Workshop archives for April, 2006

Articles about business, poverty, and innovation in the the Base of the Pyramid (BOP), the 4+ billion people living in the base of the world's economic pyramid. Suggest an article or story.

Patrick off to play again - BoP Protocol in India

Posted Mon, 04/10/2006 - 22:34 by Patrick@BRINQ

This weekend I'm heading out to join another Base of the Pyramid Protocol project, the second ever actually, this time working with the Solae Company in India. You may recall that the first implementation of the BoP Protocol was last year with SC Johnson in Kenya, of which you can see many past articles here on BRINQ.com. The Solae Protocol project is via a partnership between Solae, Cornell University, and Enterprise for a Sustainable World (ESW). ESW has hired me to join up with Protocol co-director Erik Simanis and BoP consultant Tatiana Thieme (both who I worked with on the Kenya Protocol pilot) to facilitate Solae's implementation in low income communities in Mumbai and Hyderabad.

This will be my first trip to India, and besides being personally excited for the experience, I believe the project will be a great boon for the continuing development of the Protocol. Not only are the target region and sponsoring company quite different than the last time around, but the structure of the project itself is an evolution of what we did in Kenya… most significant is the inclusion of local professionals and students on the core Protocol team.

I'll be reporting from the field every chance I get, both here and on other upcoming sites I'll be listing links to.

And of course, I'll always be on the look out for cool innovations and toys too!

Inspirations: BoP-Protocol.org and e4sw.org

Posted Mon, 04/10/2006 - 21:48 by Patrick@BRINQ

Things have been pretty quiet around the BRINQ Workshop, only a few posts in the last six months, so what have we been up to?

Well, besides trying to get things started in Brazil again, I've been doing a lot of work for other folks, most particularly Enterprise for a Sustainable World (ESW), a new organization started up by Cornell University professor and Sustainability guru Stuart Hart, whose book "Capitalism at the Crossroads" we covered here before.

Clearing things up - Who wrote the BoP Protocol?

Posted Mon, 04/03/2006 - 07:41 by Patrick@BRINQ

Yes, things have been quiet around here for a while, and expect a few more updates in the near future about what's been going on. But for the moment we need to clear a few things up. Please take a look at the updated FAQ on the About BRINQ page. The most important question is answered in more detail below:

Q: Who wrote the BoP Protocol?
A: Not BRINQ.Yes, things have been quiet around here for a while, and expect a few more updates in the near future about what's been going on. But for the moment we need to clear a few things up. Please take a look at the updated FAQ on the About BRINQ page. The most important question is answered in more detail below:

Q: "Who wrote the BoP Protocol?"
A: "Not BRINQ."

The BoP Protocol is the work of the BoP Protocol Working Group, which is directed out of Cornell University. So although you see a lot of stories about the Base of the Pyramid Protocol here on BRINQ.com, BRINQ is not in any way institutionally involved in the Protocol. We didn't write it, we don't run it, we don't decide how it's being developed. As the only web site that had been actively writing about the Protocol for some time, there was a lot of confusion over the question of authorship in the past. We have to apologize for not having made that more clear.