Upcoming Competitions, Awards and Challenges

Here is a summary of some interesting opportunities for our readers:
1.The Great Indian Developer Award: “The Great Indian Developer Awards 2008 recognizes trailblazing individuals, technologies, and organizations contributing to the evangelism, productivity and innovation excellence of the Indian developer ecosystem.” [Source: PluGGd.in] Go here to vote.
2. TIE-Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge 2008: “Canaan Partners and TIE, today [...]

World Challenge 2008 Nominees due by May 31st

Here is a fantastic opportunity for funding and support for social businesses:
World Challenge 08 is organized by BBC World and Newsweek, in association with Shell, and is about championing and rewarding projects and business which really make a difference. The winner will receive a grant of USD $20,000 to put back into their project/business, and [...]

InternetSpeech - The New Digital Genie?

In a recent interview with Fortune Magazine, Muhammad Yunus beautifully articulated his dream of a “Digital Aladdin’s Lamp”, which would provide poor women around the world with access to global markets and trends for local benefit:
“A genie comes out of it and asks, ‘What can I do for you, ma’am?’ And she says ‘I make [...]

The fine line: New research on what defines successful entrepreneurs

In an effort to figure out what actually distinguishes a successful entrepreneur from an unsuccessful one, Social Equity Venture Fund (S.E.VEN) has invested $100,000 to conduct primary research.
S.E.VEN has awarded this money to Harvard poverty expert Michael Kremer, as a part of a total of $400,000 that it has invested in researchers working on [...]

Over the weight limit …

Anyone who has flown recently can relate to the frantic attempt to remove clothing, shoes and other packed items from your suitcase in order to meet the weight requirement that is draconiously enforced upon unsuspecting passengers. In a similar fashion, here are some additional articles that may be of interest that I could not fit [...]

Agora Fellows Program

As an update to a prior post entitled “MBAs without Borders” (MWB), it has been brought to our attention through NextBillion that Agora Partnerships, in collaboration with MWB, has launched a fellowship program that aims to address issues of long-term management, specialization, expertise, and sustainability in the social enterprise sector:
The Agora Fellows program is [...]

Fair & Lovely, and may be a little bit of Dignity

Derek Newberry, a blogger at Nextbillion has a very interesting post on Ethics in the BOP Market. He uses the case of Fair & Lovely, the skin whitening cream marketed in India by Hindustan Lever, the Indian subsidiary of Unilever. The company has constantly used a advertising strategy that depicts women of darker complexion as [...]

If you build it (a map), they will come (and build solar panels)

There are few things hotter than BoP. One of them may be renewable energy, particularly solar (no pun intended) and wind. Well one would imagine that anything that combines these two fields of unusually high interest that there would be a flourish of activity on the ground. Not so fast argues Kenneth Westrick, CEO of [...]

Sustainable, Scalable Philanthropy

As brought to our attention by NextBillion, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven J. Levitt, authors of Freakanomics, published an article in the NYTimes yesterday entitled, “Bottom Line Philanthropy,” in which they discussed the need for applying business models to philanthropic organizations for the purposes of sustainability and impact.
The article highlights two individuals - Rafe Furst [...]

Experimenting with Internet Access in Rural India

How can rural communities gain access to the internet without the infrastructure required to support an internet connection? Even more importantly, even if rural communities were to have access to the internet, how would the illiterate population avail of these services? What is the use of providing internet access that cannot be used [...]

HT highligts Creative Capitalism

Dr. Muhammad Yunus has talked extensively about reconceptualizing “capitalism” in his new book, “Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and The Future of Capitalism,” suggesting that “capitalism” posits human beings as one dimensional profit maximizers, devoid of complexity and multi-dimensionality. He proposes the reconceptualization of capitalism in the context of social business, [...]