Great post Apoorva! I

Helen — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:09:42 -0500

Great post Apoorva! I thought you brought up a lot of compelling issues that deserve more attention. It seems that many of the big questions out there for the BoP are the impacts of the government on the BoP and the BoP on the government at different levels. Obviously these private sector approaches often take off in areas where the government either can't or won't provide the services, but what is the long-term impact? Will successful partnerships develop that can strengthen both partners, will BoP ventures run the risk of establishing parallel systems that create inefficiencies in the system as a whole? (or, as you mention, become inefficient through trying to get through government bureaucracy!) What are the expectations of community members for both private enterprises and the government in these partnerships and how do they change over time? Keep up the good work!

Guest Post: The Dilemmas of Scaling BoP Ventures

Derek Newberry — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:18:09 -0500

Guest blogger Apoorva Shah, a recent graduate of Rice University, is currently a Wagoner Scholar working with Ashoka: Innovators for the Public to research the influence of social entrepreneurship on public policy. Currently in São Paulo, Brazil, he wrote this post from Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Moses Lee's recent post on scaling BoP ventures raised the important and complex issue of defining "scale" in cross-sector approaches to development. What happens when "increasing business transactions that positively impact the lives of the poor" means that BoP businesses begin to enter the realm of government?

For example, many businesses work in fields traditionally relegated to the public sector - public health, education, environmental protection, electrification, etc. To scale, should the BoP venture work with government or proceed without it, and what are the subsequent consequences?

In Sri Lanka, Ashoka Fellow Lalith Seneviratne works with a network of local entrepreneurs to provide small-scale biomass gasification systems to rural villages inaccessible to the national electricity grid. The systems are fueled by the fast-growing Gliricidia wood, which is endemic to Sri Lanka and can be easily grown by villagers. Because the process of entering the national grid was slow and bureaucratic, local private actors such as Seneviratne decided to act independently to provide an environmentally friendly source of energy to rural citizens.

Yet in the past five years, the government electricity grid has expanded by 13% to reach 80% of the country's population, and according to Seneviratne, only about 5% of Sri Lankans will ultimately remain off the national grid. So how should Mr. Seneviratne define scale for his venture? He has two options:

(This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)

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Great post Apoorva! I

Guest Post: The Dilemmas of Scaling BoP Ventures