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Well it appears as if last week was “conference week” here at NextBillion, so it’s my turn to dish on my recent attendee experience. Ready? Here I go.

I was fortunate enough to attend 'Financial Inclusion, Innovation, and Investments,' a symposium organized by the Emerging Markets Program of the Department of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. In a happy bit of serendipity, a professor with whom I had corresponded informed me about the event just in time for me to change my itinerary. (I had planned to be in Ithaca the week before.)

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When I recently attended The Second Annual Conference on Public Policy and Management at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, I had not imagined that it will be difficult to summarize it in a blog post. Discussed at the conference - current thinking on the proposed National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, papers on increasing financial inclusion and other issues on policy in practice.

I particularly liked a key note address by Usha Thorat, Deputy Governor - Reserve Bank of India. She spoke of different methods in which financial inclusion could be promoted - providing easier, affordable access to financial services. These include encouraging GCCs (generalized credit cards) for rural customers and recognizing microfinance institutions.

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I attended an all-day workshop at the IFC yesterday on their Grassroots Business Initiative (GBI). A half dozen of the Initiative's enterprises from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and 30 or so GBI partners also attended, along with their program staff. The meeting was conducted under "Chatham House" rules, which means that I can't report on who said what, but allow me to share with you a few general observations, and a bit about one talk.

First, no surprise here, it's remarkable how many of the issues that are of concern to these quite small enterprises (and intermediaries helping them) are exactly those that big organizations must contend with —finding and succeeding in markets, managing for growth, balancing objectives. It's no solace to these small, struggling social entrepreneurs, but things don’t get easier when you get bigger.

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