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• Title: How to Use Technology to Spur Development: Merging Technology and Entrepreneurialism to Meet the Needs of the Poor and Improve Their Productivity has Obvious Appeal, But Such Efforts Need More Careful Study and Planning to Deliver on Their Potential (Technology AND DEVELOPMENT)
• Author : Issues in Science and Technology
• Release Date : January 01, 2008
• Genre: Engineering,Books,Professional & Technical,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 253 KB

Description

After decades of global antipoverty efforts in which nonprofit organizations operated on a separate track from the business sector, disappointment with the results is leading a diverse group of institutions to test a new approach. In recent years, groups as diverse as the United Nations (UN), the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), nongovernmental organizations, national governments, and corporate giants such as Microsoft and Visa have backed the idea that philanthropy and profitability are not opposing forces. The central premise is that increasing the well-being of the poor while increasing the profits of the private sector can simultaneously be a sound development and business strategy. Operationally, this means marketing productivity-enhancing goods and services to millions of people, often poor and rural, who form what is called the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). Although this approach has generated much enthusiasm and creativity in development circles, much remains unknown about how well this model works in practice. If implemented inappropriately, this well-intended approach will neither create opportunities for the poorest nor be financially self-sustaining for the private sector. We need to evaluate in detail what has been tried, as an essential step toward developing region-specific, pragmatic, and practice-based approaches for how companies and governments can serve the global poor and increase business opportunities. The BOP model posits that the world is an economic pyramid with four billion people at the bottom who live on less than $2 (in purchasing-power parity terms) per day. The 100 million people at the top collectively control more wealth and resources than the bottom four billion. That said, a joint report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and International Finance Corporation (IFC) concludes that the BOP constitutes an enormous $5 trillion global market. For the most part, however, these consumers are not integrated into the global economy. They have significant unmet needs for financial services, technologies, water, sanitation, and health care. They often pay higher prices for basic goods and services than do their wealthier counterparts, a phenomenon known as the "poor penalty." The BOP business approach argues that the private sector should lead the effort to develop this untapped yet lucrative market. These poor and usually commercially overlooked consumers, it is argued, need low-cost high-quality products, for which they are willing to pay, to raise their quality of life. The development of these markets would lead to poverty alleviation not through subsidies or handouts but through generating opportunities and choices for the poor.

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