Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Bottom Billion

Here is Oxford economist Paul Collier presentation at Aspen Ideas Festival on his thought-provoking concept of the poverty traps affecting the "bottom billion" of the poorest of the poor (mostly in Africa and some regions such as Afghanistan) that keep getting poorer.

In these two segments, Professor Collier discusses how the bottom billion, dysfunctional ecosystems and developed countries lobbies and "follies" render aid to these countries ineffective and how to avoid it.

Bottom Billion - part 1



Bottom Billion - part 2



Check the conferences and post your comments on how Collier´s specific points can be considered and addressed for our (and your) PII projects.

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6 comments:

Dolores Moreno Millanes said...

In the case of Mexico, and countries of Africa there are solutions that should be focused on teamwork, culture change to a company, the training of new leaders and especially to extend the frontiers of the knowledge economy, leading to effective action of an added value to society, evidence of this, several initiatives are currently under development at the Technological Institute of Sonora, by the example of Silicon Valley in San Jose, California, where a group of technology companies are have achieved synergies with Stanford University, the American economy is increasingly independent of the mass production of tangible goods, the non-renewable energy, to depend on technology knowledge together to develop their activities thereby stimulating economic development of new industries such as nanotechnology and specialized services.

Silicon Yaqui in conjunction with the International District Agribusiness DIAPYME, adding the alternative tourism have established differences in the value of its graduates and residents, where the wide regional dysfunctional economy that has depended on agriculture for over 50 years, without an industrial policy for regional trade development, established a pattern of making the history of the parenthesis, where the South Sound has been stalled for decades due to this lack of vision of the pioneers taking the historic challenge of transforming the regional economy, its efforts were focused only on the benefits of farming subsidies, subsidies for cultural reasons, focused on various dances and parties converge on the economy without business

Mariano Bernardez said...

Excellent point, Dolores: your example about the challenge (and necessity) of transforming and evolving Yaqui valley from agriculture into 21st century, intellectual capital-intensive technology hits the mark!
Recently, I shared a conference with Dr. Denise Dressler. At the beginning, the organizers screened a documentary about the pioneers in the Yaqui Valley during the 50-70s, when the Green Revolution took place.
This is clearly a new moment for pioneers to launch a project for the coming 20 to 30 years.
How do you envision it?

Dolores Moreno Millanes said...

First, is really necessary support the young people, this new talen could make the difference in the organizations, politics and universitys, the old generation, have a lot darengous paradigm in the new economy, and now, there are a kind of people that their are happy with mediocrity and a lack of vision in educational institutions, they do not understand that change is very strong.

Dolores Moreno Millanes said...

For our proposed alternative tourism, it is interesting to see how you can develop activities to enable a value chain across business communities, on the one hand, both as DIAPYME Alternative Tourism can make a difference in opening markets for trade development activities for the benefit of society, albeit, regional markets are very jealous of their products also regional market of rural communities through the impact of job creation and business can generate a measurable impact through mega budget towards DIAPYME is where the IIP Projects are directly proportional to the application of knowledge tangible.
In academia, there are 2 diseases that have been disastrous for the future of universities, these are:

Organizational myopia and autism academic, on the one hand, have no vision of what happens in the future is a weakness of the people not to develop their potential and remain in the comfort zone of $, that is only part of the myopia observe closely what is happening, not having a broader vision for the development of competitive advantages.

Autism school is focus on yourself alone, without knowing the skills and capabilities of a human capital that is being formed to address the new economy as well as autism is a genetic disorder that generates prospects of underdevelopment in humans caused by that impairs their communication and social interaction, causing restricted and repetitive behavior and also the reactions on the person who leads the organization begins to have troubles in your communication, this being reflected in the way of doing things with their partners, ie also for Applied Behavior Analysis to adapt their behavior to the characteristics of the organization, market and customers, without losing sensitivity

Antonio Salazar Campos said...

Ecosystems allow companies to create value that no firm could create alone. The benefits of these systems are real. But for many organizations attempt to integrate the ecosystem of innovation has been a costly failure. This is because, along with new opportunities, innovation ecosystems also present a new set of risks that can brutally derail the best efforts of a company. Innovation ecosystems are characterized by three main types of risks: risks of the initiative, which are the usual uncertainties of managing a project, the risks of interdependence, which are the uncertainties of coordinating with complementary innovators and integration risks, are the uncertainties raised by the adoption process within the value chain.
Currently there is renewed interest in the joint production, particularly among small-scale enterprises with one objective: strengthening to produce and market their products and services in highly competitive markets.
Clearly the union of efforts and resources is a formula for overcoming all and it is precisely in this perspective which lays down the requirement for a scheme that allows joint business cooperation and integration to companies interested in locating in the District International Agribusiness SME, taking into account the size of enterprises, their economic capacity and their production and commercial strategy.

Antonio Salazar Campos said...

Thomas Nastas, says about some issues in the ecosystem of innovation

The problem, says the author, president of the Russian company Innovative Venture Capital Ventures Inc. - is that these investments aim too high, the discovery of breakthrough technologies that can solve global problems and generate enormous wealth. His experience in his country and elsewhere, he said that an ecosystem of innovation must start with technologies that address local needs, as they did at the time the Israeli energy sector and the tech in Estonia.
To do so, recommends a plan of development for which governments can promote a healthy flow of investment projects, which covers aspects such as preparation and presentation of projects, testing of technologies and intellectual property protection, among others . With an intelligent involvement of multinationals in the process, you can climb a useful technology and create from it a whole new economic sector, which in turn can help emerging countries come to the table of the most advanced knowledge economy.