Thursday, November 15, 2007

Amy Smith is coming to CSU

"Can Low Tech have a High Impact?

While her inventions may be "low technology" there's nothing low-brow about Amy Smith's work to develop simple, affordable technologies for the world's poorest people. The CSU College of Business and the Department of Mechanical Engineering are pleased to present MIT Faculty Member and MacArthur "Genius Grant" winner Amy Smith in lecture as part of the Sustainable Enterprise Speaker Series.

Her remarks, entitled Design, Dialogue and Duct Tape - Tools for International Development, are inspired from real-world experience using technological innovation to address everyday problems in developing nations."

Date: Monday, November 26th
Place: Clark Building - Room A101
Time: 7:00 to 8:30 pm.
RSVP: www.biz.colostate.edu/ms/GSSE/RSVP

We hope to videotape and post on GSSE site for those who are not able to attend in person.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello,

I am student in Germany and currently writing at my thesis, "Collaboration between Multinational Companies and Non-for Profit Organizations as an effective market entry strategies in "BoP" Markets - a resource based view".
I came up your blog which is great.

Do you have any experience of Multinational partnering with NPO in developing countries, especially to develop and market products and services? Or just MNC who are engaged in BoP-markets?
It was also very hard for me to obtain any statistics and data of the scope and range of collaboration between these two actors.

It would be great if you could give me some more information or advice from your field experiences.

you can emai me on:
sj1208@gmail.com

thanks!

Regards,

Simon

Bopreneur said...

Simon-
A few suggestions. First, some of the academic work in this area will be found by searching on "Public Private Partnerships."
Second, take a look at Stu Hart and CK Prahalad's work on MNCs if you haven't yet. Third, take a look at the December 2006 Harvard Business Review for articles by both Christensen and Porter on the social sector (some good examples). Some of the larger conservation NGO's have begun to work quite closely with MNC's in developing world (look at websites for WWF, CI, etc.) In addition, take a look at WRI's work (click the link for Next Billion to start, then link to their many publications).
My view- I have seen some work advocating that MNCs use non-profits to enter BOP markets. The usual reason is that this will allow them to better understand the local situation. Often, these are written by people with ties to NPO sector, and NPOs do see MNCs as potential sources of funding. I think at times this may make sense, but more as a tactic for a specific opportunity in a specific market, than as an overall entry strategy for BOP. NPO's and MNC's generally have quite different missions and motivations. As Porter and others have wisely suggested,strategic partnerships between MNCs and NPO/NGO may make lots of sense... I am just not sure "market entry" is the primary role of the NPO.
Similarly, I often see entrepreneurs proposing that their market entry startegy in BOP will be "sell to local NGO". This generally reflects that they have yet to really do much research in the field. Very few NPOs know how to market and sell products. IDE, and I hope Envirofit, are exceptions.
Hope this helps!
Paul

Sim said...

Hi,

thanks again for your advice for my thesis.

I finished my thesis one month ago and received a very good mark, a distinction.

I might thought you are interesting in reading it as I also analysed the case of Shell Foundation and Envirofit.
Here you can find the executive summary of my university thesis.
http://bop-collaboration.blogspot.com/

If you interested in reading the whole paper, please tell me your email and I will send it to you.

Kindly regards,
Simon Jochim

Anonymous said...

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