Everyone has the right to invent and innovate, and to make decisions to buy things without judgment, and if you can free yourself from a life of poverty in doing so, that’s a beautiful thing. “Freedom is just another word for entrepreneurship.†I believe in that.
<3 that last paragraph. From Wokai’s blog (check it out, for the larger context).
Wokai co-founder Casey at presenting Wokai at Google!
Update: This is a cross post, a slightly longer version is posted on Wokai’s blog (a microfinance startup). Head over to check it out here. Thanks Leslie!
There’s an interesting Op-Ed on the NY Times titled “The Rise of the Machines“. As a technologist, I passionately believed in the power of technology to change the world. However, the power can likewise be abused. Well, in today’s market .. it’s more about greed catching up with men, not necessarily power being consciously used for malicious intent. From the post,
“BEWARE of geeks bearing formulas.†So saith Warren Buffett, the Wizard of Omaha. Words to bear in mind as we bail out banks and buy up mortgages and tweak interest rates and nothing, nothing seems to make any difference on Wall Street or Main Street. Years ago, Mr. Buffett called derivatives “weapons of financial mass destructionâ€
This entire economic mess, impacting the world .. all from some math formulas. Father of microfinance, Muhammad Yunus talks in this short insightful video:
He says that the market needs to find its own self-correcting mechanism. The more speculative you get, the more you set aside for a “rainy day” fund. A government bailout is akin to running to mommy and daddy for help. And the mechanism needs to be designed right now, right when we need it the most, right when we’re feeling the pain the most.
Because when times are good, we’re not going to be convinced that we’re going to need that rainy day fund. Microfinance, is about empowering people to lift themselves out of poverty. It’s not a free handout.
Awesome advice.
Food for thought: In rich countries, SME‘s (small and medium enterprises) represent more than 50% of the country’s GDP and 2/3 of the jobs in private sector. This engine for growth that sits between microenterprises and large corporations is clearly missing, a hamper on a poor country’s effort to bail itself out of poverty.
Google’s success is also because they had access to finance and well developed capital markets. SME’s in poor countries lack access to both. Google strives to bring these opportunities available to silicon valley entrepreneurs and take them global. A global silicon valley, imagine that! Silicon valleys that span nations, uniting the world 
Opportunities are difficult to come by when you just simply don’t have them. It’s like looking for a job when you have no experience, having all your prospective employers say, “show me some experience.” Likewise, this is a catch-22. I have to say, I know this first hand … and I absolutely value opportunity, never taking it for granted. The one thing worse than wasting money is wasting human potential.
This short video clip says it all. The stories are typical. An entrepreneur goes to the local bank, wanting a loan to open a school and educate children. Banks say, “show me 2-3 years of your cash-flow.”
Cash flow?!?!!!
(more…)
C.K. Prahalad writes on the powers of Dominant Logic,
All of us are prisoners of our own socialization. The lenses through which we perceive the world are colored by our own ideology, experiences, and established management practices. Each one of the groups that is focused on poverty alleviation–the World Bank, rich countries providing aid, charitable organizations, national governments, and the private sector–is conditioned by its own dominant logic.
Makes sense to me. We’ve all had different paths, and each of our paths has shaped our thinking in different ways. This reminds me of something Paul Buchheit said some time ago about the limitation of our own thinking.
In his presentation at Startup School 2007, Paul reminded us that when someone tells you, “That’s impossible†it should be translated as “According to my very limed experience and narrow understanding of reality, that’s very unlikely.†Everyone continuously builds a different set of experiences in their respective lives, and therefore everyone’s understanding of reality is fundamentally different.
I covered that here. Back to the story on why for-profits are generally viewed and treated negatively in their genuine endeavors to do good (and inhibiting them from achieving real success). Prahalad continues,
The policies of the [Indian] government for the first 45 years since independence from Great Britain in 1947 were based on a set of basic assumptions. Independent India started with a deep suspicion of the private sector. The country’s interaction with the East India Company and colonialism played a major part in creating this mindset.
The dominant logic, built over 45 years, is difficult to give up for individuals, political parties, and sections of the bureaucracy. This is the reason why politicians and bureaucrats appear to be vacillating in their positions. Most thinking people know where they have to go, but letting go of their beliefs and abandoning their “zones of comfort” and familiarity are not easy
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