NextBillion brings together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.
Our Staff Writers and Editors offer insights on the latest news, events, interviews and other happenings from the development through enterprise and base of the pyramid universes
August 20, 2009 — 04:11 pm
Achieving scale is essential for BoP firms to maximize social impact. In this second of a series of three, we explain in more detail the different characteristics of platforms belonging to conditional cash transfers, utilities and mobile phones.
August 19, 2009 — 08:04 am
Achieving scale is essential for BoP firms to maximize social impact. In this first of a series of three, we explain how platforms offer two very useful characteristics for incoming firms with a pre-defined business model wishing to gain scale rapidly: accessibility and information about BoP customers.
August 7, 2009 — 08:29 am
In 1980 the Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) economy was twice as large as that in China and India. By 2004, LAC was 20% smaller than China and India. Has this growth had a positive effect on LAC? What new business opportunities in LAC may be opened by this trend?
July 31, 2009 — 02:00 pm
CGAP is now accepting entries to their Microfinance Photography Contest. Deadline is on August 14th!
June 29, 2009 — 07:15 am
Even though microfinance is estimated to have directly reached 100 million of the poor in 2008 there is still plenty of debate about whether it has a significant impact on their lives. A series of recent World Bank studies conclusively shows that microfinance has a positive economic and social impact on participants and non-participants.
June 18, 2009 — 06:32 pm
Martin Klein, PhD from the Rotterdam School of Management, examines common postulates of what it means to work at the BoP level thanks to an extensive survey of 143 BoP firms working in 105 countries. He explains how some challenges may vary throughout the lifetime of a BoP business as well as the inherent tensions in managing BoP businesses.
June 1, 2009 — 09:00 am
The blossoming of the BoP community as a social movement has empowered entrepreneurs and fertilized the ground for radical innovations in developing countries. To better understand the BoP social movement and to pinpoint the tasks still pending we should put it in perspective with other social movements which have also created or destroyed markets.
April 6, 2009 — 04:08 pm
As the BoP field becomes increasingly established, BoP entrepreneurs and organizations need to be seen as legitimate vehicles in the fight against poverty. If the BoP community wants to be perceived as a member of equal status in the development arena we need to go beyond case studies. The next level may involve using randomized experiments.
March 24, 2009 — 04:49 pm
Before the end of 2008 I explained in one of my posts how improving gender equality can reduce poverty and stimulate growth. Back then I was puzzled to see that barely any business development initiatives had tried to improve women's status. In this post I would like to point out how this demand is set to increase in the next few years.
March 15, 2009 — 07:17 pm
Nine years ago two amazing books were published by the same author: Sebastião Salgado. Both were photography books, "Migrations" and "The Children: Refugees and Migrants". I have never known much about photography and probably will never do, but I still clearly remember how those images followed me for days.
