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Blog
Written by Nora Brown
Monday, 12 December 2011 13:59
 Recently I spent a morning listening to presentations at the Small & Medium Enterprise Initiative's 1st Annual Conference on Entrepreneurship and SME Development, co-hosted by the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund. Having sat through plenty of entrepreneurship discussions, panels, roundtables, and conferences, I thought I knew what I was in for. So, I grabbed a cup of coffee, found a seat, and prepared myself for the same presentations I've heard so many times before.
Prof Antoinette Schoar of MIT Sloan opened the discussion with a presentation on SMEs and Development, focusing on the differences between subsistence entrepreneurs and transformative entrepreneurs. Now, we've all heard this before, and we all know that some entrepreneurs are in business out of necessity and others start up businesses because they see an opening in the market. But this presentation put a different spin on the topic.
Prof Schoar made the point that entrepreneurs are not all on the same continuum starting with a nascent idea leading all the way to the next Microsoft. There are those entrepreneurs that have no intention of growing into a large multinational corporation, in fact the majority of entrepreneurs don't even want to hire additional staff! So no matter how many resources are poured into those businesses, they simply won't grow for lack of vision and desire. Not very optimistic for a room full of development people focused on supporting SMEs. However, she went on to say that if you take those same resources and target the small percent of entrepreneurs who want to become the next Google, the "gazelles," your bang for the buck will skyrocket. The question is, how do we find the gazelles and support them?
With this question in the back of my mind, I listened to the next few presentations, which focused on the impact of management on firm growth and productivity. The predominant intervention used in the research was management consulting. Many of studies showed positive results (although not all of them) and it got me thinking about the question we ask ourselves all the time here at GBSN; How can we better strengthen management education to have an impact on development? If improved management leads to improved business outcomes, what can we do to ensure that schools are providing the skills and knowledge that managers need?
GBSN was founded on the belief that improved management would lead to improved development. We've always done our best to evaluate our own work and measure our impact. With our results so far, we think we're on to something. But GBSN’s work alone won’t answer this question. We need many more minds thinking about this, and more importantly, many more hands collecting data from around the world in order to answer the question: How can management education really impact development?
Nora Brown is GBSN's Chief Operating Officer.
Written by Guy Pfeffermann
Tuesday, 29 November 2011 10:59
 This month I participated in the second EFMD Africa conference, hosted by GBSN Member the University of Stellenbosch Business School of South Africa (USB). It was first-rate both for the quality of presentations and discussions, and for their most gracious hosting (apparent in the picture below).
Congratulations to EFMD for, once again, putting Africa center-stage. As you know, opinion pieces, articles and studies picturing Africa as the “surging economic lion of the coming decade” are mushrooming. However, few point out that while there is one business school for every 250,000 people in the U.S., and about one per million in India and China, there is only one business school per 10 million people in Africa. At the very most a hundred quality business schools are operating on the continent.
The good news is that, especially over the past 10 years, the number of high-quality African business schools have grown at an impressive rate. Membership in the Association of African Business Schools, a GBSN partner organization (www.aabschools.com) has grown to 25. More important, these schools have been expanding in their reach and their offerings. Indeed, being young and therefore not as constrained as “old” business schools in the US and Europe, some African business schools are serving new markets in innovative ways – entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, health and agribusiness management.
For example, for the past five years, USB has been offering a Masters in Development Finance, uniquely I believe, tailored to the continent’s needs. Strathmore Business School (Nairobi) is running an advanced health management program. An agribusiness management center is being established at Nairobi’s Chandaria School of Business, and Lagos Business School spawned a highly successful Enterprise Development Center, which is now being replicated across Nigeria and in other African countries.
As I mentioned, I was very impressed by the quality of discussion throughout the conference. Participants discussed the impact of business education on African society and the competitive landscape facing business schools in Africa; business schools as agents of social development in Africa; support required by African business schools; and accreditation in the African context. Some of the discussion focused, as was the case at last year’s first EFMD Africa Lisbon conference, on whether the African environment called for a “New Model of Business School,” a topic that will no doubt continue to be debated in years to come.
In short, I returned from this conference energized and hopeful about the trend in business education on the continent.
Written by Lisa Leander
Monday, 28 November 2011 15:19
 The tombs will amaze you. The traffic will frustrate you. The food will delight you. The pollution, well that depends on the weather. As soon as you arrive, the colors, the smells, the culture of India will embrace you.
Most of all, India will never ever bore you.
This is my fourth year planning the GBSN annual conference, and every year each city has unique differences and mazes to explore. For example, one should not try to purchase 100 notebooks the day before the conference starts in South Africa—there are no “Office Depots” as you can easily find in the states. You should know that in Mexico, if there are less than seven courses to a dinner, it should not be called a “Gala” Dinner. In fact, anything less than seven is really just a regular dinner. In Washington DC you should expect to pay US $150 to purchase an extension cord in the hotel, whereas it would only cost $10 one block away at the local convenience store. In planning a conference one must be prepared for the worst, expect the best, and never become complacent.
 This being my first visit to India I was excited to see the differences as we start planning for the seventh annual GBSN Conference in Delhi. I will be blogging about my experiences throughout the year as we begin our preparations for the 2012 conference next June.
Arriving in Delhi on the long haul direct flight from Newark, NY (an almost 15-hour journey) I arrive to a modern clean airport. I flew through customs, (or sleep-walked as I can’t really recall much, other than it was exceptionally fast and efficient) grabbed my bags and headed out to meet my colleague from our partner school, IMT Ghaziabad.
You are overwhelmed walking out of the airport, with large families and others waiting for arrivals. Even late at night there is traffic, cars honking and an energy vibrating throughout this large exciting city.
 My first adventure of the day is to purchase a sim card so I have a local cell phone number. In order to buy a sim card you must fill out paperwork and attach a passport photo of yourself. I don’t typically carry around photos of myself, so we had to figure out how to obtain this picture. Was there anyone local who could take this picture? No. Could we cut out the picture from a copy of my passport in my purse? No, it must be in color. Finally, we took a picture on a cell-phone, emailed it, and then printed on a color printer at the store. Success! One sim card.
Lesson #1: Expect difficult tasks (customs) to go quicker than usual, simple tasks (sim card) to take longer than imagined, and when packing, throw in a few extra passport photos with you.
Lisa Leander is the Member Services Officer for GBSN.
Written by Michael Battaglia
Monday, 28 November 2011 14:18
 Guest Blogger: Michael Battaglia, Operations Manager, International Council for Small Business
On 'Head in the Cloud: A New Playground for Entrepreneurs'
scalability
- n
the ability of something, esp a computer system, to adapt to increased demand.
Like one panelist plainly stated, ‘to make significant progress against the world’s problems, innovations must scale in order survive.’ Whether you agree with him or not, you cannot discount the idea that entrepreneurship is about disruption, about transforming innovations into real economic value. Today, mobile technology is considered the largest distribution network that has ever been created by mankind. This by default means access. Access to people, access to markets, access to change. So, what better way to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) 2011 than with a discussion about innovation, mobile technology and the significance of the cloud.
 Head in the Cloud: A New Playground for Entrepreneurs was a panel event hosted by ICSB and GBSN at the George Washington University School of Business (GSWB) on November 15, 2011 that really struck a chord with the overall mission of GEW - to celebrate the innovators and job creators who launch start ups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare.
Our panel of ‘disruptors’ were assembled to not only address how the advances in technology and telecommunications are changing the nature of entrepreneurship, but how the role of mobile technology has significantly increased the opportunities for entrepreneurs to make a difference. As Mohsen Khalil exclaimed during the session, ‘the market for mobile technology has now reached 6 billion people!’
In both developed and developing countries, the accessibility of mobile phones and technology has made possible a whole new range of disruptive innovations that bring ideas to life and drive economic growth. Entrepreneurs like Joel Selanikio of Datadyne.org are paving new roads to development and prosperity with award winning mobile applications like his EpiSurveyor -that enables the easiest, fastest and least expensive way to start collecting healthcare data. The EpiSurveyor, offered by Joel’s company Data Dyne, is used by programs in more than 170 countries to collect essential data for health, for agriculture, for business, for research, for conservation: anywhere people were using paper on a clipboard, they're switching to EpiSurveyor. Think of the possibilities...
Disruptive Innovation, as Clayton Christensen famously presented in his seminal book The Innovator’s Dilemma, ‘is a product or service designed for a new set of customers; they offer a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream.’
Identifying and supporting these innovations has been Mohsen Khalil’s mission at the World Bank for years, where he invested in entrepreneurs in developing countries and advised governments on sector reforms and institutional capacity building to enable innovative environments. ‘The best ideas,’ as Mr. Khalil’s stated during the session, ‘can only survive if you can scale them. Scalability is a key success factor for any innovative idea. People all around the world are intelligent and motivated to be innovators, but the key question is whether or not they have the right enabling environment to bring their ideas to life.’
 Today, innovations like the EpiSurveyor offer us access to information, knowledge, and opportunity in communities covering nearly the entire globe. Even in Sub-Saharan Africa - the least connected place on earth - there is a 50% penetration rate for mobile. Thanks to mobile telecommunications, entrepreneurs can bring their lost-cost silicon valley business models to the developing world, and as a result give capacity to people in countries where computers and laptops are scare.
As Pete Erickson of Disruptathon explained to the audience, ‘leveraging disruptive tools like cloud computing and open source allows entrepreneurs to put their focus where it’s more important; on their creativity and passion for solving problems in different areas of the economy.’ Drawing on his experiences with three (3) different technology start-ups in the dot.com age, Mr. Erickson sees tremendous potential for disruptive innovation in the mobile space. The barriers to entry are low enough for entrepreneurs that they can concentrate of their job of identifying the under-served market and going for it. Today, if you design an application for the iTunes store and it becomes a hit, the innovation can lead to a new business with a potential market size of 6 billion mobile users! Think of the possibilities...
For more information on this event, including the event recording and panelist bios, please visit: http://www.gbsnonline.org/news-and-events-section/events/head-in-the-cloud-a-new-playground-for-entrepreneurs.html.
In addition to important topics related to entrepreneurship presented above, the panel also touched on topics such as venture capital investment, emerging technologies, developing countries, mobile app development, electronic medical records, and the entrepreneurial experiences of today's mobile app developers.
Written by Guy Pfeffermann
Monday, 28 November 2011 13:30
Foreign Policy has released their list of the 2011 Top Global Thinkers and we're proud, though hardly surprised, to see our own Mari Kuraishi on the list. For those of you who aren't aware of the work of our GBSN Board Chair outside of her leadership of our own organization, here is a snippet from the write-up in the FP.
"Mari Kuraishi has proved that, thanks to the Internet, everyone can be a philanthropist -- and the giant development institutions no longer have a monopoly on efforts to improve the lot of the world's poorest. In 2000, the Japanese native left a successful career at the World Bank to found GlobalGiving -- a website she describes as an "eBay for philanthropy" that revolutionized the field by connecting a worldwide community of donors with ventures in need of funding. A decade later, hundreds of thousands of donors have pooled their funds -- the average donation is around $25 -- to give more than $50 million to more than 4,500 projects."
Click here to read more
Congratulations to her and to GlobalGiving for this well-deserved recognition.
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Food for Thought
“Before the financial
crisis, a lot of business schools talked the talk on ethics and their contribution
to society, but did not make it a core part of their program. Now they are
seeing it as a key part of their curriculum. It is important that the values
of excellence, leadership, integrity and social awareness are imprinted on
students by business schools – this needs to be just as important as the
imparting of business skills.”
–
Mthuli Ncube, President of
the South African Association of Business Schools and Director of Wits Business School
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