"WE STARTED out abroad as ‘accidental tourists’,” says Anand Mahindra, managing director of Mahindra & Mahindra, an Indian maker of tractors and off-road vehicles. Owed money by a Greek manufacturing plant, it took an equity stake instead, and so Mahindra Hellenic was born in 1984.

Mahindra & Mahindra is now one of 100 companies from the developing world that Boston Consulting Group (BCG) thinks have the clout and ambition to upset the world's multinationals. The consultants sifted over 3,000 companies from 30 countries, picking firms that had revenues approaching or surpassing $1 billion last year and are expanding overseas aggressively (not accidentally). They measure this expansionism by five criteria, including the firms' international sales and assets, and the money they can tap for foreign raids and acquisitions.

The result is a list that cunningly appeals to the pride of the aspirants and the insecurity of rich-world incumbents. According to Fortune magazine, Jeff Immelt sent last year's list to his underlings at General Electric, ordering them to identify the companies it could sell to and buy from, and those it would have to compete with.

The fourth Arab Meeting for Small and Medium Industries, which was held in Sana’a from 25-26 November, has recommended establishing an Arab Investment Bank to finance small and medium industries, to be approved at the next pan-Arab summit. The meeting called on Arab countries to set up a legal framework to organize small and medium industries and to unify government efforts to assist this sector.

It was recommended that Arab countries should create financial mechanisms which cover the operational needs of small and medium industries through setting up co-operative banks, on the lines of those found in European countries.

Acumen Fund, a leading catalyst for sustainable, scalable solutions addressing poverty in South Asia and East Africa, announced today that it has been honored with the 2008 Fast Company/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award. The award recognizes outstanding organizations whose social impact and organizational effectiveness make them unrivaled leaders of social entrepreneurship.

"Acumen Fund is proud to be honored by Fast Company and the Monitor Group as a leader in providing market-oriented approaches to overcoming the challenges associated with global poverty," said Acumen Fund CEO Jacqueline Novogratz. "Acumen Fund is committed to identifying and supporting local entrepreneurs who bring affordable water, healthcare, housing, and energy to the world's poor, and we are excited about the prospects for change as we continue to expand our operations and impact around the globe."

To view this article with product design diagrams and graphics, click here.

MIT’s D-Lab can turn a plastic baby bottle into lab equipment and refashion a toilet as a chlorination system. Here’s how its low-cost, low-tech solutions are saving lives around the world.

MIT is often thought of as a high-tech clubhouse, a play space for brilliant thinkers who churn out one world-changing innovation after the next. MIT brainiacs have brought us everything from vital advances in high-speed photography and internet architecture to robots with artificial intelligence. But not all of their solutions are mind-numbingly complex. What use is an electrical invention if you live in a community that doesn’t have the reliable power to use it, or a fragile device in an area where it’s almost impossible to find spare parts?

A worldwide survey jointly conducted by the GSM Association and Microsoft indicates that there is an untapped potential market of 70 million consumers interested in notebook PCs with built-in mobile broadband, the two companies announced yesterday in Macao.

"Notebook manufacturers weren't yet addressing this opportunity," Robert Conway, the CEO of the GSMA, said at a press conference at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress. "We've identified a new market segment, and now we're going to define that market segment".

The survey, which was the first of its kind, involved more than 12,000 consumer interviews across 13 countries. It indicated that there is a potential worldwide demand for about 70 million laptop PCs equipped with such technology, and that this segment of the PC/telecom industry could be worth as much as $50 billion.

When Hamagu, a Tibetan village north of Shangri La, refused Government offers to replace their rutted yak track with a paved road to increase tourism, neighbours thought they were naive.

But for village leader Liu Tang, making it easier for coach-loads of tourists to trample on his ancestral pastures and sacred hills was exactly what he wanted to avoid.

When Beijing rebranded the nearby Tibetan town of Gyalthang, (Zhongdian in Chinese) as the mythical "Shangri La" in 2001, it was dubbed a cynical ploy, but it worked. Too well for Mr Liu, who is convinced that eco-tourism is the only hope for his village to climb out of poverty and protect its Tibetan culture and way of life from the corrosive effects of mass tourism and "Hanification".

The Financial Times, in partnership with IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, today launched the 2008 edition of the FT Sustainable Banking Awards, the leading awards for triple bottom line banking.

Two new categories - Banking at the Bottom of the Pyramid, and Sustainable Investor of the Year - have been added to the ground-breaking programme.

The awards, now in their third year, were created by the FT and IFC to recognise banks that have shown leadership and innovation in integrating social, environmental and corporate governance objectives into their operations.

Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus has asked for major reforms in the World Bank saying the multilateral development bank has not been successful in achieving its main goal of poverty alleviation.

"The world has gone through so many changes over the last few decades, but the World Bank remains static since its establishment about 60 years ago. It needs reforms and there should be a rethink of its policies," Yunus told reporters after a meeting with visiting WB President Robert Zoellick at his Grameen Bank's Headquarters in Mirpur yesterday.

"Within the present structure, World Bank country offices are working like post offices," Yunus said, adding the offices wait for directives from the headquarters and implement those.

Entrepreneurs love to grumble about the roadblocks and delays created by bureaucrats. Government officials, they say, are slow, bumbling and concerned only about hewing to their rules and clocking out at 4:55 p.m.

But in a study of global entrepreneurship, Raffi Amit and Mauro Guillen, both Wharton management professors, have found that a simple, if smart, bureaucratic initiative mattered critically in determining a country's level of entrepreneurship. Specifically, countries that created electronic business registries saw far higher levels of new business formation than those with traditional paper ones. Even the announcement that a country planned to establish an online log led to a jump in business registrations.

How could such a small change make such a big difference?

Huge profits made by London-based brokers who arrange emissions-cutting projects in developing countries contrast with little benefit for the world's poorest nations, company and United Nations data shows.

BCG calculates that 200m of the region’s 350m people live on incomes above the poverty line and below median household income – or $500 (€360, £245) to $1,300 a month in central Europe, and $350 to $1,050 in the former Soviet Union. Together they account for half the region’s disposable income, most of it concentrated in just three countries – Poland, Ukraine and Russia. This is a much larger market than the 50m people on top incomes that multinationals have already successfully reached.

A new law by parliament in Transdniestria (Pridnestrovie) streamlines property ownership for the poor. It makes registration of rural homes possible even when no papers or title exist. The reforms are based on a wealth-creation roadmap by Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist.

Migrant workers sending money home has become the biggest source of foreign income in some poor European countries, the World Bank has said.

In a report on European and Central Asian (ECA) nations, the bank said that remittances sometimes beat foreign investment aid and exports in size.

Officially recorded payments in the region - which includes former Soviet states - were over $19bn (£9.67bn).

The largest amount of remittances, as a share of GDP, were sent to Moldova.

The study, using data from 2004, indicated that money sent there by migrants was equivalent to 27% of GDP - an estimated $705m.

Two weeks ago, there was a government assembly and the Prime Minister presented new projects for the government. As Kazakhstan Today reports, Social Business Corporations were on the list. “Sara Arka” will be the first, to be established in Karaganda (because the akim there was on the ball, they say). By the end of the year, six more will be established in the regions.

A significant proportion of European companies making investments in emerging markets are ignoring serious risks that would be deal killers in their own markets, according to a new survey published on Friday.