Agora Partnerships: Building Talent With Bamboo

Abigail Keene-Babcock — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:26:19 -0500

Over the last few months, there’s been plenty of discussion about the growing importance of building talent in the area of BoP business/social enterprise. Moses Lee has mentioned talent often – in one recent post, he described how a BoP business scheme failed when a group of experienced managers believed they could run the venture from afar and had no interest in taking talent into the field to do the "heavy lifting." Related to this is a recent post on the Acumen Fund Fellows' blog, where Tricia Morente - who is working with a chain of low-cost, high quality maternal care hospitals in India - placed talent ahead of money as the biggest challenge to scaling up a social enterprise.

These discussions about talent reflect maturation within the sector. There’s increasing recognition that, while entrepreneurs remain the keystone of BoP success, without the permanent building blocks of specialized skills and long-term management processes, the bridge will not stand for long, no matter how brilliant the idea. Building the sustainability of a sustainable business is becoming as important, if still not as sexy, as scouting out the next pro-poor business model or innovative product design.

It's great news, then, that NextBillion ally Agora Partnerships is launching the Agora Fellows Program. The program will link skilled professionals who have an interest in sustainable business with emerging enterprises chosen from Agora's portfolio of promising entrepreneurs. The first portfolio enterprise to receive a Fellow is Bambucasa ("Bamboo-house"), a start-up in Nicaragua that aims to build an environmentally sustainable and profitable bamboo construction business while also helping to alleviate a serious shortage of affordable housing. (For more information about this Fellowship, and how to apply, click here.)

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Agora Partnerships: Building Talent With Bamboo