What is your role in the Social Capital Market?
Profitably bring affordable power to the bottom of the base of pyramid.
How might we re-imagine resources to create self-sustaining and thriving local communities?
The talent and solutions to tomorrow’s problems will come from the billions of poor people in rural communities entering the global economy.
Global business leaders cannot directly relate to the emerging needs and will have to integrate local communities in the design and roll out of the solutions that best fit local needs.
A great example is Kenya’s mobile money service, M-PESA, which is arguably the most widely penetrated mobile money service in the world. M-PESA arose from behaviors unique to poor rural communities where family members working in urban areas sent money home using pre-paid phone airtime. Rural recipients converted the phone credit codes they received over the phone into cash locally.
These behaviors typical to rural communities are foreign to business leaders abroad and can only be envisioned with the help of local talent and insights.
What does Money + Meaning = to you? What should the social capital market stand for?
Both terms mean “money”.
An investment into a profitable business serving a poor rural community returns profits and lifts communities who in turn enter the global economy and generate additional profits.
Money + Meaning has double returns - perhaps one day all companies will be measured on both.
