The World Resources Institute sponsored a conference on Eradicating Poverty Through Profit last December. I was unable to attend, but a couple of my coworkers did and found it extremely stimulating. The conference operated on the underlying philosophy that large companies do have a role to play in development, by providing products and services to "bottom of the pyramid" markets. While there is interesting ethics involved in profiting from the poor, I think that they also have an interesting approach, in that large companies are going to be much more interested in profit than charity. They have just set up a website to continue the conversation at www.nextbillion.net.
A caveat--I did try to sign up for a password for login access and haven't received it yet. However, there is a lot of information available on the regular site, and there is an RSS feed.
A caveat--I did try to sign up for a password for login access and haven't received it yet. However, there is a lot of information available on the regular site, and there is an RSS feed.
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