Development as Social Transformation

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Development as Social Transformation
Quote:

Learning Expectation:
Financial assistance sought by individuals or groups should not duplicate assistance that is obtainable from other government agencies or departments.
Review:
The Committee only considers requests from individuals whose income levels are at or below the poverty line ($5,503.00 per annum). Discretion may be exercised for families facing extenuating circumstances.
Funds shall not be provided directly to individuals. Rather the agencies of the Ministry of Social Transformation shall liaise with institutions, agencies or businesses to procure services or items granted to individuals or groups.
Submissions for funding from CBOs and NGOs shall include the comments of the Community Development Department and/or the Poverty Alleviation Bureau on the viability of the project and its potential to alleviate poverty, where relevant.
For funds approved in excess of $100,000.00 an agreement prepared by the Office of the Solicitor General would be concluded by the organisation and the Ministry of Social Transformation.

Lessons Learned:
The Welfare Department, was established and a number of Social Centers were built for the increasing social activities which were mainly tea meetings, dances and service or songs. The League and later the Welfare Department managed the Social Centres and assumed responsibility for Community Development in the island.
The early Centres were also used as venues where people were taught Handicraft to meet the demands of the embryonic tourist market and as an income earner mainly for women. Some were also used as Child Health clinics. In the mid and late 1960 there was an increase in community development activity in Barbados, necessitating an increase in facilities.

Integrative Questions:
1. How to encourage and develop a sense of civic consciousness.
2. How to build and maintain strong, cooperative and harmonious?
3. What are the relationships among the various interest groups within communities?
4. How to foster a spirit of self-help, community enterprise and entrepreneurship?
5. What are the part of an overall strategy towards sustainable development and poverty eradication.

Reducing Corruption

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Reducing Corruption
Quote:
“The people practice the corruption because is the easy way to do his jobs and resolve his problems, and they just follow the example, and because they say that the people who practice that is the smart people”
Learning Expectation:
The leadership desires Corruption is self-defeating and therefore will work for its dissolution. A good leadership worths best in a society no matter what.
Review:
Corruption is said to be an act done with intent to give some advantage inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others. It includes bribery, but is more comprehensive; because an act may be corruptly done, though the advantage to be derived from it be not offered by another. Corruption has been around for a very long time and will be around in the future unless governments can figure out effective ways to combat it. This is not going to be easy, since much public corruption can be traced to government intervention in the economy, policies aimed at liberalization, stabilization, deregulation, and privatization can sharply reduce the opportunities for rent-seeking behavior and corruption. Where government regulations are pervasive, however, and government officials have discretion in applying them, individuals are often willing to offer bribes to officials to circument the rules and, sad to relate, officials are occasionally tempted to accept these bribes.
Lessons Learned:
Corruption from my point of view is like a disease that eats a country up. i think that corruption retards growth because when u always have to bribe your way through getting things done, then it practically mean that you are preventing another resourceful person from achieving his or her goal. the ‘who you know’ system is so bad that even when it comes to schooling, the good students are left to stay home and the unintelligent ones take their place only because they don’t have the money to pay to get admission.this is a peculiar issue in my country which is destroying it because at the end of the day,the schools produce very poor commodities who cant even think on their feet and as such stops creative thinking. therefore, i think that for a country to progress, it needs a corrupt free environment”
Integrative Questions:
1. What are the plans of government for changes to the current system and to create laws to protect whistle blowers?
2. What articles write to your local newspaper when you see corruption in action?
3. How many of the campaigns to fight against corruption?
4. Is there for a for good governance around the world ?
5. Is there a global phenomenon of corruption?

The Ecosystem for Wealth Creation

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
The Ecosystem for Wealth Creation
Quote:
“An ecosystem is a complete community of living organisms and the nonliving materials of their surroundings.”
Learning Expectation:
Ecosystem Wealth Creation is a stock, meaning that it is a total accumulation over time. Income is a flow, meaning it is a rate of change. Income represents the increase in wealth, expenses the decrease in wealth. If you limit wealth to net worth, then mathematically net income (income minus expenses) can be thought of as the first derivative of wealth, representing the change in wealth over a period of time.
Review:
The environment is relatively stable and the innovation that comes with diversity isn’t a high priority, you can move to directly control the assets your company needs, by acquiring your partners or otherwise taking over their functions. A physical dominator ultimately becomes its own ecosystem, absorbing the complex network of interdependencies that existed between distinct organizations, and is able to extract maximum short-term value from the assets it controls. When it reaches this end point, an ecosystem strategy is no longer relevant.
If, however, your business chooses to extract maximum value from a network of assets that you don’t control—the value dominator strategy—you may end up starving and ultimately destroying the ecosystem of which you are a part. This makes the approach a fundamentally flawed strategy.
Lessons Learned:
If your business is at the center of a complex network of asset-sharing relationships and operates in a turbulent environment, a keystone strategy may be the most effective. By carefully managing the widely distributed assets your company relies on in part by sharing with your business partners the wealth generated by those assets. Can capitalize on the entire ecosystem’s ability to generate, because of its diversity, innovative responses to disruptions in the environment.
Integrative Questions:
1. What is ecosystem?
2. What is wealth creation?
3. What is the strategy of managing the company?
4. Is there an ability of ecosystem’s to generate?
5. What are the value from a network of assets? 

BOP: A Global Opportunity

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
BOP: A Global Opportunity
Quote:
The total opportunity costs of such an action can never be known with certainty, and are sometimes called “hidden costs” or “hidden losses” as what has been prevented from being produced cannot be seen or known. Even the possibility of inaction is a lost opportunity.
Learning Expectation:
Global Opportunity cost is a key concept in economics because it implies the choice between desirable, yet mutually exclusive results.
Review:
Global Opportunity cost or economic opportunity loss is the value of the next best alternative foregone as the result of making a decision. Opportunity cost analysis is an important part of a company’s decision-making processes but is not treated as an actual cost in any financial statement. The next best thing that a person can engage in is referred to as the opportunity cost of doing the best thing and ignoring the next best thing to be done.
It is a calculating factor used in mixed markets which favour social change in favour of purely individualistic economics. It has been described as expressing “the basic relationship between scarcity and choice.” The notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that scarce resources are used efficiently. Thus, opportunity costs are not restricted to monetary or financial costs: the real cost of output forgone, lost time, swag, pleasure or any other benefit that provides utility should also be considered opportunity costs.
Lessons Learned:
A person who sells stock for $10,000 denies himself or herself the opportunity to sell the stock for a higher price in the future, inheriting an opportunity cost equal to future price minus sale price.
An organization that invests $1 million in acquiring a new asset instead of spending that money on maintaining its existing asset portfolio incurs the increased risk of failure of its existing assets. The opportunity cost of the decision to acquire a new asset is the financial security that comes from the organization’s spending the money on maintaining its existing asset portfolio.
If a city decides to build a hospital on vacant land it owns, the opportunity cost is the value of the benefits forgone of the next best thing that might have been done with the land and construction funds instead. In building the hospital, the city has forgone the opportunity to build a sports center on that land, or a parking lot, or the ability to sell the land to reduce the city’s debt, since those uses tend to be mutually exclusive. Also included in the opportunity cost would be what investments or purchases the private sector would have voluntarily made if it had not been taxed to build the hospital.
Integrative Questions:
1. What is global opportunity?
2. Is there an ability to construct a fund?
3. What is the organization of BOP?
4. How much the value of the benefits in funds?
5. Define the BOP?

Products and Services for the BOP

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Products and Services for the BOP
Quote:
As White explains, “our products have huge reach and so the opportunity to improve lives and to make sure we reduce our overall environmental impact is primarily through our products.”
Learning Expectation:
Not only are companies attracted by the prospect of discovering markets with untapped growth potential, but they’re also aiming to have an impact, in a global society characterized by deep divisions between the haves and the have-nots. But those developing new products for those living in poverty are finding that cost alone isn’t the most important factor.
Review:
The product had clear social benefits, providing clean drinking water for households in places where the health risks of untreated drinking water are high, especially for children. After three years of market tests though, PUR was looking like a commercial failure. Many other firms would have closed down the project, but P&G instead moved PUR to its corporate sustainability department, easing the pressure on turning a profit. Since 2003, P&G has sold the product at cost and worked in partnership with non-profit organizations, who distribute the product through their development and humanitarian relief networks.
 
Lessons Learned:
People can afford computers and, thus, schools can justify investments in routers and infrastructure, a sensible proposition for companies like Cisco. The cycle goes on.
So, rather than, or as a complement to, trying to make money off of the BOP as new market opportunities, when companies help create value by allowing families to create wealth through “their” creations or products, lends itself to more robust investments. Otherwise, companies will continue to scratch their heads on how to capitalize on the BOP.
Integrative Questions:
1. What are the products of BOP?
2. What are the services for the BOP?
3. What are the opportunities in the company?
4. What is the impact in global society?
5. What are the creations of the products or investments?