It's now official. The William Davidson Institute, my employer, is now officially a Managing-Partner of NextBillion. For me, this is a very exciting partnership with unlimited possibilities.
For the past couples of years, the WDI has been a big supporter of the NextBillion community. Grace Augustine (formerly at WDI) and I have contributed to the community as Staff Writers, sharing insights from our work writing cases and research notes on BoP ventures and topics. Ted London's work on impact assessment has been featured and discussed heavily here. Many Ross School of Business students have highlighted their internships or school projects.
And most recently, the WDI has sponsored The Next: 2010 Case Writing Competition. I have already received a number of entries, from schools in New York to Toronto to New Delhi. Rob, Francisco, and I are thrilled at the response so far and can't wait to read the final cases. And as a reminder, if you want to enter the competition, the intention to compete forms are due this Friday, January 15th.
In the coming weeks, you will read more about our work at WDI from our Executive Director, Bob Kennedy, and the Director of the BoP Initiative, Ted London. There will also be a more active voice from the students at the Ross School of Business and at the University of Michigan as a whole. I will also include more on the social venture creation course that I am running here at the University of Michigan at the Center for Entrepreneurship. In the meantime, you can check out what we're doing in class, the student projects, and our partners on this blog.
In addition, we are looking to hire someone to help us co-manage the NextBillion website. The job description is on the WDI web site and NextBillion. We look forward to continue building the BoP movement and sharing with you our insights, lessons learned, and our network. We believe greatly that market-based solutions can help alleviate poverty, and are convinced that NextBillion is a powerful catalyst to making this happen.