wdi davidson review winter 2010

The William Davidson Institute’s Development Consulting Services (DCS) initiative was established to fulfill the Institute’s mission of bringing business knowledge to emerging markets with an emphasis on practical applications of WDI’s research.

“DCS serves a vital function for WDI,” said Institute Executive Director Robert Kennedy. “It’s a way to connect our research to real world projects. And it connects us with funders. They have the money and we have the expertise. It gets our researchers out in the field and gives us different and better insights.”

In support of WDI’s Base of the Pyramid (BoP) research initiative, for instance, DCS landed a U.S. government contract to provide the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) with a comparison of the BoP approach to poverty alleviation to the value chain approach favored by development agencies. The goal will be to identify the synergies, distinctions, and contra-dictions between the two approaches, and to recommend ways that USAID can incorporate a BoP approach into its portfolio.

WDI is a thought-leader in BoP and this project will give the Institute an opportunity to direct and enhance the effectiveness of poverty alleviation projects funded by major development agencies.

DCS also looks to leverage the expertise of faculty across the University of Michigan, and to include UM schools and colleges in their project bids.

“We don’t just work for WDI, we work for others,” Kennedy said.

Al-Naif said when it comes to contracts, “most development agencies speak a different language. That makes it difficult for most researchers to navigate the process. That’s how we play a valuable role. We get the contracts that help get these researchers out in the field.”

DCS is collaborating with UM’s Transportation Research Institute, Ross Professor Ravi Anupindi, and the African Studies Center on a project to develop the capacity of the University of Johannes- burg’s faculty to provide graduate level courses in transportation, logistics and supply chain management. The program includes faculty exchanges and a student study tour to the United States. These activities will create sustainable approaches to

A Growing Global PresenceProjects, Collaborations with WDI Research Initiatives, UM on the Rise

C o n t I n U e D o n P A G e 2 6 >C o n t I n U e D o n P A G e 2 6 >

10WIN

TER

Business Knowledge for emerging economies

w i l l i a m d a v i d s o n i n s t i t u t e

I n t h I s I s s U e

4 Base of the Pyramid

9 educational outreach

16 executive education

20 Global Impact Internships

About DCSDevelopment Consulting Services (DCS) is WDI’s international consulting practice. DCS serves donor clients such as USAID and the World Bank, private clients such as the Gates Foundation, Goldman Sachs, and the Eurasia Foundation, and partner governments like Rwanda, Algeria, and the United States. The staff and consultants at DCS apply business expertise to strengthen economic, educational and social infrastructures to effect meaningful change so people can lead better lives.

Working under contracts or grant mechanisms, DCS designs, develops, and implements development projects in many of the world’s emerging countries.

DCS’ technical engagements include financial services, management consulting, private sector development, public sector health, environmental management, gender, poverty alleviation, governance, and food security.

DCS TeamC o n t I n U e D o n P A G e 2 7 >

w w w. w d i . u m i c h . e d u w i n t e r 1 0 | review

ReseARCh UPDAtes

4 Base of the Pyramid

7 Green Leap

8 Business of health Care

PRoGRAM UPDAtes

9 educational outreach

12 Development Consulting services

16 executive education

sUPPoRtInG InteRnAtIonAL ACtIvItIes

20 Global Impact Internships

23 Cross-school Collaborations

24 Global Impact speaker series

26 travel-study Course

28 WDI Calendar

table of contents

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William Davidson Institute 724 east University AvenueAnn Arbor, Michigan 48109 UsA

Editor: Dan [email protected]

Photographers: sean Killian and Dan shine.

3

greetings from the William Davidson Institute. This is the 13th issue of the Davidson Review, our semiannual newsletter designed to keep you updated on our activities and plans, and to urge you to become involved in our programs as we build communities of interest in our focus areas.

As we’ve discussed in past letters, the William Davidson Institute (WDI) organizes its activities into five broad areas—research, development consulting services, executive education, educational outreach, and supporting international activities at U-M.

I’m happy to report that everything is going quite well at the Institute.Development Consulting Services (DCS), under its director Khalid Al-Naif, has established some great

momentum. It has 12 continuing projects covering 12 countries. Since the last newsletter, DCS has won four new contracts. Khalid has built a strong team and is developing projects that support the other initiatives at the Institute. I foresee a bright future for DCS. You can read more about DCS in this issue’s cover story.

Educational Outreach (EO), our case writing initiative, also has made great strides in the past six months. Sales are up more than 400 percent from fall 2008, and EO’s teaching materials are being adopted more widely at both Michigan and other top business schools. The case catalogue now numbers more than 200 pieces and we are working on several institutional partnerships that we hope to announce in the coming months.

Executive Education continues its steady growth despite the global economic crisis. Exec Ed will deliver 36 programs this year and continues to run the highly-successful Goldman Sachs entrepreneurship program in Rwanda.

Our research initiatives are going well. Our Base of the Pyramid research initiative, under the leadership of Ted London, hosted a well-received conference in the fall and will publish a book on the topic in 2010. The Business of Healthcare research initiative has developed a protocol and is now testing it in the field. The Green Leap Global Initiative has signed two partnership agreements to start research labs in China and is in active discussions with funders to underwrite more work. And the Globalization of Services research initiative led to the publication of my book, “The Services Shift: Seizing the Ultimate Offshore Opportunity.” It has been out about a year and has had strong sales in both the U.S. and overseas, particularly India which has outsold the U.S. The book has been translated into Croatian and Mandarin. French and Swedish versions will be out in the next few months.

WDI’s support of international activities at the university continues to grow. We are finalizing the MBA Multidisciplinary Action Projects (MAP) we will sponsor at the Ross School this winter and starting to organize summer internships. We will sponsor a travel-study course for the second time, this year to Russia. Last year, the course focused on Turkey, and was both popular and a good learning experience. The Institute continues to organize a speaker series and to sponsor projects at the schools of Medicine and Public Health.

In March 2009, as you might recall, we lost our founder and leader Bill Davidson. We still feel his loss at WDI but I am strengthened by the great supporting relationship I have with Karen Davidson and the entire Davidson family. We are working to pursue his vision and to honor his legacy with our work every day.

You can read about all of this work in greater detail in the rest of this newsletter, and stay updated at our website, www.wdi.umich.edu.

As you can see, the breadth and impact of WDI’s activities across the globe continues to grow. If you are already engaged with WDI, we thank you for your involvement. If you are not, we invite you to become a part of this dynamic community.

Sincerely,

Robert E. KennedyExecutive Director

LetteR FRoM the eXeCUtIve DIReCtoR

Bob Kennedy speaks at a Green Leap event.


RESEARCH

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UPDAte

BAse oF the PYRAMID

For three days in October, leaders from the private,

non-profit, development, foundation, and academic sectors convened in Ann Arbor to learn and share their ideas about the base of the pyramid (BoP).

The invitation-only gathering of 100 people also gave the nine authors collaborating on a book about the BoP an opportunity to present their collective thinking and solicit feedback and comments from the event’s attendees.

Tentatively titled “Creating Mutual Value: Building Businesses and Alleviating Poverty with the Base of the Pyramid,” the book will summarize what has been

learned so far, identify challenges for the field as it continues to develop, and explore creative avenues for maximizing impact both on theory and practice.

The book is scheduled to be published in summer 2010. The authors are: Ted London (WDI); Stuart Hart (Cornell Univ.); C.K. Prahalad (Univ. of Michigan); Allen Hammond (Ashoka); Jacqueline Novogratz (Acumen); Prabhu Kandachar (Delft Univ. of Technology); Robert Kennedy (WDI); Erik Simanis (Cornell Univ.); Madhu Viswanathan (Univ. of Illinois); and Patrick Whitney (Illinois Institute of Technology).

The conference kicked off on

Oct. 1 with a talk by London and Hart looking at the 10 years since the idea of the BoP was first articulated. They also looked at the future development of the BoP domain. (For more on this talk, please turn to Page 24.)

The conference’s second day was filled with three sessions hosted by the authors entitled — Designing for the BoP; Aligning Business Strategy with the BoP Opportunity; and, Enhancing Sustainability and Catalyzing Innovation. Conference attendees had the opportunity to attend each of the author’s presentations to provide feedback and comments.

The “Designing for the BoP”

cluster was led by authors Madhu Viswanathan, Patrick Whitney, and Prabhu Kandachar. Viswanathan said those in the audience displayed an interest and passion in the topic.

“It was very useful,” he said of the sessions. “The interaction was great. It was a wonderful platform on which to present to a truly remarkable audience of leaders.”

On the final day, attendees proposed topics that needed further discussion. The most popular issues were then dis-cussed in breakout sessions for deeper evaluation.

Viswanathan participated in the breakout sessions and said they were “intellectually stimulating.”

“It was just fascinating to be there with participants from different sectors and leaders in specific areas,” he said. “There was a flurry of questions and answers and give and take as participants maximized the use of time to learn from others. It was remarkable to see the passion, energy, and sharp focus on poverty alleviation.”

London said the end-of- conference breakout session discussions will be continued at the next BoP gathering.

Voices from Different Sectors Drive Conference Discussion

the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) initiative, headed by Dr. ted London, continued to create knowledge and establish partnerships around the globe.

our impact assessment work is accelerating through new field-based collaborations and an innovative workshop. A signature book co-edited

by some of the leading thinkers in the BoP field is progressing well and should be on the bookshelves in 2010. Interest in our activities — both

on the University of Michigan campus and around the world — continues to grow. We launched a new research effort, funded by UsAID, to

compare the BoP perspective with the value chain approach. We also expanded the BoP-oriented opportunities for students at Michigan

as we partnered with more organizations on internships and MAPs.

Above: Conference attendees mingle during a break. Authors Patrick Whitney (top right) and Erik Simanis (bottom

right) discuss their book chapters.

w w w. w d i . u m i c h . e d ureview | w i n t e r 1 0

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Left: BoP Research Associate Heather Esper (2nd from left) observes a survey beingconducted for VisionSpring.

Left: Sateen ShethRight: Andy Grogan-Kaylor

WDI is organizing a workshop in Ann Arbor for 10-15 participants from organizations that work with the base of the pyramid and need to either develop or refine their impact assessment process.

WDI has developed an impact assessment framework to help organizations measure poverty alleviation outcomes so they can enhance their business models. Most ventures that serve the world’s poor primarily collect data on pre-determined business milestones and recite feel-good stories. Without a true assessment of how they are serving their target market, organizations are unable to improve their economic and social performance.

Ted London, Heather Esper, and Sateen Sheth of WDI, along with UM School of Social Work Professor Andy Grogan-Kaylor, will run the workshop.

The first day of the workshop will be devoted to an overview

of the impact assessment framework developed by London.

On the second day, participants will perform an initial strategic assessment, learn more about research design, sample size, developing a survey, pre-testing, the data collection process, implementing a survey, and analyzing data. Participants will then initiate their impact assessment plan.

The final day will give participants the chance to present assessment plans specific to their organization and receive feedback.

Upon completion of the workshop, participants will:• Develop a strong understanding

of the Impact Assessment Framework

• Perform an initial strategic analysis of their organization’s impacts

• Understand the key issues in

Impact Assessment Workshop to Assist BoP Organizations

Another way in which the BoP initiative furthers its aim to improve impact assessment efforts in the development community is through engagements with field-based ventures committed to understanding and improving their business models. The BoP initiative stresses that ventures should see measuring impacts as an iterative learning process and investment that will allow them to better hear the voices of the BoP in order to improve their economic and social performance.

The BoP research initiative has an agreement with Digital Divide Data (DDD), which trains and employs economically disad-vantaged and physically disabled

young adults in Cambodia and Laos in IT skills. WDI impact assessment experts will review and provide feedback on the organization’s current impact assessment plans and documents.

The agreement with DDD is an “Advisory Engagement,” one of two ways that the initiative works with clients. The other approach is a “Collaborative Engagement,” which the initiative has with Movirtu, a for-profit social enterprise that provides innovative mobile technology and business models for wireless telecommunication service providers servicing rural poor communities in Sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia.

Partnerships Focus on Impact Assessment

developing and implementing a robust data collection strategy

• Create an actionable plan for moving forward in measuring their organization’s impact “The workshop is designed to

provide action-based learning,” Esper said. “Our goal is for participants to gain a deeper understanding of impact assessment and to be able to enhance mutual value creation. The attendees will leave with an action plan to move these ideas forward in their organizations.”


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Helene Lerossignol-Bayeux has joined the BoP research initiative to oversee the USAID project.

She spent more than 8 years working for a major European consulting firm, specializing in change management. She has led several missions for international banks, pharmaceutical companies, and aeronautical businesses.

Lerossignol-Bayeux also worked several years for French NGOs, serving as the chief financial officer of missions in Guinea-Conakry and Bosnia. She was a board member of the Catholic Comity for Development and Against Hunger (CCFD), France’s second-largest NGO. She led the commission selecting projects in Africa that would be

financed by the CCFD.In addition to her work for

the BoP initiative, Lerossignol-Bayeux also is working as a project administrator for WDI’s Development Consulting Services. She is managing the RESUME project in Algeria (see page 12 for more details on that project).

WDI’s BoP research initiative is working on a year-long project to compare the U.S. Agency for International Development’s traditional value chain approach to poverty alleviation with that of the base of the pyramid perspective.

In comparing these two approaches, WDI will articulate overlaps, distinctions, possible synergies, and contradictions. To do this, WDI will identify the core principles that guide

the development of these approaches as well as discuss similarities and differences.

WDI will produce a final report that also provides initial recommendations on how a BoP approach can be implemented in the field.

The WDI team is Ted London, Ross School of Business Professor Ravi Anupindi, and Helene Lerossignol-Bayeux. They will conduct research, talk to experts, and travel to Africa for the project.

In this approach, BoP team members work closely with an organization to co-create, customize, and support their impact assessment efforts using the BoP Impact Assessment Framework. WDI provides support in designing and implementing a data collection strategy using the initiative’s adaptable Impact Assessment Survey, and analyzes the results.

The ultimate goal of both of the advisory and collaborative approaches is to assist organi-zations in their attempts to assess and enhance the impacts of their ventures.

The BoP impact assessment team includes Ted London, Heather Esper, and Sateen Sheth of WDI. Additionally, Dr. Andy Grogan-Kaylor, an associate professor at the School of Social Work, is a key member of our impact assessment team, especially related to collecting data and conducting the data analysis.

Together the team developed a survey tool and data collection process for VisionSpring. In October 2008, BoP Research Associate Heather Esper worked with VisionSpring on baseline data collection. She spent four weeks in India helping transfer the impact assessment method-

ology to the local management team. She also helped train the team conducting the interviews for VisionSpring, assisted in establishing the protocol for the interviews, and ensured that the overall process would be appropriately implemented in the field.

Esper and Ted London then returned to India six months later to facilitate the follow-up data collection activities. They refined the process for collecting the data.

This data and analysis allows VisionSpring to identify ways to adapt their business model to better meet the needs of their stakeholders and to reach a larger audience. Without a tool such as this, organizations typically have to rely on anecdotes or stories to highlight the work they are doing, which offers limited insight on how to improve performance.

“These partnerships make sense because they tap into our area of expertise, they deepen our partnerships, and they build our community of interest,” London said. “Over time, as we get more data from a variety of partners, we will also be exploring the relationships between venture strategy and poverty alleviation impacts.”

A VisionSpring worker gives a woman an eye exam.

BAse oF the PYRAMID

Bayeux to Assist with USAID Project

Project Compares Two Approaches to Poverty Alleviation

Helene Lerossignol-Bayeux


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One of the early goals of GLGI is to start collaborative research centers in China.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed to establish the Tsinghua Center for Green Leap. It will be hosted at, and financially supported by, Tsinghua University. The university has proposed having Green Leap Director Stu Hart, Cornell University’s Mark Milstein, and Green Leap Project Administrator Xiaojian You speak at its June 2010 China MBA Education Reform conference. They also are interested in co-developing a book about Green Leap with Chinese company case studies in the next two years, and co-hosting a Green Leap Global Forum in 2011.

There also was progress toward launching a Green Leap Center in the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE). Prof. Jianjun Shi, the president of UIBE, and his team proposed several collaborative projects, including one pilot project to reclaim waste lands along the Yellow River through bio-technologies developed by a start-up company they are working with. The UIBE team will draft a work plan and strategic work frame for future collaboration.

The two centers will support research programs and pilot projects on Green Leap initiatives already occurring in China. With the help of MBA and doctoral students, these ventures will be documented and analyzed in order to identify key success factors and best practices. There are also plans for student exchange programs.

Green Leap Team Visits ChinaGreen Leap Director Stuart Hart, program manager Xiaojian You, and Cornell University’s Mark Milstein travelled to China in December for several meetings and visits to multinational corporations.

During the 9-day trip, the three met with representatives of multinational corporations such as Unilever, Dow Corning, IDEO, Ericsson, and GE; and with Green Leap partner Redbud Textile Technology Co. in Shanghai. In Beijing, they visited the largest solar heating company in China, met with UNDP officials, and with Green Leap partner Tsinghua University.

Food Security Issues Topic of Hart TalkHart discussed food security at a November conference in Washington, D.C. Khalid Al Naif, director of WDI’s Development Consulting Services, introduced Hart and later moderated a panel discussion on the topic.

Hart was the keynote speaker on the second day of the five-day SEEP (Small Enterprise Education and Promotion) Network Annual Conference called Powering Connections ’09.

The second day of the conference was titled, “Food Security: Exploring New Pathways.” Hart’s talk started a day full of workshops and panel presentations that introduced new enterprise-based approaches to the lack of food security.

Hart, an expert on base of the pyramid (BoP) and sustainability issues, stressed the need for a new generation of BoP strategies that emphasize the co-creation of products and the commercialization of “green” technologies. The discussion highlighted how the new generation of BoP strategies can connect business and communities in a collaborative process for innovation and change.

While also at the conference, Hart was a participant in a panel discussion about the Green Leap.

UPDAte

GReen LeAPRESEARCH

In 2008, WDI launched the Green Leap Global Initiative (GLGI) to look at a new approach to development that drives economically and

environmentally-sustainable growth through the commercialization of green technologies. Research is focused on clean technologies targeted

at the base of the economic pyramid in China where the infrastructure has not been built out and where it is possible to construct a new next

generation form of living and infrastructure from the beginning. the past year was spent building relationships and creating partnerships with

universities and potential business partners in China.

Two Research Centers Established


RESEARCH

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T wo field studies to further examine the impact of

improving the management and organizational skills of health care workers will be undertaken in Rwanda and Ghana in 2010.

In collaboration with the Access Project, a project run by Columbia University’s Earth Institute, WDI will implement a data-gathering project in Rwanda. It will retrospectively compare the changes in the operational management and motivation of staff in health centers where management training and coaching of health staff was provided versus changes in health centers that were not part of the intervention group. The data will be available by June 2010 and will guide a research project in Ghana.

Although there are many ways to try to mitigate or understand the effects of confounding factors in uncontrolled or retrospective studies, the gold standard will always remain the prospective randomized study. Such studies are infrequently done in the field of operations management or

human resources. The proposed study in Ghana will be such a study, and will compare the changes in operational manage-ment, staff morale, the staff work-group climate, and certain key health indicators among two groups of 15 health centers.

A protocol has been developed to expand the Management and Organizational Skills Program collaboration with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. This will help determine how effect- ively the methodology used in Rwanda translates to other health systems. A proposal for funding has been submitted to the Center for Global Health to support this work.

“With these controlled studies, we will try to see how the mastery of management skills factors into things such as clinic operations, staff morale, and how well the staff works as a team,” Canter said. “We will also explore the utilization of clinics, and the impact on ante-natal care, child immunizations, and reproduc-tive services.”

Canter’s interest in this research stems from the work he did in Rwanda in 2008. He said the two field studies this year will provide additional data to support a future bid for funding larger field studies.

“A larger study will allow us to look at how these methodologies can really be applied on a regional or national scale, and what benefit a country could expect to obtain from their investment,” he said.

Canter’s second research area looks at the interdependence of business, foreign aid and non-profit organizations in the delivery of health care. In developing countries, health care is strongly supported by non-profits and foreign aid coming from both government sources and private donors.

That leads to questions such as how health care systems start to become less dependent on donors, and what happened in countries that have steadily reduced their dependence on foreign aid.

“Research into how NGOs and donors influence health care strategies in certain countries has progressed over the past year with the help of research associates Sara Bonner and Tanistha Datta,” Canter said. “We have built on the work of others to rethink the question, ‘Why do some countries remain depen-dent on foreign aid while others can reduce that dependence? Are there programs, such as the introduction of universal health insurance that have turned out to be significant inflection points in health system development? In all of this change, what have been the opportunities for private

health care businesses, and what has helped or hindered their development?’”

The group has focused on Ghana, Rwanda, and Thailand — countries that are illustrative of the different stages of foreign aid dependence.

Canter taught a graduate-level course in fall 2009 called “The Business of Biology,” which explored the scientific, ethical, legal, financial, and management aspects of a human health biology- based business. The course focused on the emerging personal genomics business models to illustrate many of the complexi-ties of a business that has chosen to market health services directly to the consumer. The course attracted students from the Ross School of Business, the School of Public Health, and the colleges of Engineering and Pharmacy.

“I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of teaching a cross- disciplinary graduate-level course,” Canter said. “I learned a lot about what the students look for in a graduate course and equally what I thought my experience could offer them. The business students are some- what disconcerted by the need to understand the science under- lying a biology-based business, especially one related to human health. The ethical, scientific and legal questions raised during the course go far beyond the world of marketing and venture capital. The course also had medical, pharmacy, chemistry, and engineering students who learned so much of the business side of the business from the MBA students who make up over half of the class.”

Canter taught the class with Liz Barry, the managing director of the university’s Life Sciences Institute.

the health Care Research initiative, led by David Canter, seeks to

improve the delivery of health care in low-income countries by means

of business rather than clinical approaches, and to study how their

health systems transition from donor dependent to donor agnostic.

UPDAte

the BUsIness oF heALth CARe

Rwanda, Ghana will be Sites of Field Studies

Research Focuses on Three Donor-Dependent Countries

In the Classroom

David Canter (left) leads a discussion after class.


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PROGRAMS UPDAte

eDUCAtIonAL oUtReACh

Educational Outreach has made great strides in the past six months. Sales are up more than 400 percent from fall 2008, and EO’s catalogue now numbers more than 200 pieces — cases, conceptual notes, simulations, exercises, and videos. That is an increase from about 70 a year ago.

Most significantly, EO teaching materials are being adopted more widely at both Michigan’s Ross School of Business and other top business schools.

This past fall, the materials were used in 14 Ross classes — including four core courses. Two honor code cases were used in the MBA and EMBA orientation. Also, the Leadership Crisis Challenge, developed by EO, was presented to about 200 students in January. And Bob Kennedy is teaching a BBA “Introduction to Business” course with Ross School Dean Robert Dolan and Professor Scott Moore. The course will make extensive use of newly-developed materials from EO.

Ross faculty has said they enjoy having material customized to their courses, and students said they like to see the Ross brand on cases instead of Harvard.

Professors from such universities as INSEAD, Cornell, and the Helsinki School of Economics, have submitted materials to EO.

Fifteen new U.S. schools became customers in fall 2009, including Stanford, Duke, Notre Dame, Yale, Princeton, and George Washington University. Some of the international schools that have purchased EO materials include Oxford, the University of Toronto, Yeshiva University, and the Stockholm School of Economics.

New High Profile Cases and CollectionsGlobaLens cases feature the latest thinking and current topics. At about the same time the Boeing 787 Dreamliner finally took its maiden flight — almost two years behind schedule, GlobaLens posted a case by Ross Professor Ravi Anupindi called “Boeing: The Fight for Fasteners.”

One reason for the delay with the 787 was an industry-wide shortage of aerospace fasteners, the hardware that held the aircraft together. Engineers at Boeing never could have imagined that fasteners, which comprise approx- imately 3% of the total cost of an aircraft, would become such an issue. Anupindi’s case introduces students to the challenges of

operating a global supply chain, and how a small part can derail a multi-billion dollar project. The case provides deep discussion on the topics of value-sharing, supply chain visibility, program implementation, and globalization.

GlobaLens boasts a number of popular collections on topics such as sustainability, and base of the pyramid, as well as a series of notes on entrepreneurship by Jim Price. EO also is working with Professor C.K. Prahalad on a series of new cases highlighting “The New Age of Innovation,” the title of a new book by Prahalad and Professor M.S. Krishnan. Two cases are in the GlobaLens catalogue and several more are expected to be added in the coming months.

The first Prahalad case is on India’s wireless giant Bharti Airtel (Airtel) that shows how the firm exemplifies many of the tenets set forth in Prahalad’s book. The case ends by asking

students to analyze the Indian environment and capabilities of Airtel to determine what strategies the wireless provider should use for growth. The second case gives students the opportunity to see which strategies the company actually pursued and the results of those approaches. The case asks students how Airtel can maintain its culture of innovation while growing quickly.

Another Prahalad case on Jaipur Rugs explores how a company can benefit the poor by connecting them with global markets. Jaipur Rugs makes this connection by building and orchestrating a global supply chain on a massive scale — one focused on developing human capability and skills at the grassroots level, providing steady incomes for rural men and women in the most depressed parts of India and connecting them with markets of the rich,

educational outreach (eo) focuses on two goals — developing and disseminating teaching materials on international business topics, and working

with Michigan’s faculty to help move their research ideas into the classroom. In the last six months, eo has been focused on operational improvements

to build on the successes of the last year. Among the notable achievements are: completion of a strategic plan for eo; increased adoption of

GlobaLens materials into elective and core courses at RsB; increased submissions of teaching materials by faculty; and a rapid increase in sales.

Gaining Momentum

C.K. Prahalad


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such as the United States. Thous- ands of independent workers are organized to consistently produce a very high quality product, on a complex decent-ralized basis through a system of organization that is unique.

New Role for Lee Moses Lee, who has been a research associate with Educa- tional Outreach since 2007, has taken on new duties as the initiative’s marketing and communications manager.

Lee will spearhead efforts to draw attention to GlobaLens and build a community of interest around the site’s teaching materials in international business. This includes a Twitter account, which can be followed at http://twitter.com/globalens.

Marc Robinson, director of Educational Outreach, said Lee deserves this promotion.

“He has aggressively developed new case ideas, advocated new partnerships, and started new initiatives such as the case competition in partnership with NextBillion that have had a huge impact on EO and WDI,” Robinson said. “In his new role, Moses will be able to devote more time and energy to these high-payoff initiatives. This will help EO communicate the business ideas central to WDI and the Ross School of Business, and get the ideas into the hands of faculty members who are teaching the next generation of business leaders for the world.”

Lee graduated from UM with a bachelor’s degree in business and master’s degree in accounting. Prior to joining the WDI, he worked as an investment banking

analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, and as a senior auditor at Ernst & Young. He also was a senior financial analyst at General Motors.

Highlighting Ross Faculty Work As mentioned earlier, EO works with the Ross School of Business at Michigan to develop cases. But EO also has undertaken a major effort to market these cases outside the school.

Moses Lee, the marketing and communications manager for EO, has used a variety of tools to promote the work of faculty. He does outreach via email newsletters, creates course web sites, blogs regularly on the NextBillion site about new cases, develops and posts video interviews with profes-sors, and keeps a Twitter account with frequent updates on new EO offerings.

For example, Lee created an

online resource for faculty on Professor Gautam Kaul’s course, “Finance and the Sustainable Enterprise.” The course is unique in that it looks at the issue of environmental and social sustainability through an economics and finance perspective. The course has already been taught five times at the Ross School and has received rave reviews.

The resources, all available on the GlobaLens website, included teaching cases and notes, the course syllabus, commentary on class sessions, and a community forum. Lee also kept a blog on the course, and worked with Kaul, the John C. and Sally S. Morley Professor of Finance at Ross, on a video describing the course that was posted on the popular website YouTube.

Kaul said he wants to make students realize that “business as usual,” at least as it has been known for the past several dec- ades, cannot lead to a sustainable world. Students hopefully will also emerge through this experience equipped with a framework and a set of tools that can help them

create and manage businesses that can deal with the complex and uncertain world confronting us today. Ultimately, the goal is to evaluate not only the private benefit, but also the social value, created or destroyed by a project and therefore the firm.

“The course is unique in that it looks at the issue of environ-mental and social sustainability through an economics and finance perspective,” Lee said. “It was nice to be able to highlight Professor Kaul’s course in a few different ways, and we will look to do that with more cases going forward.”

WDI Collaborates on Two UM Courses WDI, in partnership with the College of Engineering and the School of Art and Design, designed and taught a multidisciplinary course in social entrepreneurship

eDUCAtIonAL oUtReACh

Ravi Anupindi in the classroom. Videos of Anupindi and Gautam Kaul can be seen at the GlobaLens website and on YouTube.


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in fall 2009. The same team has created a Social Venture Creation course which will be delivered in the winter 2010 term.

Moses Lee, Educational Outreach’s marketing and communications manager, will be an instructor in the winter social venture course. The course aims to bring students across disciplines at the University of Michigan to work on solving society’s challenges together.

The students will form multidisciplinary teams and take steps to launch a social venture. At the end of the course, student teams will submit an implementation plan and make a presentation on a social venture idea to a panel of industry experts and potential funders. The hope is that some of these multidisciplinary student teams will be able to launch a social venture upon completing the course.

The course will feature cases, readings, videos, lectures, group projects, and group discussions to help students understand the social entrepreneurship movement. Students will be exposed to the building blocks for starting a social venture; assessing and enhancing a social venture’s

impact, raising capital, and scaling-up the business.

“It’s great that the tools and knowledge that we’ve researched and developed at WDI will be put into the hands of students to effect real change in the world.”

The “Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship” course taught in fall 2009 was designed as a gateway to the emerging field of social entrepreneurship. The course gave students a broad conceptual framework, with case studies, readings, and guest speakers to explore some of the skill sets necessary to effect change, and to ignite within each student the desire to do so.

WDI Sponsors Case Writing Competition WDI, along with the World Resources Institute and Acumen Fund, sponsored a case writing competition with the hope of engaging students and faculty on

campuses all over the world in the emerging field of social ventures.

The contest, called “The Next: 2010 Case Writing Competition,” was open to students and faculty members at both the undergrad-uate and graduate level. The deadline to turn in an “Intention to compete” form was Jan. 15. Cases are due April 30, and the winners will be announced on June 1.

The first place winner will be awarded $1,000. Second place is $500, third is $250, and fourth and fifth winners will each receive $100.

“We’re pleased to be a sponsor of this competition because it combines two of WDI’s key activities — research at the base of the pyramid and case writing,” said WDI Executive Director Robert Kennedy.

Moses Lee, one of the organ- izers of the competition and a research associate with WDI’s Educational Outreach initiative, said he is often asked by students how they can become involved in the base of the pyramid commu-nity. Unfortunately, he said, there are not many opportunities on most college campuses, spurring the idea for the writing contest.

“The purpose of this competi-tion is to engage students in writing high-impact case studies with their professors to help further the overall base of the pyramid movement,” Lee said. “The hope is that these cases will be used to better inform the sponsoring organizations, help academics teach this material

to future leaders, and ultimately, make a tremendous social impact on the ground.”

Contest judges include: Kennedy; Anupindi; Ted London of WDI: Brian Trelstad, chief investment officer, Acumen Fund; and Virginia Barreiro, New Ventures global director, World Resources Institute.

To learn more about the competition, go to: www.nextbillion.net/thenext

Vogeler CoordinatesEO Teaching Materials Lorena Vogeler is EO’s project administrator. In this role, Vogeler coordinates the production of GlobaLens teaching materials in their manifold forms and formats, and tends to the legal aspects of their production, editing, and publishing. In addition, she cont- ributes to the many aspects of operations of GlobaLens. She graduated as a graphic designer from PROdiseno, in Caracas, Venezuela. She received an M.S. in Communications Design from Pratt Institute in NYC and worked eight years as an art director for branding and advertising corporations before joining WDI.

Moses Lee teaching his Social Venture course.

Lorena Vogeler


PROGRAMS UPDAte

DeveLoPMent ConsULtInG seRvICes

12

WDI, based partly on our successful work in the past in Algeria, has been awarded a three-year grant by Higher Education for Development (HED) to provide capacity building services to Mentouri University in Constantine, Algeria. The goals of the project are to enhance the school’s English language studies and Business Management curricula to align them with the needs of the Algerian labor market, and to establish a career center that will help Mentouri students make informed decisions about career paths and strengthen the school’s relationships with private sector employers.

Soon after the agreement was signed, a Development Consulting Services team including Carolyn Madden, associate director for curriculum at the University of Michigan’s English Language Institute (ELI), and Judy Dyer, lecturer at ELI, completed the first field visit to Mentouri. The team finished a baseline assessment of the university’s capacity and needs in the English language curriculum, business school curriculum, and career center services. A career center has already been designed, established, and launched by Mentouri with the help of the WDI team of experts.

The three-year project, called RESUME (Recruiting Employable Students at the University with Management Education), is supported by the U.S. Agency for Inter- national Development and the U.S. Embassy in Algiers. It comes after President Obama delivered an important speech on June 4, 2009 in Cairo in which he stressed the importance of creating higher education

partnerships between the U.S. and Muslim-majority countries.

“President Obama’s ‘New Beginning’ speech in Cairo stressed that education and innovation would be the currency of the 21st century and promised that the U.S. would be involved in building human capacity across the Arab World,” said WDI Development Consulting Services Director Khalid Al-Naif. “RESUME is the first project in Algeria that takes the President’s words to implementa-tion, and WDI is proud to be a partner in this important initiative.”

Using real-world learning and experiences, the partnership will create a career center, develop English language training curricula, and enhance the faculty’s ability to teach a

modern business management curriculum at the university.

WDI also will implement a collaborative “train the trainer” program while also engaging the private sector to integrate key skills and knowledge that is needed in the workplace.

In addition to keeping up with the needs of a growing university population, Mentouri University and other Algerian higher education institutions are struggling with the issue of unemployed graduates. In spite of the large number of unemployed university graduates, private-sector employees report difficulty identifying young Algerians who can demonstrate English language proficiency, basic management and computer skills, and

Development Consulting services (DCs) had its second straight record-setting year with revenues growing by 40 percent. the DCs portfolio

features a mix of varied and geographically-diverse international development projects. new projects in Algeria and Kazakhstan resulted from

our past successful work in those countries. our staff and consultants boast experience in more than 60 countries and provide solutions that

cross many disciplines. DCs will look to balance the recent growth in the near east and Africa regions by pursuing new program opportunities

in both Latin America and Asia Pacific.

New Project in Algeria off to Quick Start

Mentouri University in Constantine, Algeria.


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WDI is heading back to Kazakhstan, this time to provide strategic advice to Kazakhstan Economic University (KazEU). The project is supported by the European Foundation for Central Asia (EFCA), which conducts the work of the Eurasia Foundation in Central Asia.

A WDI team of consultants will travel to the Kazakhstan city of Almaty in early 2010 to make recommendations for modifying the university’s mid-term and long-term strategic plans. The goals are to strengthen the university’s market position, enhance its educational services, and improve its management structure. The project is scheduled to run till April 2010.

This project builds upon WDI’s experience working with the International Academy of Business (IAB) in Almaty from September 2006 to March 2008. WDI partnered with IAB to enhance the capacity of the Marketing Education and Research Center to build a sustainable and cooperative partnership with the private sector.

This is also the second collaboration between WDI and the Eurasia Foundation. From November 2001 through September 2006, WDI worked with the Kelajak Ilmi International Business School in Tashkent, Uzbekistan to assist the school in providing

business education in the style of a top American business school, gaining accep-tance from the business community as a source of high-quality, business graduates, and pursuing accreditation from the Uzbek government.

“The contours of post-Soviet education reform in Kazakhstan is being increasingly set by international donors, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, UN agencies, USAID, and international NGOs,” said WDI Development Consulting Services Director Khalid Al-Naif. “However, it is still common to find a mismatch between the discourse of donors and the needs of Kazakhstan. At the international level, donors have been increasingly able to ‘speak the same language’ by orienting their efforts towards pre-defined sets of targets like those embodied in Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals.

“Nonetheless, it is still to be seen whether those initiatives truly resonate with national governments and coincide with plans to move forward. WDI’s team will work with the leadership, manage-ment, staff, and students of Kazakhstan Economic University to reengineer, reposition, prepare, and get ahead of the eventual change curve.”

WDI Runs Workshop for USAID Mission in Sri Lanka

In September, WDI delivered a custom-designed “Management, Team Building, and Leadership” workshop for the USAID mission in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The 50 participants were trained in team building and leadership, and received practical experience for the entire Mission. All attendees participated in action learning, resulting in meaningful new project recommendations for the Mission Director.

At the workshop’s conclusion, participants said the program was very good, valuable to the Mission, and well worth the time. Addi- tionally, they said it brought people together on a more equal footing than they enjoy in the office.

“Some of the Foreign Service Nationals said they flourished in the open atmosphere,” said WDI’s Khalid Al-Naif. “The real-world practical experience with cross-cutting teams demonstrated the value of team work and cooperation between offices as they identified and planned new projects of significant value to Sri Lanka.”

Project Looks at Base of the PyramidWDI’s Base of the Pyramid (BoP) research initiative is working on a project to compare the U.S. Agency for International Develop-ment’s traditional value chain approach to poverty alleviation with that of the BoP perspective. Read more about this project on Page 6.

Kazakhstan Project Works on University’s Strategic Plans

the “soft skills” needed for workplace success such as strong verbal communications, writing, teamwork, and problem-solving. This partnership aims to assist in all of these areas.

“The partnership will contribute to building the human and institutional capacity of Mentouri University as well as produce a long-term relationship between U.S. and Algerian higher education institutions,” said HED Executive Director Tully Cornick.

The new three-year RESUME project continues WDI’s work in Algeria. Beginning in January 2007, the Institute has been involved in the Educating Managers,

Promoting Linkages and Opportunities Initiative (EMPLOI) project, a partnership with Institute of National Commerce and the U.S. State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI).

WDI launched a career center in Algeria at the Institute of National Commerce (INC). The center has helped more than 3,500 Algerian students to find jobs in Algeria’s private and public sectors.

WDI also has organized career fairs at INC for Algerian students. The last one drew about 6,000 attendees. And the Institute recently held a two-day symposium on entrepreneurship in Algiers.

Tully Cornick, HED Executive Director.


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DeveLoPMent ConsULtInG seRvICes > onGoInG PRoJeCts

A one-day international conference on integrated

natural resource management was held Nov. 10, 2009 in Jordan as part of the Jordanian Education for Water and Environmental Leadership — or JEWEL — proj-ect. WDI is helping build the capacity of Jordanian universi-ties to train current and future leaders in natural resource management.

Some of the featured speakers at the conference included: His Excellency Eng. Said Al-Masri, Jordan Minister of Agriculture; Prof. Munir Rusan, director of the JEWEL program; Valentina Qussisiya, director general of the Jordan River Foundation; Jay L. Knott, USAID mission director in Jordan; and Khalid Al-Naif, director of WDI’s Development Consulting Services.

Other notable speakers were David Mulla from the University of Minnesota, and Rob Mikkelsen

from the International Plant Nutrition Institute in Georgia.

Topics discussed at the conference included: integrated water resources management in Jordan; integrated nutrient management soil quality; integrated environmental management; land degradation; and sustainable land management.

Another facet of the JEWEL program is WDI’s development of a Master of Science degree in Integrated Natural Resource Management to train future leaders in applied Natural Resource Management. The five graduate students currently receiving full scholarships to complete the two-year, thesis-based M.S. program gave presentations at the conference. A second cohort of MS students has been selected for the program.

WDI also completed a sustainability plan for JEWEL.

Student Tours for SALETTI ProjectIn March, scholarships will be made available for sophomore and juniors at the University of Johannesburg to participate in two-week study tours of the U.S. A student scholarship committee will be formed to select the participants. WDI will partner with UM’s African Studies Center (ASC) at the International Institute to assist with the study tours.

The students will spend their time in the Ann Arbor and Detroit areas meeting with UM faculty and students, visiting transportation companies and large warehousing facilities, and participating in a defined course of study.

The main purpose of the SALETTI project is to build capacity within the University of Johannesburg’s Department of Transport and Supply Chain Management. The project includes faculty and student exchange programs, executive education workshops, experien-tial learning projects, and baseline assessment of the department’s programs in order to expand and improve what is currently offered.

The project also calls for the conceptualization, development, and launch in 2011 of a master’s program in Supply Chain Man- agement. SALETTI will provide opportunities for South Africans — especially marginalized and underprivileged groups—through faculty and student exchanges, internship programs, and curriculum development.

WDI Consultants Visit West Bank for ProjectIn October 2008, the Expanded and Sustained Access to Financial Services (ESAF) project was awarded to WDI and its partners by USAID. The program aims to build a more inclusive financial sector in the West Bank Terri- tories by increasing sustainable access to financial services for households and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. WDI is enhancing the enabling and regulatory environment through university training, strengthening a training institution for microfinance bankers, and providing technical assistance to the central bank and the regulatory body for the securities industry.

Several WDI consultants visited the area in December to work on different parts of the project.

WDI Consultant Robert Homans traveled to Ramallah, Palestine to provide technical assistance to the Palestine Capital Market Authority (PCMA) to improve leasing regulation capabilities. Consultant Dr. Alec McEwen traveled to Hebron and Ramallah to assist Palestinian Polytechnic University (PPU) in building institutional capacity in the area of land registry. Faculty from PPU also was prepared for an upcoming observational study tour of the U.S. And Dr. Tarek Zaher and Dr. Mahmoud Haddad traveled to the West Bank to help improve the university finance curriculum at Al Quds and Beth- lehem universities.

Other work done recently for the project include preparations for a faculty exchange. Professors from Al Quds and Bethlehem universities will visit Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and a

First-ever Natural Resources Management Conference Held in Jordan

Jordan Minister of Agriculture Said Al-Masri.


15

finance professor from the U.S. will travel to Al Quds University as a visiting scholar for the spring 2010 semester.

An agreement has been signed to have the Arab Academy for Banking and Financial Sciences deliver “train the trainers” work-shops at the Palestine Institute for Financial and Banking Studies.

Data Gathering on Migrant Loan ContinuesWDI has teamed up with the Academy for Educational Dev- elopment (AED) for a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to design and test an innovative financial facility that allows Guatemalan migrants in the U.S. to act as guarantors for micro and small enterprise loans in Guatemala.

In the past six months, the Migrant Backed Loans project team continued to gather feed-back on the migrant-backed loan facility in Quetzaltenango and Huehuetenango in Guatemala, as well as Grand Rapids, Mich. and Washington, D.C. to assess demand for the loan facility and to improve the understanding of product characteristics of interest to migrants.

Overall, there was a high level of interest in the migrant-backed loan facility and much was learned about product features that were important to both migrants and beneficiary entrepreneurs.

The next step will be to find a local financial institution to act as a program partner. A Memoran-dum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed with two institutions to implement the project.

Tourism Work Plan for Communities Completed

The Economic Development and Growth for Enterprises (EDGE) project is working to strengthen the competitiveness of Turkish Cypriot firms, and to build a financial sector in which these firms can thrive. EDGE encourages growth in the Turkish Cypriot ecomomy as another means towards a lasting reunification of the island. WDI, as part of this project, provides technical assistance to the Buyukkonuk Eco-Tourism Association in the areas of governance, communica-tions, membership and program/ service development; assists in the development of at least two other community-based tourism associations; and coordinates public awareness programs for eco-tourism in the Karpaz region.

Recently, WDI consultants designed and developed a work plan for the city of Famagusta. They also worked on a gover-nance structure for a destination development project in the city of Lefke as well as a tourism work plan. And they provided training seminars to 10 community-based tourism officials from three communities.

Data Collection, Analysis Finished in Two CountriesThe impact of taxes and tariffs on anti-malarial commodities is being evaluated by WDI for the Malaria Taxes and Tariffs Advo- cacy Project (M-TAP). In addition to WDI, the Academy for Educa-

tional Development (AED), Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM) and Ogilvy Public Relations Inter- national also is working on the project. The team is evaluating the impact of tax and tariff reg- imes across 72 Malaria-endemic countries, with specific case studies for Benin, Cambodia, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Uganda.

In the past six months, trips to Benin and Cambodia for data collection and analysis were completed. The team also presented its one-year progress report to the funders, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

New Scholarship Winners AnnouncedWDI was awarded a new grant from Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women Program to continue the successful Goldman Sachs Scholarship program for underprivileged and disadvantaged undergraduate women business students in Kigali, Rwanda. The number of women receiving scholarships has been expanded from 30 to 45. Applications were reviewed and a new batch of scholarship recipients were selected in January to attend the School of Finance and Banking (SFB) in Kigali.

Scholarship recipients receive counseling and mentoring by the program manager and SFB faculty to ensure academic success.

Recipients are judged on a num-ber of factors, including financial need and academic readiness.

Job Fair Draws Students

The EMPLOI career center is collaborating with WDI’s RESUME project (see page 12). In November, a delegation of U.S. Embassy, MEPI, and WDI representatives visited the center to collect information on the EMPLOI project, specifically the career center and its activities. The delegation was composed of: Jim Wright, Deputy Director of the USAID Office of Middle East Programs; Lawrence Randolph, Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Algiers; Carolyn Madden, associate director for Curriculum at the English Language Institute, University of Michigan; Judy Dyer, lecturer at the English Language Institute, UM; and Lakhdar Boukerrou, WDI consultant and research professor at the Florida Atlantic University.

A job fair presented by the Institute of National Commerce (INC) Career Center, originally scheduled for December 2009 at the Algiers OREF Monument, has been rescheduled for June. WDI and INC are partners along with the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) on EMPLOI (Educating Managers, Promot-ing Linkages and Opportunities Initiative).

The 2010 Goldman Sachs scholarship recipients.


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WDI and Seminarium Internacional S.A.have been teaming up for executive education programs in Latin America for nearly five years.

During that time, the partners have collaborated on programs in 10 countries covering 9 programs. The countries are: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Uruguay. The topics are: HR Management, Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, Leadership, Services Marketing, Brand Equity, Sales Management, Product Marketing, and Strategy.

“The partnership has grown and evolved every year as we add new countries and topics,” said Amy Gillett, director of executive education at WDI.

Programs are conducted in English, with simultaneous translation into Spanish.

Seminarium was founded in 1984 and is a market leader in Latin America in executive education programs for the development of managerial competencies with experience

and knowledge of the trends shaping modern business and strategy.

In addition to WDI and the Univ. of Michigan, Seminarium also has partnerships with other leading academic institutions including: Univ. of California at Berkeley; Kellogg School of Management; Yale School of Management; Univ. of Chicago Graduate School of Business; and Notre Dame.

“We are always searching for strategic alliances with the most prestigious universities worldwide which present the latest trends in modern management,” said Carola Dañobeitía B., director of Executive Education Latin American Programs at Semi-narium. “WDI’s programs are led by faculty from Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan which is considered to be the number one business school in human resources and leadership.”

Gillett said Seminarium has been a great partner in Latin America and has allowed the Institute to tap into the region.

“We are consistently impressed

by their ability to attract a high- quality audience to the programs,” Gillett said. “They reach out to both the leading local firms throughout Latin America and the major multinationals. The programs are always well-run. After each program, our faculty has returned to Ann Arbor asking, ‘When can I go back to Latin America?’”

Dañobeitía said all of Seminarium’s programs are developed according to the market tendencies and the strategic needs of the companies.

“The topics covered and the cutting-edge approaches to them allow participants to update their knowledge on the most relevant issues facing all the areas of their organization,” she said. “Our

strategic alliances with the most prestigious universities around the world, together with the internationally-renowned faculty, academics, speakers and consultants of modern management, allow us to draw top executives from major Latin American companies.”

“The participants at the Seminarium programs are always well prepared and eager to learn the latest thinking,” said Ross Professor John Monoky, who frequently teaches in Seminarium programs. “I enjoy teaching in their programs, and always look forward to working with them. The Seminarium people are very professional in all they provide to the participants and to the instructors.”

WDI’s executive education is having another busy year, with 36 executive education programs planned for 9 countries. Following our successful

delivery of the Goldman sachs 10,000 Women entrepreneur Certificate Program last year, Goldman sachs has renewed our grant for a second

year. this means we will train another 60 women from across Rwanda in entrepreneurship skills, with the goal of equipping each with a viable

business plan by the conclusion of the program. In Latin America, we’ll be working with our local partner to offer training programs in sales

Management, hR, Marketing, and a new program in Logistics & supply Chain Management. In Latvia, we’ll run our signature mini-MBA certificate

program and our new hR Professionals Program in cooperation with our local partner, the stockholm school of economics. Geographic

expansion continues to be a top goal, and we are currently evaluating potential partnerships in China and Russia

Latin American Partnership Going Strong

PROGRAMS UPDAte

eXeCUtIve eDUCAtIon

John Monoky


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AQ An

D

Q D A V I D S O N R E V I E W : What is the impact of the economic crisis on the

companies in different parts of the world (US-Europe)?

D E N I S O N : I think the main difference is that in the U.S. the recession comes, and hopefully goes, quite a bit faster than in Europe because of the relative influence of the government in the economy. You see a substantial difference. During late 2008 in Europe you didn’t see many signs of recession, and very little of the “Oh, we just went over the cliff” reaction that we saw in the States. In 2009 Europeans saw the decline more clearly and projected from the start the the recession would extend through 2010, whereas in the U.S. we keep looking for signs of recovery quarter to quarter. Any way you look at it 2009 has been a rough year both in Europe and the States. You see some signs of recovery in Europe, but you see many more in the U.S. But that’s the main difference — the speed with which recession comes and goes.

Many countries and companies in emerging economies are particularly hard hit for two reasons — they don’t have access to the resources needed to stimulate their economies, and they have less control over the institutions that really impact a global slowdown.

Asia is a different pattern. China has still grown quite dramatically, even though there has been a slowdown. Japan’s economy has slowed quite a bit. Emerging economies like Malaysia were also much slower to see the downturn, both because of the control that the State has over the economy and because they had relatively little explosure to the mortgage-backed securities that got us into this mess to begin with. Those are some of the basic differences. Everyone’s been pretty hard hit.

Q What are the differences in leading change in the time of prosperity and in time of crisis?

D E N I S O N : It’s challenging in both times. In times of prosperity you have the resources but no sense of urgency. In times of crisis, you have the sense of urgency but not the resources. To drive change you need to have both resources and urgency. There’s quite a bit of interesting writing about urgency and the resources and the timing. If a large organization is trying to react quickly in a crisis, it’s very hard to do. It’s like trying to turn a supertanker around quickly. You have to react quickly, but it tends to create as many problems as it solves.

I think that you do see a lot of change in times of crisis. The theme I hear over and over is to never waste a good crisis. That is the time to get things done. In every good company I have worked with, they see clearly that there is not a lot of time for fooling around. One company I work with was trying

to reduce their budget dramatically. They quickly cut a lot of non-essential things and developed a clear focus on the basics, on the essentials. That’s good. That’s the time when strong companies gain a big advantage over their competition.

Q In times of crisis, are companies more or less reluctant to listen to the advice from consulting

companies and from professors?

D E N I S O N : For many companies, until you get to the edge, you probably aren’t willing to take advice very seriously. That’s my experience in our consulting work. There are people who will resist change as long as they can. They only change because it hurts too bad to keep things the way they are. There is a little window for change when the combination of urgency and resources is just right.

For example, a company may do a good job in searching out solutions and getting good advice. But if they are in deep enough trouble, they often have urgency but can’t afford to look very far ahead. This makes it quite a struggle with each client. Situations are tough. Companies are playing for keeps. But in some ways they do want to cut to the chase. They do want to know what to do and how to do it.

Consulting work that is focused on things that are “nice to have” have really suffered this past year. But they will listen to things that are really giving them added capability. Companies bargain hard on the pricing for consulting work or executive teaching. I do see a lot of companies that are much more motivated to do things and to do it right. The volume of “unheeded advice” is probably down dramtically this year. If people are going to pay for it, then they are going to do it.

Q What should companies focus on in times of crisis?

D E N I S O N : Three things: The basics, the high priority innovations, and the future. I think the dilemma is that you always have to solve the survival problem of today in a way that helps you build for tomorrow. Companies have to focus on the basics for the future. While some want to chop up the furniture to burn it in the fireplace to keep warm for one more day, someone else has to focus on the future. That’s the real challenge. Companies that have cleaned up their business model and become more efficient have dumped a number of things they couldn’t do very well.

So, despite all the pain, the crisis has some positive effects. It pulls people back to the basics. You have to keep things focused, and keep them simple when lots of people are running around with their hair on fire. That’s a big distraction.

Daniel DenisonWIt

h

HR Network WorkshopThe winter 2010 WDI Human Resource Network will be held Jan. 21-22 in Bratislava, Slovakia. The workshop is designed to help executives learn how to better manage business culture and leadership to improve business performance, especially in the time of crisis. The workshop will focus on Professor Daniel Denison’s model of organizational culture and effectiveness, and the survey tools that have been developed from it. Denison will lead the workshop. The model and survey are used to manage the changes associated with turnarounds and transformations, organizational restructuring, new leader transitions, conflict resolution, mergers, acquisitions, and other change initiatives.

Denison is professor of Management and Organization at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. Before joining IMD, Denison was an associate professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Manage-ment at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He taught in the MBA, PhD, and Executive Education programs at Ross. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in Organizational Psychology. His teaching, research, and consulting focuses on organizational culture and leadership, and the impact those have on the performance and effectiveness of organizations. Denison’s research has shown a strong relationship between organizational culture and business performance metrics such as profitability, growth, customer satisfaction, and innovation.

About the Human Resource NetworkThe William Davidson Institute’s Human Resource Network is the leading professional forum for HR executives active in Central and Eastern Europe. HR directors and vice presidents convene in European capitals to learn from top HR professors and to share ideas and best practices. Workshop leaders have included management gurus Noel Tichy, Wayne Brockbank, C.K. Prahalad, and Henry Mintzerg.

For more information on the HRN, go to www.wdi.umich.edu/Executive Education/HRN/.


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eXeCUtIve eDUCAtIon

T he third group of 30 women in the Goldman

Sachs 10,000 Women Entrepre-neurship Certificate Program is scheduled to graduate in January. A month later, 30 more women will start the six-month program.

The program, organized and designed by WDI in cooperation with the School of Finance & Banking in Kigali, is designed for women from Rwanda seeking to expand their small businesses. Sessions are held in the areas of marketing, finance, accounting, HR, legal aspects of running a business, and operations. Net- working events are an integral part of the program, with participants visiting successful Rwandan enterprises to learn about best practices.

Two graduating classes have successfully completed the entrepreneurship program, which is part of Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative which aims to give 10,000 women around the world a business and manage-ment education over the next five years. The sponsorship means that all participants attend the program tuition-free.

The first group of graduates recently met for a reunion.The reunion was an opportunity for the 29 women to receive additional business training, network with other program graduates,

learn about funding opportunities, and address specific challenges they’ve faced. The women also completed a detailed survey on their professional and personal development since graduating from the program.

The survey results were positive. Three-fourths of the women with a business at the start of the program reported a growth in profit since graduation with a majority of the women reporting growth of at least 10%.

In separate interviews before the reunion, the women expressed concern about getting their business expansion financed. Fortunately, one workshop during the reunion hosted loan officers from several Rwandan banks to speak on a panel and address specific questions.

A National Bank in Rwanda official also gave a talk on the Women Guaranty Fund which was set up by the Rwandan government to help women entrepreneurs receive necessary funding for their businesses. The director of the Women’s Entrepreneur Association gave the keynote address on challenges faced by women entrepreneurs and how women business associations can offer support.

The next reunion for the women is scheduled for August 2010.

H enriette Hyirantwari, who graduated from the

Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Entrepreneurship Certificate Program in July 2009, attended the annual Women’s Forum in Deauville, France in October. She received a special invitation from Goldman Sachs, and was the only participant from any of the 10,000 Women programs run by Goldman in 18 countries around the world.

Hyirantwari was selected based on her successful starch manufac-turing business, and for teaching job skills to local orphans.

At the forum, she spoke about her experience as a 10,000 Women program participant, and the impact it has had on her business and life. She also met with members

of the international press as well as her Goldman Sachs online mentor, who is located in Paris. The forum, which brings together women leaders and their male peers to discuss ways of enhancing women’s contributions to the global economy and society, hosted 1,200 participants from 75 different countries.

This was Hyirantwari’s first time traveling outside of East Africa. She said the experience was exciting, and she was inspired by the many women she met. Despite being in the fast-paced city of Paris, she said she was surprised to find the world could still feel like a village connected by a common goal of empowering women economically, socially, and politically.

Goldman Sachs Entrepreneurship Certificate Program

Third Group of Women to Graduate; First Group Reunites

Special Honor for Entrepreneurship Graduate

Henriette Hyirantwari


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Working with Employees

Since the February 2009 conclusion of the first Goldman Sachs Entrepreneurship Certificate Program, Anastasie Nyirabukeye — one of two grand prize winners of the business plan competition that capped the six-month program administered by WDI — has made some changes to her business.

One of the first changes was how Nyirabukeye, who owns a lumberyard, furniture manufac-turing business, and construction company, manages her staff. Prior to being selected for the program, she said she spoke harshly to her employees. She thought that was the only way to get them to work properly.

But Nyirabukeye used what she learned in the program’s HR session and sat down with every employee to discuss the important role they play in making the business work well. She asked the workers to consider themselves a partner in the business, and to feel free to discuss any problems with her before they start affecting their performance. She said she has seen improvement in employees she thought would never change.

As a result, her business is improving. And because she has developed and empowered her employees, Nyirabukeye is now free to write bids for more work and strategize about the future of her business.

Nyirabukeye credits the program with giving her the confidence to succeed despite difficult situations, and to become a calculated risk taker. She has found ways to increase her sales and expand her

business despite a slow down in the furniture industry.

She said it was the entrepre-neurship program that challenged her to be creative in her approach. It gave her a confidence she lacked, the know-how needed to improve her business, and made her resilient to economic climates.

Surviving, Then Thriving Like many women in Rwanda, the 1994 genocide was full of tragedy and heartache for Placidie Murebwayire, another business plan winner. Unlike most women in her country, she was able to use the hardships from that time to motivate her to become a successful businesswoman.

To accomplish this, however, took a reunion with her long-lost mother, a return of her faith, and a resumption of her education.

Placidie’s 2-year-old son was killed in the genocide. She was attacked and buried alive while pregnant with her second child.

After the genocide, Placidie opened a tailor shop in 1995, but it soon closed. She felt demoral-ized and unmotivated.

What started to lift Placidie’s spirits was finding her birth mother, whom she never knew.

After the genocide, people began to stream back into the country from Uganda. Placidie’s friends told her they had seen her mother in that East Africa nation. After a long search, she happily found her mother. It gave Placidie the confidence that nothing was impossible.

This renewed spirit was further buoyed by Placidie’s decision to start attending church again. “It was a miracle I survived” the genocide, she said.

“It must have been for a reason, for a purpose.”

The mother of four, who also cares for eight orphans, realized that there were people in her life who depended on her. She started thinking of ways to open her business again.

In 2004, she opened a tailor shop on the outskirts of Kigali. But while she was handy with a needle and thread, she was not as adept at handling the business’ finances.

Then Placidie was selected to participate in the entrepreneur-ship program. At the end of the

six months, Placidie was one of two grand prize winners in the program’s business plan competition and awarded $5,000 by the William Davidson Institute, which operates the training for Goldman Sachs. She used her prize money to buy more machines to improve the quality and volume of her work.

Since enrolling in the program, Placidie has seen her profit margin increase 20 percent.

She has hired an accountant and is looking to add to her current staff of five.

New Role for ArnettSharolyn Arnett has been

promoted from Program Coord- inator to Program Manager for WDI’s Executive Education. Arnett’s current assignment is focused on oversight of the Goldman Sachs Entrepreneurship Certificate Program for underprivileged women in Rwanda.

“This is one of our flagship programs and it is very important to our future success,” WDI Associate Director Rosemary Harvey said when announcing the promotion. “We know that Sharolyn will continue to do a great job.”

Amy Gillett, director of WDI’s Executive Education department, said the promotion is in recog- nition of Arnett’s significant contributions.

“She has been a tremendous asset on the Goldman Sachs Entrepreneur Certificate Program,” Gillett said. “She manages program operations

with our partner, the School of Finance & Banking in Kigali, and a Rwandan-based program staff. She has identified and implemented many areas for program improvement.

“Additionally, Sharolyn manages programs in Central Europe and Latin America. Her cultural sensitivity and deep interest in global affairs and education come through on whatever project she’s working on.”

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Past Business Plan Winners Making Strides

Sharolyn Arnett

Left: Anastasie Nyirabukeye.Right: Placidie Murebwayire


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sUPPoRtInG InteRnAtIonALACtIvItIes At MIChIGAnINTERNSHIPS

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I worked on behalf of a U.S. social venture capital fund, Grassroots Business Fund, at a start-up called LabourNet, which was attempting to finalize an equity deal. My role was to help prepare the investment memo, to support the investment officer in negotiating the deal, and to design and implement a social impact metrics system.

LabourNet was designed to connect small businesses and households with labor needs, such as plumbing, painting,

masonry, and housekeeping. By managing a database of workers they trained, LabourNet believed that it could deliver the right kind of worker at a faster rate than clients could do on their own by accessing the informal sector labor market. On the flip side, workers, many of whom were migrant, would get training, healthcare, identification cards, and a bank account — building blocks to poverty alleviation.

On most days, I’d work out of the office. On others, I’d hit

the road and visit workers on construction sites to get a sense of how LabourNet was benefiting them, and what kind of poverty indicators made sense. These inputs were necessary for design of the metrics system, which ended up being survey based. I also visited LabourNet’s competi-tors in an effort to extract the information I needed to put together a competitive analysis, part of the due diligence process.

Working on the deal structure was the most useful to me. I had

never been involved in any kind of investor negotiation, and so was privileged to not just observe, but to be called upon to help. This opportunity has prepared me to move forward with valuation and negotiations.

My work resulted in a closed deal, and a system that LabourNet still uses. LabourNet now knows who benefited from the program, how they benefited, and which services worked best to lift workers out of poverty.

Left: Sean Killian shows children an image from his camera.

Middle: Patrick Fay with a Peruvian entrepreneur who makes wine and marmalade.

Right: Ashish Gupta (far right) tours a new neonatal ward in Canje in Central Plateau, Haiti.

Sean KillianLabour Net // India

Last summer, 27 UM students traveled around the world for WDI-sponsored internships in a number of fields. the students’ work assignments

varied from Asia and Africa, Central and south America, and the United states. the interns’ responsibilities ranged from writing business plans

to gathering data to assessing the impact of various projects. Five of those interns wrote about their experiences from last summer.


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This summer I consulted with entrepreneurs who participated in the Idea Tu Impresa (Your Company Idea) business plan competition in three regions of Peru served by TechnoServe. The goal of the competition was to provide education, consulting assistance, and funding to startups in Peru that incorporate the base of the pyramid theory into their business plans.

When I arrived in Lima, the competition had been narrowed to 60 businesses (out of more than 700). My role was to help 33 of the businesses market their products and services to their customers. The businesses I helped ranged from chocolate and coffee peddlers to organic cosmetic producers and lumber producers.

My second task was assessing the economic impact of the new businesses (or expansions of existing ones) and publishing a report on the best practices of the most successful entrepreneurs.

Getting to know 33 entrepre-neurs at once — all in different locations — was quite a challenge, as was juggling meetings and tracking their progress. I spent a

great deal of time with entrepre-neurs and consultants in their homes, at local marketplaces, and in universities teaching business skills. I learned about the cultural norms of doing business in Peru (handshake greetings for men, a kiss on the cheek for women) and how relationships between businesses and their suppliers were formed.

I learned a lot about interna-tional business from this internship. My background as an engineer at Ford gave me a quantitative point of view and a regimented approach to solving business problems. But this internship really gave me an opportunity to apply what I have learned at Ross. I worked with consultants from top-tier firms and they helped me review business plans and identify strengths and weaknesses in them.

This fall I have interviewed with several firms such as BCG’s Mexico office and LAN Airlines, which would not have been possible without this experience.

Patrick FayTechnoServe // Peru

Ashish GuptaGeneral Electric // Haiti

I spent this summer with GE Healthcare’s Rural Health Initiative. The goal of this new initiative is to develop ultra-low cost medical devices that are appropriate for rural areas of developing countries to improve public health outcomes.

My specific tasks were to research the role of ultrasound in maternal health, and to answer questions around technology requirements, clinical workflow, and health system integration. There was a steep learning curve in the initial weeks of the project, familiarizing myself with maternal health issues, the state of maternal health globally, and major organizations involved in improving global maternal health. I was given a crash course on maternal ultrasound in order to get a hands-on understanding of ultrasound and its application in obstetrics.

While I learned a tremendous amount during our research in the office, I really enjoyed being out in the field at our partner sites where I supported our pilot projects and learned answers to some of the research questions. I had the opportunity to visit two sites —

one with Partners in Health in Haiti, and another with Grameen Kalyan in Bangladesh.

The Haiti experience was a personal eye-opener for me. In one incident, we came across a group of 12 men who were carrying a woman in labor and suffering from eclampsia on a home-made stretcher for four hours over mountains in order to take her to a hospital.

While this woman and her baby survived, it provided real perspective on why maternal mortality is such a difficult problem to solve. It made me realize that technology was only a small part of the solution. Basic things such as emergency obstetric facilities, emergency transpor-tation, and communication equipment are needed in order to provide a complete solution.

The on-the-ground learning was further solidified during our Bangladesh trip. A memorable highlight for me was the opportunity to meet and present our findings to Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his poverty alleviation work.


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Over the span of 12 weeks with the Access Project in Rwanda, my activities ranged from assisting the District Health Advisor in assessing health center needs to providing recommendations for business management issues to writing concept papers. The aim of the project was to improve the access to, and quality of, health care. This is done by teaching health care workers better business management skills.

I worked and lived in three very different areas in Rwanda — a village, a town, and the capital city of Kigali. For the first seven weeks, I designed a project to reduce the wait times of patients. At one health center, wait time went down 58 percent in three weeks.

For the final five weeks of my time in Rwanda, I developed a health care skills strengthening program proposal for the District of Bugesera for the project and its partner organizations.

In the field, I worked directly with health care workers in health clinics. My role was to accompany the District Health Advisor to 19 health centers to assess the financial, pharmacy, data, staff,

infrastructure, and planning management, and to make recommendations for improvement.

After getting to know the challenges in the field, I moved to Kigali and an office job. I spent most of my time researching and devising concept papers on how to strengthen the health care and business management skills of health care workers in the District of Bugesera.

My overall experience was enjoyable and rewarding. Because of the tight-knit nature of these communities, I integrated and formed connections quickly. Within a week, I received my own Rwandan name — Umutesi, translated as “one who is treasured.”

Back at UM, I looked at how to use my dual degree in business and public policy through different lenses. Although I know that my passion lies in improving access to, and quality of, health services, my career options have expanded to working in developing countries as well. My internship affirmed my skills and talent in health care management, and provided an additional avenue to exercise my talents.

I spent the summer working with Sahmakum Teang Tnaut, a housing-rights NGO based in Phnom Penh with a field office in Kampot, a small provincial town along the coast. I went to Cambodia to start a pilot project using a technique called Photovoice in an effort to increase women’s participation in local planning and decision-making. However, many villages would not allow women to use the cameras so I began a mapping and enumeration survey project in a village with a more egalitarian governing structure.

This entire village of 300 households faces mass eviction in the near future to make way for a resort. Their leaders wanted a semi-official survey of house-holds, percentage of single mothers, and access to services such as piped clean water and electricity, to name a few, as well as a physical map of the area.

Because of the limited time left for my stay in Cambodia, I had to work every available day for 1 1/2 months in Kampot in order to survey all 304 house-holds. I took GPS data points for

the properties, and measured each parcel with a tape measure. I worked with one assistant, a 19-year old local economics student/volunteer, and the deputy village chief, a hardworking, no- nonsense fisherman in his 60s.

The biggest challenge was the gender discrimination I faced daily. Most people did not care that I possessed advanced degrees, or that I worked with high-level politicians in multiple countries on issues related to women’s rights. To many, I was the strange “French” woman trying to impose my values on a place that did not want to hear them. It was quite sobering to have to check my ego in almost all of my interactions there, and try to more subtly (and less stubbornly) make my point.

Karen TamAccess Project // Rwanda

Thida SamSahmakum Teang Tnaut // Cambodia

Left: Karen Tam (right) works at a health clinic in Rwanda.

Right: Thida Sam (in white shirt) talks with villagers in Cambodia.


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In november 2006 two projects were selected to expand WDI’s support of international activities across the University. the first involved

supporting student internships and research on global health issues at the school of Public health. the second was a joint Ross school-Medical

school engagement at a hospital in Fort Portal, Uganda. Both programs launched in winter 2007. here are updates of the two programs.

WDI funds two main programs at the school — international

internships, and support of research on determinants of healthcare

utilization in the Kigoma Region of tanzania.

Last summer, WDI provided funding for eight students from the SPH who worked in Morocco, Tunisia, Tanzania, Uganda, Egypt and France on health issues under two programs: the Center on Global Health, and Cancer Epidemiology Education in Special Populations. The students wrote papers on their experiences in September.

WDI also supported research conducted by Prof. Margaret Kruk on determinants of health care utilization in Kigoma Region, Tanzania. In the first phase of the study, the professor and her Tanzanian colleagues developed a survey instrument on utilization of services. She also examined three different health centers in the Kigoma Region that have been recently upgraded with support from the Bloomberg Family Foundation.

For the next phase of her research, Professor Kruk collected data from the three clinics and one health center without upgrades to assess wealth disparities in utilization of inpatient care in this remote part of Tanzania. As more upgrades — such as obstetric surgeries — are added at the health centers, more data will be collected in 2010 to measure the effect of quality upgrades on number and range of admissions.

So far, six papers on the findings from the first study funded by WDI have been published. Another paper is under review. Also, several doctoral students are currently working with the data and two MPH students have been funded to travel to Tanzania to collect data, affording them an excellent research and global health experience.

Kruk said WDI’s sustained support “has yielded a number of insights into drivers of utilization of essential health services and highlighted the importance of quality of care in individuals’ decision-making about health service use in rural Tanzania. Several students have also benefitted by being exposed to research in an African context.”

School of PublicHealth (SPH)Global Initiatives

A partnership between the Ross School of Business and the Department of Family Medicine at the Medical School is working to upgrade clinical and admin-istrative performance at Virika and Kumi hospitals in Uganda. The work will form the basis of a protocol that can be replicated at other facilities.

Work continues to make Kumi hospital a center of excellence in disability care. The first patients in physiatry were served with what appear to be significant results. One patient was sent down from Soroti Hospital to Kumi as a place for him to spend his final days. As a result of the treatment, the patient increased his mobility and returned to Soroti, much to the surprise of the people there.

Based on that outcome a second patient came down from Soroti. There have been other stories along these lines and the staff is visibly proud of their work.

A team of MBA students visited the hospital to work on retention and employee satisfaction. After completing some background work, the team interviewed much of the Kumi staff and conducted some surveys to identify areas for potential improvements. The team completed the project in December.

A team of University of Michigan doctors worked with Kumi staff on surgical and anesthetic procedures. A number of potential improvements were suggested and the doctors are following up now.

Medical SchoolVirika and Kumi Hospitals // Uganda

Clockwise from top left: The Kumi Hospital campus. A local baby is given a checkup at Kumi Hospital. The entrance to Kumi Hospital. A boy waits to get a new cast at Kumi Hospital.

sUPPoRtInG InteRnAtIonAL ACtIvItIes At MIChIGAn

CRoss sChooL CoLLABoRAtIon


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Ventures at the BoPLondon focused his talk on the roadmap showing how to take a BoP venture from design to scale. He said the impetus for companies to look to the BoP to start a new venture is the opportunity for new growth. On the poverty alleviation side, a catalyst for looking to the BoP is a growing openness for new ideas.

London then showed two photographs of African schools taken 20 years apart. Not much had changed over the years. “There’s been a lot done in poverty alleviation, but what’s the real outcome?” he asked. “If poverty alleviation plans

aren’t working now…”Two examples of BoP ventures

were cited by London. One — Nike’s attempt at a low-cost shoe in China — failed. The other — by Mexican cement giant Cemex — was successful. One big reason Cemex’s venture worked and Nike’s didn’t was that Cemex spent a year in the community building a skill set.

Ventures at the BoP need a protected structure, a long-term investment strategy, the right talent, and problem solving by talking to the right people, London said.

He said the four stages of venture development are design (“there’s a need to get out in the community and ask questions”), pilot projects, a model that’s

sustainable, and scale. “You need the capability to go

from market to market to market,” London said. “You have to be able to create relationships. If you do this, you’ll be able to move quickly through the design, piloting, and sustainability phases.”

In closing, London said BoP ventures will succeed when they have guiding principles that are integrated “closely with the development community’s efforts to facilitate market-base approaches to poverty alleviation.”

BoP and the EnvironmentHart said the next real challenge he sees is the looming environ-mental meltdown as new economic activity is generated at the BoP. “It’s so important to confront this and to think about it creatively,” Hart said.

A “green leap” approach — a new approach to development that drives economically and environmentally-sustainable growth through the commercial-ization of green technologies — makes sense at the BoP, Hart said.

There are two types of leapfrog technologies. The first, which Hart called “green giant tech,” include clean technology that is large in scale and centralized, such as solar thermal farms, wind turbines, smart grids, and carbon capture and storage. There is interest in investing in these because they “line up well with our current infrastructure and don’t threaten any of the existing players,

especially at the top of the pyramid in the developed world.”

The other option is “micro green,” which is small scale, distributed, on site, point-of-use, localized, and household scale. These include small solar and wind, and fuel cells — “a complete-ly different set of technologies with a completely different set of implications as to how they’re going to unfold,” Hart said.

“These are disruptively innovative in the existing served markets, like here in the U.S. So it shouldn’t come as a great surprise that we don’t see a whole lot of rapid traction in these technologies.”

Hart said it’s too difficult to push micro green technologies into the top of the pyramid. But there’s opportunity for many of these technologies at the BoP where there is little access to dependable electricity.

“One of the reasons why there is such a huge business opportu-nity at the BoP, and also one of the reasons why there is such a huge opportunity to incubate green tech at the BoP, is that you’re not struggling against these perverse subsidies that infest the top of the pyramid,” Hart said. “So this is very much a leap to the BoP and then trickle up.

WDI hosted four guest speakers in fall 2009 as part of its Global Impact speaker series. the series features

leading thinkers who work in emerging markets. the goal of the series is to spur discussion around

development and developing country issues. In addition to their talks, the speakers also sat down for

one-on-one video interviews which can be found at: www.wdi.umich.edu/NewsEvent/VideoAudio

sUPPoRtInG InteRnAtIonALACtIvItIes At MIChIGAnSPEAKER SERIES

ted London, director of WDI’s Base of the Pyramid (BoP) research

initiative, and stuart hart, director of WDI’s Green Leap Global Initiative,

kicked off the 2009-10 Global Impact speaker series on oct. 1. the talk

also was the start of the WDI Base of the Pyramid conference, “Creating

a shared Roadmap: Collaboratively Advancing the Base of the Pyramid

Community.” (to read more about this conference, turn to page 4).

Ted London (left) and Stuart Hart (right).

Rex Widmer

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“If you can incubate a low-cost model, you can always add cost and features on to it and migrate it up market. But the reverse is not true. It’s really hard to take costs out of a high-cost model and send it down market.”

Rethinking Rural Health DeliveryRex Widmer, director of GE Healthcare’s Rural Health Research and Development, talked about the company’s vision and strategy for entering base of the pyramid markets.

Widmer, who spoke Nov. 12, said the rural poor suffer from a lack of doctors, infrastructure, and funding when it comes to access to health care. He said GE Healthcare is committed to making inroads in rural commu-nities because they represent new markets for the company. Other reasons for wanting to provide health care to rural areas is that it will spur radical innovations; it will be a new breeding ground for next-generation multinational corporations; and there is a moral imperative to help those less fortunate.

GE Healthcare wants to shape a new age of patient care by enabling a new “early health” model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection, and disease prevention.

After much analysis, Widmer said GE is focused on four areas: maternal health; newborn health; cardiac care; and emergency medicine.

“This is where we’ll focus the next five years,” Widmer told the packed classroom.

The core challenge for maternal care is that there is no predictor for complications during labor and delivery, Widmer said. To address this, GE Healthcare collaborates with a group of

health workers who are below the level of a doctor but above the level of a nurse.

These “paraprofessionals” will “become the principal care providers,” Widmer said. This care will be community-based, he said, and all sectors “must contribute via partnerships.”

“We must build a new 21st century rural health service delivery,” Widmer said.

The new health service delivery will move away from the clinic in favor of a patient’s home. Illness prevention and some health screening will be done at home. Other screening, testing, and treatment will be at clinics as needed.

The first step will be to establish up to 10 pilot sites to put some of these theories into practice. “It will be a start on a long journey to rural domain expertise,” Widmer said.

Widmer is responsible for the design, development, assessment, and deployment of medical devices uniquely suited for low- resource rural settings of the developing world.

He said medical devices must be redesigned in order to perform in a rural setting. They will need to be cheaper, rugged, portable, operational without electricity, and user friendly.

“Holistic innovation is needed, which will be achieved only through partnerships,” Widmer said.

Helping Ventures Grow at the BoPLuiz Ros, manager for the Opportunities for the Majority (OM) Sector Office of the Inter- American Development Bank (IDB), spoke Dec. 3 on promoting and coordinating activities cor- responding to the OM initiative.

There are 360 million people in Latin America and the Carib-

bean who live on less than $300 a month, Ros said. The IDB’s Opportunities for the Majority initiative promotes and finances private sector business models that develop and deliver quality products and services, create employment, and enable low- income producers and consumers to participate in the formal economy. The objective is to stimulate economic growth and raise the incomes of those living at the BoP in those countries.

The IDB’s involvement in the initiative ensures that each of its projects will undergo a rigorous evaluation that stresses economic and financial viability as well as the targeting of investments to benefit low-income populations. The bank has the ability to promote partnerships and multiply the effectiveness of successful projects by applying lessons learned and by financing similar programs throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

The difference between the OM initiative and the other activities of the bank is “not in terms of the financial product but in terms of the type of innovative business solutions we are looking for, which are the ones targeting the poor.”

A challenge, Ros said, is finding business models where the private sector, public sector and the civil society organizations come together to serve the poor. The IDB, he said, tries to identify and promote those models. When the models fail, more often than not, it is not due to market failure but what Ros calls “coordination failure.”

“The poor aren’t served because two or three stakeholders didn’t come together to think of a solution,” he said.

Ros said it is vital that any business platform that they explore be able to reach scale. He said they don’t have a solution on how to reach scale yet, but they must “or we’ll really be at the margins.”

They are exploring a few platforms that have tremendous untapped potential, Ros said.

One is a private sector project in Brazil where a chain of hardware stores offer free training in their facilities via satellite. The program started with just a dozen or so modules but now has 32. Those who complete the program in painting, for example, can then register on a web site. When a homeowner needs painting done, they put in their zip code and the site gives them names of participants who successfully completed the program. The hardware store also has seen sales increase 30 percent in their participating stores.

“We can do this (program) in many countries,” Ros said.

Ros said there is a lot of work ahead for the OM initiative, but it is making strides. To be successful, all stakeholders have to be intro- spective. That includes the IDB.

“We ask companies to rethink their business models when trying to serve the poor,” he said. “But we don’t want to rethink our risk, our legal, our pricing. The challenge is, how can we calibrate our instru- ments in order to serve the poor and go down market?”e d u

Luiz Ros

w i n t e r 1 0 | review

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tRAveL-stUDY

WDI is once again providing financial and administrative support for a

travel-study course at the Ross School of Business. Last winter, students

learned about Turkey and travelled to that country as part of the course,

“Bridging in a Globalizing World: Turkey and the European Union.”

This winter, Ross students will travel to Moscow and St. Petersburg as part

of the course “Marketing in Russia.” It is being taught by professors Jeffrey

Sanchez-Burks, who also taught the Turkey course, and John Branch.

Travel-study courses are designed by the Ross School of Business to create

awareness of diverse business issues in the current international business

landscape, and provide on-the-ground experience in a different country.

More broadly, the course aims to help students develop their global

leadership capabilities by exposing them to novel cross-cultural situations.

“Understanding the world economy ought to be considered a key success

factor for every manager,” Branch said. The travel-study course to Russia

“is one other opportunity here at Ross for students to improve their

understanding of the world economy. Indeed, it forces students to think

about business not as an isolated activity, but instead as part of the much

bigger, holistic, world economy.”

The purpose of the Russia course is to expose students to how marketing is

conducted in Russia, increase their awareness of the dimensions of Russian

culture that shape marketing successes and failures, and improve their

understanding of the Russian business environment.

“The broad theme of this year’s offering — Marketing in Russia — provides

a perfect entré to the world economy,” Branch said. “Students will peel

back the layers of an onion or more aptly, uncovering the levels of the

matryoshka (Russian nesting dolls) — in order to reveal the interconnecting

dimensions of international business.”

w w w. w d i . u m i c h . e d u

The first phase will be the “pre-country immersion,” with traditional classroom sessions designed to conceptualize the theme of the course and the end-of-class project.

The second phase will be the week spent in Russia, which will be filled with lectures, company visits, professional meetings, cultural and social events, and individual and group research time.

The third phase will be dedicated to post-country debriefing sessions, as well as the completion and presentation of the end-of-class projects.

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The marketing course is structured into three phases:

travel-study in Russia strengthen the transportation sector in South Africa.Dean Yang from UM’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public

Policy is working with DCS on the Guatemala loan study. The project creates an innovative mechanism to use expat- riate remittances as a source of loans for small businesses in Guatemala.

“It was a very easy decision to collaborate on the project with WDI because it is in line with my research and helps advance my research agenda,” Yang said.

And the English Language Institute (ELI) at UM has done preliminary assessment work on the RESUME project in Algeria. This project is designed to close the gap between the skills demanded by the labor market and the skills acquired in higher education. Judy Dyer, a lecturer with ELI, said being able to work overseas is beneficial to her and others.

“Exploring and beginning to understand the ever- expanding context of English language use globally provides us with insights to bring back to the university and our students here — both those still learning English and those who are interested in pursuing a career teaching English internationally,” Dyer said. “In addition, we and our colleagues abroad are fostering improved interna-tional relations through the sharing of knowledge, resources and pedagogies.”

Both Kennedy and Al-Naif see a promising future for DCS. It is developing expertise in areas such as business school capacity building, sustainable business, and financial sector policy. DCS, Kennedy and Al-Naif said, has the potential to be a self-sustaining business that extends the Institute’s reach to all corners of the world.

DCS has gained significant momentum in the past three years after Al-Naif was hired and a new strategy was put in place.

In 2009, DCS had its second straight record-setting year. Its portfolio has 15 ongoing projects and revenues have grown 40 percent in the past year. (Read more about each project on pages 12-15.)

Growth — both geographically and in the number of projects — is expected to continue.

“We’ve earned a reputation for high quality delivery of projects, so much so that we are being sought out for projects more frequently,” Al-Naif said. “Two of our newer projects — in Kazakhstan and Algeria — were partly a result of our successful work there on previous projects.”

Kennedy said DCS is an important path by which WDI can disseminate its intellectual capital and connect the Institute’s research efforts with leading practitioners around the world.

“It’s important to bring your ideas to the real world to test the market,” he said. “If our ideas are good ideas, then field work is a good test. It brings a sense of reality and discipline to the whole thing.”

C o n T I n U E D f R o M C o v E R : A GROWING GLObAL PRESENCE >


Director KHAlID A. Al-NAIf joined WDI in January 2007 as Director. He served as Chief of Party (CEO) for many USAID-funded development projects, most notably a $169 million, three-year U.S. Government initiative to assist the Government of Iraq in growth and prosperity for all Iraqis by developing a more market-friendly environment for broad-based economic activity and business expansion.

In his career, Al-Naif has managed a diverse USAID economic development portfolio that exceeded $1.5 billion. While in international banking, he oversaw a business development portfolio that exceeded $4 billion in the United States, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific regions.

He also has served as Regional Economic and Finance Advisor for USAID in Amman, Jordan, Country Corporate Officer for Arab Bank PLC in Amman and Credit and Marketing Officer at Chase Manhattan Bank, in Amman and Investment Banking Officer at Chase’s European Capital Markets Group in the United Kingdom.

Project AdministratorsAyAKO ARIgA joined the William Davidson Institute in March 2007. She formerly held a post with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, now the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the financial institution of the Japanese government that is equivalent of USAID in the United States. She served as a Program Evaluation Officer and later as Country Loan Officer for India and Turkey. Ariga led numerous program evaluation teams, organized institutional capacity building seminars for the counterpart government officials, and managed a loan appraisal team to China, India,Vietnam, Kenya and Turkey. Ariga earned a Master’s degree in public policy from the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and served as Policy Fellow at the Executive Office of the Governor of Michigan in Lansing. She oversees the Expanded and Sustained Access to Financial Services Program in the West Bank Territories, SFB School of Finance and Banking in Rwanda, the Marketing Education and Research Center Project in Kazakhstan..

lUcAS W. BUcKlAND joined WDI after managing emerging market projects as Program Officer at Development Associates, Inc. in Washington, D.C. His project portfolio spanned across the globe in countries including Armenia, Jamaica, Peru, Uganda, Egypt, South Africa, Rwanda, West Bank, Nepal, Yemen, Indonesia, and Ukraine. Buckland’s experience includes work in areas of Democracy & Governance, Economic Growth & Trade, Education & Training, and Global Health. Additionally,

Buckland has experience in the U.S Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Commerce, Labor, and Treasury. Buckland is well adept in the international development industry since his post-graduate studies at the University of Bath’s Economics and International Development and early career in Washington, D.C. At WDI, he oversees the following projects: Goldman Sachs Scholarship Fund; Cyprus Promoting Private Sector Development; Malaria Taxes and Tariff Project; South Africa Logistics Excellence and Transportation Training Initiative; and Jordanian Education for Water and Environmental Leadership.

RAUl REyNOSO joined WDI in August 2009. Before that, he served as CEO of Webology eBusiness Solutions, a web development and consulting company. In 2007, he successfully designed and implemented a project for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to enhance their release management application and improve planning, coordination, and management of changes to business systems that process billions of dollars worth of business. Reynoso also has worked as a Senior Researcher for the Julian Samosa Research Institute focusing on transnational labor and globalization. He also was a Policy Consultant for Urban Habitat and the Social Equity Caucus in San Francisco. Reynoso received a Masters in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds an MA in Latin American and Iberian Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the Project Administrator for DCS’s Guatemala Migrant Backed Loans Project, USAID BoP and Value Chain Comparison, EMPLOI in Algeria, and EFCA’s Kazakhstan Economic University project.

HElENE lEROSSIgNOl-BAyEUx joined WDI in fall 2009. She is the Project Administrator for the RESUME Project in Constantine, Algeria. She also is working with the BoP research initiative to oversee the USAID Project (see page 6). Bayeux spent more than 8 years working for Orga Consultants, a major European consulting firm, specializing in change management. She has led several missions for international banks, pharmaceutical companies, and aeronautical businesses. Lerossignol-Bayeux also worked several years for French NGOs, serving as the Chief Financial Officer of missions in Guinea-Conakry and Bosnia. She was a board member of the Catholic Comity for Development and Against Hunger (CCFD), France’s second-largest NGO. She led the commission selecting projects in Africa that would be financed by the CCFD.

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C o n T I n U E D f R o M C o v E R : AbOuT DCS >

Left: Khalid A. Al-Naif. Clockwise: Ayako Ariga; Lucas W. Buckland; Helene Lerossignol-Bayeux; and Raul Reynoso.

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