Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise Announces Winner of BoP Competition
Coordinated through the Center?s Base of the Pyramid Learning Lab, winner makes veterinary services available to poor farmers in Zambia
December 20, 2007 - Ithaca, NY - The Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson School at Cornell University is pleased to announce the winners of its first annual Base of the Pyramid e-Journal Competition. Coordinated through the Center's Base of the Pyramid Learning Laboratory, the competition was developed to highlight the challenges of doing business in underserved markets and identify innovative business experiments or solutions to those challenges.
The competition attracted submissions from authors representing seven nationalities and featured a diverse array of projects in 10 different countries. Using a double blind review process, the judges, with expertise in journalism and Base of the Pyramid enterprise development, took into consideration the quality of writing as well as initiatives that illustrated a unique approach to poverty alleviation through an innovative business model, product, service, or technology. The winning submissions were able to clearly articulate a business challenge that an organization, either a non-profit or for-profit enterprise, working in low-income communities is striving to overcome.
First place, and a prize of $2000, went to Joe Dougherty, senior manager for financial sector development at Emerging Markets Group, Ltd., who wrote about an innovative business model that would make veterinary services available to poor farmers in Zambia. Using a holistic approach, this business model addressed issues of trust and access between small cattle farmers and vets.
Second place and third places went to Ryan Kelley and Jeff Gangemi respectively, both students at the Johnson School at Cornell University. Ryan Kelley (MBA '09) highlighted the success of a rural radio network in Madagascar through its partnership model with multiple stakeholders and its transition from a non-profit model to a for-profit model. Jeff Gangemi (MBA '09) explored the challenges and costs faced by U.S. immigrants when accessing mainstream banking services. He highlights a licensable remittance processing platform as a solution to integrate the unbanked and underserved immigrant population into mainstream banking.
"The Base of the Pyramid Learning Lab is a consortium of companies, NGOs, multilateral organizations, entrepreneurs, and academics that work together to create growth opportunities in underdeveloped global markets," commented Monica Touesnard, managing director of the BoP Learning Lab. "This global competition was designed to raise awareness of some of the most innovative business ventures that are already improving the livelihoods for the world's poorest people and communities."
The winning essays will be posted on the BoP Learning Lab website at www.bopnetwork.org.
