Encouraging entrepreneurship in vulnerable environments

Anshul SaxenaVikas Agarwal

9 January, 2007

CINE

Empowering Poor

• Access to resources, skills, institutions & technologies– Communication and Power interplay– Risk management

• Nature of risk• Portfolio diversity and vulnerability

– Building upon local knowledge systems– Role of culture, religion and other social institutions– IPR Protection– Retaining young blood

Dial “M” for Munna bhai

Telecom revolution

• Pride• Fun activity• Loyal customer base• 25% increase in sales• Business model for others

“Let there be light”… Shantipada Gon Chaudhuri Director, West Bengal Renewable Energy Agency (WBREDA)

Sunny side-up• Savings up to Rs 10,000 p.a. • Low crime rates (Street lights)• Better medical facilities (refrigerators)• New forms of entertainment (Radio, TV etc)• Significant improvement in students’ performances• Women can sew till late to supplement the family income• Increased productivity (average man-hour work up by 10%)

• Gon Chaudhuri and his men won the Green Oscar in 2003 • There are 22,000 applications for solar power pending now • Target motto: ‘Electricity for all by 2012’

Banker of the poor• Md. Yusuf:

– PhD in Economics, Vanderbilt University, USA– Prof. in Vanderbilt University, USA– Fund villagers from own money for 6 years– Founded “Grameen” bank in 1983

• Micro-credit bank– $3 billion – 2 million Bangladeshi benefitted

• Recognition:– Nobel peace prize (2006)– Included in list of 20 real heroes (US News & World Report, 2001)

Innovations: The Corporate Way

• Creativity: At employee level… approx. all big organizations have it• To nourish creativity and make it to innovation level requires

support• Big Corporations have always come under tight grip of bureaucracy • Creativity and Innovation could not get proper nourishment and

support, because– They could not pass through tight and slow web of bureaucracy– Old stalwards could not understand changing environments and business

requirements

• Some organizations promoted creativity but could not shape it to innovation

Xerox Story

• 1st Personal Computer (PC)• Xerox … COULD HAVE owned the PC revolution• One of the biggest corporations in 1970s in US

economy• Biggest example of bureaucratic organization that

could not support innovation• Xerox PRAC invented desktop computing machines,

icons, WYSIWYG printing• But kept aside by ‘Commandos’ as they could not take

their mindset out of copier business

1979: Death of ‘Alto’

• IBM think tank – ‘Boca Raton’ Team volunteered with conditions that management (commandos) leave them alone and look the other way

• Management agreed• And Boca Raton team violated every procedure in the

book of IBM .. Result IBM PC• For them… BAD was in fact GOOD• Later IBM realized and changed the procedure to

support innovation ..• Now IBM has a good track record of commercializing

innovations

IBM Story

Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.“

… George Kneller

Thank You !!