Thursday, September 21, 2006
Can you do well by "doing good"? How do you make money in countries
where the average worker makes as little as a dollar a day? Why is technology
the answer for grass roots entrepreneurship on a village by village basis?
Presented in association
with the MIT Media Lab and the MIT Program in Developmental
Entrepreneurship, "Global Entrepreneurship: Inefficiency
as Opportunity in the
Developing World" will open the eyes and minds of
entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on emerging global markets.
- How to do good, and make money, by identifying needs and
solving inefficiencies affecting poor regions
- How high-tech solutions work in low-tech areas
- Why "bottom-up" entrepreneurship works and "top-down" doesn't
- How to use the US legal and financial systems to go global
- How to overcome legal and governmental obstacles
Our featured panel includes Alex
(Sandy) Pentland (moderator), professor of Media
Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab and co-founder and
director of the MIT Program for Developmental Entrepreneurship;
Damien Balsan, co-founder and vice
president of business development for WAY Systems, a leader
in mobile point-of-sale devices; Rick Burnes,
co-founder of the venture capital firm Charles River Ventures; Iqbal
Quadir, founder of the GrameenPhone
cellular network in Bangladesh , and co-founder and director
of the MIT Program for Developmental Entrepreneurship; and
Randy Zadra, managing director of the
Institute for Connectivity in the Americas.
Speaker Biographies
Sandy Pentland
Professor Alex
(Sandy) Pentland PS '82 is co-founder
and director of the MIT Program for Developmental
Entrepreneurship and the
Toshiba
Professor of Media Arts & Sciences at the MIT
Media Lab. Sandy
is a pioneer in mobile communications, health systems, and technology for
developing countries. One of the world's most-cited scientists, he has helped
to create more than a dozen organizations, including several publicly-listed
firms. He was previously founding director of the Center for Future Health
and the Media Lab
Asia, and was the Academic Head of the MIT Media Laboratory.
A winner of numerous international awards in the arts, sciences and engineering,
he was chosen by Newsweek as one of 100 Americans most likely to
shape this century.
Damien Balsan
Damien Balsan GM '02 has
over 15 years of experience in the telecommunications, mobile, bank card, and
payment industry. Damien started his career in Mexico at France
Telecom, in
charge of developing the Minitel concept following France Telecom's investment
of $500M in Telmex (Telefonos de Mexico). He has held several positions at
Gemplus, the leading smart card manufacturer, including: Sales Director of
Central and Eastern, General Manager for South America, and Director of Marketing
for the Gemplus Mobile Business unit that focused in mobile banking and mobile
commerce applications. Damien graduated from MIT's
Sloan School of Management and was one of the first Developmental Entrepreneurship alumni, completing
his thesis on Mobile Commerce Business Models with a particular focus on developing
countries. The ideas developed in this thesis led him to become a co-founder
of WAY Systems, an international leader in mobile point-of-sale devices.
Rick Burnes
Rick Burnes was a co-founder
of Charles River Ventures in
1970 and has played a major role in the firm's development into one of the
country's major venture firms with offices in Waltham , Massachusetts and Menlo
Park , California. Over the last 15 years, Rick has focused on investments
in the fields of communications and information services. Among the successful
investments he has led are: Cascade Communications, Chipcom Corporation, Epoch
Systems, Abacus Direct, Summa Four, Concord
Communications, Prominet, Aptis
and Sonus Networks.
Apart from venture capital, Rick has been active in community organizations.
Currently he is Chairman of Boston's nationally recognized Museum
of Science, Chairman of the Entrepreneur's
Foundation of New England, Vice Chairman of
Sea Education Association and Director of The
Boston Foundation.
Iqbal Quadir
Iqbal Quadir is the founder
and director of the Legatum
Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at
MIT, which promotes bottom-up entrepreneurship
in developing countries. Quadir is often credited as having been the earliest
observer of the potential for mobile phones to transform low-income countries.
Quadir spent most of the 1990s founding and building GrameenPhone
Ltd., which
has now become Bangladesh’s largest telephone company, with net income
of $250 million in 2006. To date, it has built the largest cellular network
in the country with a subscriber base
of nearly 20 million, providing telephone access to more than 100 million people,
while helping to create 250,000 micro-entrepreneurs in these villages. For
four years, Quadir taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University, focusing on the impact of technologies in the politics and economics
of developing countries. In 2005, he moved to MIT.
Randy Zadra
Randy Zadra is currently
Managing Director of the Institute
for Connectivity in the Americas (ICA),
which was created for promoting and funding hemispheric innovation in the application
of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the Latin American and
Caribbean region. He has more than 15 years of experience in ICT, and extensive
international experience. Randy previously held senior management positions
at Teleglobe in Montreal, Quebec and Washington, DC and has founded two Internet
start-ups, focusing on providing accessible Internet in developing countries.
He has also worked with the Ministry of Industry in Canada, in international
trade development and policy.
