Introduction
Time and again, it has been proven that entrepreneurs create
products, services and jobs. By so doing they expand economies,
improve people's lives, and bring about competition.
A competitive environment, in turn, gives rise to efficiency,
meritocracy, and further innovations and
entrepreneurial drive. Moreover, the potent combination of
entrepreneurship and technological innovations contributes
to an ecosystem — including government policies — that
is conducive to further entrepreneurship and technological
innovations.
As a premier institution for technological innovations
along with its entrepreneurial culture, MIT can play a fundamental
role in setting off virtuous cycles of entrepreneurship and
technological innovations in places that have otherwise been
subject to poverty and stagnation. This is the core rationale
for MIT’s Program
in Developmental
Entrepreneurship (DE).
The Program leverages MIT’s:
- extremely
gifted and international student body
- enormous reservoir
of technological
innovations
- global alumni network, made up of often
entrepreneurial individual
- the ‘virtual United
Nations’ culture
of Cambridge, and
- other development-focused efforts at
MIT,
including Development
Lab, IDEAS,
and Global
Lab.
Together,
these resources enable the DE to be a global focal
point for the next generation of top-notch ideas and entrepreneurs,
literally from and for the entire world.
Developmental Entrepreneurship Today
The Program in DE—in conjunction with the Entrepreneurship
Center at the Sloan School of Management, the Media
Laboratory,
and the new Design
Laboratory:
- offers instruction in development-oriented
entrepreneurship
- works with all of the other development-oriented
programs at MIT
- builds the Developmental Entrepreneurship
Network (DEN) in partnership with the MIT Alumni Association,
and
- supports the new MIT
$50k Competition in Entrepreneurship for Development.
The Directors of DE have made major intellectual and practical
impact: Professor
Sandy Pentland and Iqbal
Quadir are both
serial entrepreneurs who have launched successful enterprises
on their own and also promoted other entrepreneurs and innovations.
At
its core, the Program helps MIT students invent new technologies
and organizations, increases their understanding of the
challenges faced by low income communities, connects them to
other resources at MIT and
elsewhere that may help them design and implement sustainable
enterprises, and conducts research that may be useful to entrepreneurs
and enterprises.
DE Enterprises
DE already has a strong record of success. It has produced
spin-offs such as:
Way Systems
added a card reader and banking network to convert existing
cell phones into low-cost point-of-sale
devices. Their goal is to enable the world’s 100M village
entrepreneurs to participate in a credit economy and provide
simple banking services.
United
Villages delivers voice messaging
and email to rural areas using ultra-low-cost WiFi technology.
Reports the
Wall Street Journal: “The Village Area Networking
Kit is a fraction of the cost of the electricity and communications
infrastructure that would otherwise be necessary to deliver
email to the villages.”
CellBazaar creates
a local electronic marketplace for
villagers via cell phones. With 8.5M villages in Bangladesh,
its goal is to become the eBay of the developing word. The
Economist said of CellBazaar: "it will have the effect
of making price information more transparent and widely available."
Howtoons produces cartoons
that show kids of all ages ‘How To’ build things.
These ‘Tools
of Mass Construction’ inspire
kids everywhere to think about hopeful futures while developing
the practical skills and creative savvy to solve real problems.
Dimagi uses
PDAs and cellular phones to help deliver healthcare services
around the world. Their product line provides rural heathcare
workers with up-to-date medical information and creates aggregate
databases to help in the
management of global disease.
blueEnergy is
a
provider of low-cost, sustainable energy
to underdeveloped communities in Central America using locally-made
micro wind turbines. blueEnergy’s efforts provide local
jobs, boost local economies and provide those in need with
critical basic energy services.
