November 17, 2006

Jaw Dropping Name Dropping

Yunus_3I'm on my way back from the Global Microcredit Summit and the UN Advisors Group on Inclusive Financial Access, both of which met in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I don't like to drop names (ie, I didn't mention dining in SF last week next to Mayor Gavin Newsom and Mick Jagger). But microfinance is where it's at right now. And it was amazing to see a who's who of grassroots economic development. I was standing in line at a reception hosted by the foreign minister of Andorra honoring this year's Nobel peace prize winner, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, when it dawned on me that the woman patiently queuing behind me was the queen of Spain...

More on these meetings later...

Nov 17, 2006 9:38:00 AM | A World Safe for Hypocrisy (politics & society)

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Your Paperless Future I'm in Halifax for a global summit on microfinance. While here, the newspapers have been going on about a report by Statistics Canada confirming the folly of the paperless future and other assumptions about the digital age. Despite the advent of widespread personal computing, consumption of paper for writing and printing doubled between 1983 and 2003. While the Internet enables virtual communication and collaboration, business travel is still increasing as well. E-commerce increased fourfold between 2001 and 2004, but it still accounts for only 1% of total retail sales. And the number of brick-and-mortar retailers, the amount of space they occupy in the real world, and the numbers of people they emply have all continued to rise too. Even old fashioned postal mail is still increasing, regardless of the advent of email (and express couriers). The report cites our "talkative...
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Learning from the Poor "A grassroots approach to emerging-market consumers" is a very interesting article from the new issue of the McKinsey Quartlerly. It talks about the corporate benefits to the private sector when they get involved in microfinance and other grassroots efforts. When companies figure out how to serve low-income consumers in developing countries profitably, everyone wins: the disadvantaged gain access to products and services that the private sector is best positioned to deliver, while companies tap into vast new markets. On top of that, when core sectors of the economy—such as banking, electricity, telecommunications, and water—thrive, they transform consumers into producers and promote economic development. But what I thought was especially interesting was the way that these macro companies are learning new market strategies by paying attention to the dynamics of microfinance. They are using mechanisms such as the peer pressure of...

Steve

Steve Barth consults to international government, NGO, academic and corporate clients. Recent work has focused on organizational learning and KM strategies in economic development and peace and security. Award-winning writer specializing in organizational intelligence and knowledge worker productivity.

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