business IS personal

I know - this blog is in danger of becoming a McKinsey advertisement.  However, when they keep putting out so much good stuff, I can’t help it!  Today there are 5 articles on microfinance/microcredit and banking services for the bottom of the pyramid.  Three of these are premium (paid subscribers only) articles which are only guest passed for current subscribers to the free version for a limited time.  So get reading!

Direct from the e-mail:

Special collection: The biggest market on Earth
In one country, as part of a ubiquitous custom called “five–six” lending, poor people borrow five pesos from informal lenders and repay six, usually within a week. The annual interest rate works out at roughly 13,000 percent.

This is hardly the only place where low-income people suffer from a lack of choices and information. Their options have been limited because legitimate companies have been reluctant to enter the markets that serve them.

These articles from the archive show that large and reputable financial and retail businesses are now finding ways to do so profitably.

A grassroots approach to emerging-market consumers
November 2006

Extending financial services to Latin America’s poor
March 2007

The following three premium articles are available to nonpremium members for a limited time through this e-mail.

Financing Latin America’s low-income consumers (Guest passed until May 16)
March 2007

The CEO as CIO: An interview with the head of India’s top private bank (Guest passed until May 16)
March 2007

Succeeding in Latin American banking: An interview with Banco Itaú’s CEO (Guest passed until May 16)
November 2006

I think I’ve mentioned before that I find the McKinsey Quarterly’s free resources available by signing up for their newsletter to be top notch.  This quarter’s entries for top strategy articles are no exception.  The descriptions below are taken directly from the e-mail newsletter.  I’ve deleted the ones that are only available to premium (paid) subscribers.  I’ve only read the climate change and Brad Bird/Pixar ones so far, but both were excellent.

Going through the old e-mails again, and found this fascinating article in HBS Working Knowledge that was shocking and inspiring.  First off, I must admit that I’m a fan of the show Boston Legal and that most of my knowledge of Asperger Syndrome comes from that show (yes, i’m pitifully uninformed or misinformed).  However, I’ve worked with autistic children in after-school programs and have heard lots of scary statistics about the “autism epidemic.” This can be a debilitating condition and the success stories seem few and far between - the only one I can think of (disregarding the Hollywood savant examples) is Temple Grandin, who apparently also is in the Asperger Syndrome category on the autism spectrum disorder scale.

Usually, when I think of job training and opportunities for autistic people, I think back to working at the Volunteer Center of Durham 15 years ago, and how we used organizations like Good Work for low-skill labor opportunities such as stuffing and labeling envelopes for mailings.  The results were haphazard at times, and we often had our Board of Directors and Junior League volunteers come in instead to place mailing labels on fund-raising and development mailings to insure quality.  Granted, these were an entirely different population and spectrum of developmental disorders, but still, I never would have thought that anyone on the autism spectrum disorder would be not only well-suited for software testing.  Not to mention that it would actually be so well suited as to provide a competitive advantage.

Enter the shock and inspiration:

“But who is best suited to control and manage the tests? The surprising answer may be found in a group of people previously thought to have a crippling condition: autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

In a new case coauthored by Austin, “Specialisterne: Sense & Details,” an innovative consultancy in Denmark has turned testing into its own specialty. While its 50 or so part-time consultants are considered best-in-class—they are paid industry-competitive wages, and customers include LEGO, Microsoft, and Oracle—75 percent of them live with what others might consider a handicap: They have Asperger syndrome or some form of ASD.”

And later in the article:

Specialisterne now has two offices in Denmark, another under construction in Scotland, and branches being planned in Sweden and India. Its niche, according to the case, is testing when the cost of establishing automated testing is too expensive and complex. In March 2008 Sonne was honored with Denmark’s IT Award for outstanding contributions to IT development. In a statement read at the ceremony, the award was bestowed to Sonne of Specialisterne because “these highly gifted people require special support to get on in society—but via their particular logical skills and sense for precision, they can contribute massively.”

This blog post reports that “Southern California Edison plans to install 250 megawatts’ worth of solar panels on commercial rooftops, generating enough electricity to power 162,000 homes.”  Great post/article that goes into the long and short-term business implications of this decision, including a potential short-term price hike as demand spikes before an eventual price fall as economies of scale ramp up, and potential faster adoption of thin-film solar panels, which use far less silicon than traditional panels.

This report coming on the day that we’re hosting a screening of the documentary Kilowatt Ours with a Q&A session from director Jeff Barrie seems like some sort of good omen, or at least a pleasant coincidence.

MapEcos is a joint venture led by business school professors at Harvard, Dartmouth and Duke. It “brings together information about companies’ environmental management, provided voluntarily by managers in real time, with companies’ pollution data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” according to a recent article in HBS Working Knowledge.

The New York Times reported today that Virgin Atlantic will conduct a test of one of its Boeing 747s using biofuels. The most interesting thing to me is that there seems to have been a lot of thought put into both the sustainability and the business aspects (even though this first step is actually a blend of 20% biofuel and 80% conventional jet fuel).

Sustainability: Virgin spokesman Paul Charles is quoted as saying the company rejected fuels derived from crops like palm oil because of the land that would be needed to cultivate such crops, and that the biofuel production would not compete with food or freshwater resources.

Business: This joint project between Virgin, Boeing, and GE Aviation splits the costs of innovation among several companies, and had smart business requirements. For example, the test plane will use one of GE Aviation’s CF6 engines as a “drop-in solution,” meaning the use of biofuel requires no modification, and will not affect the engine’s performance or range.

I recently read a New Yorker article about Branson and his work with Al Gore to create the Virgin Earth Challenge with its $25 million prize.  I’m impressed that he’s so intent on solutions that are market-driven, commercial, and don’t require major lifestyle changes, as I believe that these are the ones that are truly scalable.  An excellent article that shows that for Branson, business is very personal.  I just wonder whether he’ll consider himself eligible to win his own prize?

Consulting giant McKinsey & Co has a free subscription service offering a subscription to their business publication, the McKinsey Quarterly. While they do have some articles that are “premium” and require you to purchase full access, a startlingly large percentage of what they put out is free. It’s shocking, but they offer more free content than any of the other business knowledge services I subscribe to (HBS, SSIR, Net Impact) with the exception of Origo Inc’s cross-sector news which is totally free and published less frequently. N.B. All of these services require registration, which means giving out your name, e-mail address and company affiliation, but I find that the information I receive is worth far more than this small amount of personal data. Also, links to each of these services can be found at the right side of this page in the “Social Entrepreneurship Resources” list - no time to create individual links today - sorry!

Today I received an e-mail with the McKinsey Quarterly’s top interviews of 2007. I thought that folks might be interested in one with Al Gore and David Blood on investing in sustainability.

The others from the list that I found particularly helpful and/or interesting were:

Strategy’s strategist: An interview with Richard Rumelt
A giant in the field of strategy ruminates on strategic planning, diversification and focus, and the role of the CEO.

Crafting a message that sticks: An interview with Chip Heath
The key to effective communication: make it simple, make it concrete, and make it surprising.

Promoting growth and social progress: An interview with the president of Chile
Michelle Bachelet discusses her views on the roots of political upheaval in Latin America, and the link between economic development and the fight against poverty.

Leading change: An interview with the CEO of Deere & Company
Bob Lane details the steps his company took to engage the whole organization in an operational and cultural transformation.