with many social problems. Amidst this disenchantment with government, the field of social entrepreneurship has emerged…..But in order to [solve these problems] society needs to think differently about the approach.
(Source: article introducing How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein)

It’s to the point at which topics like “Governments as Agents of Change,” broached at the Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) conference “Innovative Strategies – Measurable Impacts,” held last year in New York City, seem almost laughable. But are they?

Now clearly, my professional choices have demonstrated a certain degree of sympathy for this point of view. After all, I am pursuing a business degree, not a degree in public policy — not to imply that two are mutually-exclusive. But I cannot say that I have stopped to analyze this core assumption about the role of government. Not surprisingly, my examination of this question has fallen victim to a seemingly endless flurry of pre-MBA activity.

However, it came bouncing back to the surface (as these things often do) quite unexpectedly after a trip to visit a friend in New Orleans. She courageously decided to move home to NOLA from Nigeria eighteen months ago after witnessing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina via CNN. I remember anxiously tracking the progress of the storm with her and subsequently acting as a sounding board to her internal debate about how, when, and whether to return home.

More than a year later, as she took me on an impromptu tour of the city, she deftly explained some of the issues encountered by the citizens of the New Orleans after the storm. The issues: rebuilding homes and neighborhoods via the “Road Home” fund with all of its delays, the lack of support for renters, the negligence of the levee system, the inefficient and expensive use of mobile homes for temporary housing, control of federal aid disbursement, local political reform, and the practical implications of what a “market driven recovery” should look like, seemed ridiculously daunting. Nonetheless, despite all of this, the people of New Orleans are taking the initiative to set priorities, rebuild, and bring their city back.

As encouraged as I was by the determination of NOLA’s citizens, I was equally shocked and disappointed by the (arguably) apparent lack of a comprehensive recovery plan sponsored by; you guessed it, the city government. (It was still in the approval process at the time of my visit). To make matter worse, even if there had been a finalized plan, given the federal government’s ineffective response to the disaster, including the under-funding of the relief effort relative to the extent of the damage sustained in Louisiana, and the conflation of disaster relief and rebuilding funds, it might not have been financed even if it had been finished sooner.

So my question is, “Is it really okay to abdicate, implicitly or explicitly, the distribution and management of public goods to private enterprise?”

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