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This is the sort of email we circulate round members of this web who are all passionbate ablout collaborations in technology for or by the poor -partiticularly mobile technology which due to investment by DR Muhammad Yunus and some of the world's poorest women in 1996 has turned Bangladesh into a world class leader in this market in the 2010s. (tell us if you want to join our circulation lists)
idea of sept 2010 dhaka meeting with yunus: 1 tech for poor; 2 economics for youth
chris macrae buildingsocialbusiness.com
dc 301 881 1655
books birthdays 10000 olympics e family-foundations
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sustainability story of 1984 by primary editorias writer of The Economist 1949-1989
Our 1984 scenario of an internetworking world
The great technological event of the next 40 years will be the steady rise in importance of the Telecommunications-Computer terminal (TC for short)... By 2005 the gap in income and expectations between the rich and poor nations was recognised to be man's most dangerous problem. Internet linked television channels in sixty-eight countries invited their viewers to participate in a computerised conference about it, in the form of a series of weekly programmes...
In 2024 it is easy to see this as a forerunner of the TC conferences which play so large a part in our lives today, both as pastime and principal innovative device in business. But the truth of this 2005 breakthrough tends to irk the highbrow. It succeeded because it was initially a rather downmarket network television programme. About 400 million people watched the first programme, and 3 million individuals or groups tapped in suggestions. Around 99 per cent of these were rejected by the computer as likely to increase the unhappiness of mankind. It became known that the rejects included suggestions submitted by the World Council of Churches and by many other pressure groups. This still left 31,000 suggestions that were accepted by the computer as worthy of ongoing analysis. As these were honed, and details were added to the most interesting, an exciting consensus began to emerge. Later programmes were watched by nearly a billion people as it became recognised that something important was being born.
These audiences were swollen by successful telegimmicks. The presenter of the first part of the first programme was a roly-poly professor who was that year's Nobel laureate in economics, and who proved a natural television personality. He explained that economists now agreed that aid programmes could sometimes help poor countries, but sometimes most definitely made their circumstances worse.
update of sustainability story requested by dr yunus glasgow nov 2008 http://yunusforum.net/?p=80
Not quite a social business case
*Grameen Solutions www.grameensolutions.com open source property asserted by The Social Busienss Action Team - Q&A welcomed by team - chris.macrae @yahoo.co.uk
Could you imagine the world’s poorest making an investment in a 21st C world leading sector?
This is not technically a social business being a for profit but largely owned by social business partners including a majority shareholding by Grameen. Arguably it is the most exciting investment majority owned by a microcredit bank. It converges the future of the mobile investments interests that Muhammad Yunus (with some extremely timely advice from MIT entrepreneurs) began in 1996 when a world bank consultant predicted that only quarter of a million Bangladeshi’s would ever own mobiles. Dr Yunus invested in Grameen phone getting the mobile franchise at cents in the dollar- this company’s majority partner is a Norwegian telecom though there has been a dispute about ownership and whether Grameen has been fully rewarded for its brand equity. Today over 40 million Bangaldeshi’s use mobiles- and about 4 billion people access digital worldwide via mobile where internet access by computer terminals may be only just over 1 billion.
I think it is fair to say that Muhammad Yunus is ever more optimistic that digital technology can sustain the world where maybe many in NW hemispheres have lost some of the pre-millennium euphoria. It is this attitude of his which makes me optimistic than in the 2010s we will suddenly start accelerating millennium goal momentum in ways that were last in the 00s. NW hemispheres have not found that many applications where the value of knowledge multiplies on all sides even though compared with consumption of physical thin gs the hope of the networking economy as one that can advance humanity beyond poverty must be based in knowledge’s positive value multipliers
Grameen Solutions with partnership projects eg http://www.bankabillion.org can rightly claim to be a world leader in smart uses of mobiles, and a leading gravity for partners who believe it is precisely the first network generation than can open source an en d to poverty. The new projects of Kazi Islam, CEO of Grameen Solutions, are I must confess an area I most look forward to being updated on when I visit Dhaka. When it comes to using technol0gy to create jobs, I believe the 2 most dramatic entrepreneurs in the world today are Muhammad Yunus and Jack Ma “I want to help china create 100 million jobs”, Clinton Global 2009) of Ali Baba the nearest China has to an ebay (with Nilekani of Infosys in India not at all far behind!). One of the best bits of news in 2009 was that they have entered into some job creation social business partnerships – keep searching!
Further Reference: Growing Up With 2 Giants- a prescient leaflet of Yunus written 2006 on National Partnering Strategy for Bangladeshcongratulations to Dr Yunus, Obama Presidential Laureate Aug 2009- a Ning for those who want to thank goodness yes we can 1,.0 and yes we can 2.0 are meeting up!
dedicated to young people and yes we can networkers who want to end poverty and sustainably invest in the woprld using the only proven microeconomic models for doing this which were deveoped since the 1970s in bangladesh primarily by Grameen and BRAC- since Grameen's 69th birhday present to Dr Yunus included a brand new web, we start with some of its official links that we like touring first
.Tour Grameen's History of Sustainability Investment Grameen Employment Services Ltd.
| .Grameen Future Capitalism Partnerships | .For Profit, Owned wholly by Grameen's Not for Profit Companies or Social
Businesses: For Profit, Owned Partially by Grameen's Not for Profit Companies or Social Businesses : |
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