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
February 19, 2008 — 06:08 am
In "The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid," the authors analyzed several markets. However, only one market - financial services - was not estimated in terms of exact size and scope. Financial services can be a fiendishly hard thing to...
December 21, 2007 — 04:18 pm
Julia Tran mentioned in a previous post some Boston Consulting Group (BCG) publications related with the “Next Billion”. Two more studies were published in November –“Decoding Next Billion Consumers” and “A Road Map to expanding Financial Inclusion in India” (this second one looks...
December 17, 2007 — 07:17 am
Last week, while checking out some regular blogs, I bumped into a short note about a magazine called "Upsides" in the CGAP Blog. Upsides is an FMO (the Netherlands Finance Development Company) initiative, supported by other likeminded financial institutions such as Standard Bank,...
December 7, 2007 — 08:27 am
Codensa is a very successful utility company that serves 2.2 million customers in Colombia. It is controlled by Endesa, the largest electric utility company in Spain, which in 1997 took control of Codensa and Emgesa (this second company accounts for 21% of the generated electric capacity in...
December 3, 2007 — 03:35 pm
This post is the continuation of my previous one last Monday. Just as it was posted, Robert Katz sent me an email with the following question:"That BOP firms, to be competitive, don't have to be innovative in the same way that Western firms do makes sense. But what about Western firms...
November 26, 2007 — 06:41 am
Businesspeople tend to prefer predictable business environments to work in. However, in developing countries, business environments tend to be more unstable than in Western markets because of various unpredictable social, economic and political changes. Since business plans depend on...
November 16, 2007 — 04:15 pm
It is often the case that business models touch but rarely elaborate on the aspirational value of many products offered for the first time at the BOP level and the subconscious consequences they have on BOP consumers. I recently read, with a touch of sadness, a short article published in the...
