Tuende!

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Trip Start May 27, 2005 Trip End Aug 19, 2005 Next
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  Millbrook, New York, United States
Friday, May 27, 2005

I concluded my last travelog as I left Costa Rica to go home, apply to business school and start a new adventure: true love, a la Princess Bride. [For those keeping track, the Fulbright didn't work out...surely some technical issue!?] I am proud to report that these endeavors are well on their way. I am halfway through getting my MBA at Cornell's Johnson School of Management, focusing on sustainable enterprise and working closely with the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell (http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/sge/). Most importantly, Tatiana and I have been living together, for the most part, for over a year and are getting married next June 17th in Cadaqués, Spain. Our relationship continues to push, stretch and challenge me in ways that bring me fundamental peace and effervescent joy the likes of which poets, composers, artists--all humanity--still strive to communicate.

So, what am I doing bothering you again? I am lucky enough to have some interesting work/adventure lined up for the next two and a half months and wanted to share it with you. I am headed to Kenya as one of six on a pilot test team for the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) Protocol that was created last year by the BoP Learning Lab. Links and info on the pilot test, the protocol, the Learning Lab and BoP work in general are available at: http://www.brinq.com/projects/kenya/. I pasted some of the information below but am not sure if the links will work.

In broad strokes, we are going to Kenya to learn how people living at the base of the income pyramid are surviving, what makes people rise out of and fall into poverty, and what ventures (business models) could be created to empower and create opportunities for Kenya's poor to improve their livelihoods. We are also working with our main in-country sponsors (SC Johnson and Kickstart, formerly ApproTEC) to help them improve their operations and offerings based on our findings and the nifty tricks we've learned as MBAs.

We've taken some Swahili and have a few key phrases down: "Jina langu si 'mzungu;' ninaitwa 'Justin.'" (Basically: "My name is not 'whitey;' I am called Justin.") We've studied and discussed the research techniques we will use in-field (RAP, PAR). We have connected with a diverse network of in-country partners who will help us throughout our stay: SCJ's local affiliate, Kickstart, Egerton University, Carolina for Kibera, UNDP, and the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya, to list just a few off the top of my head. We have spent countless hours on conference calls and email. We've laid out a detailed workplan and itinerary. And yet I am sure that with my first lungful of Nairobi air I will actively have to will my feet forward into the unknown as all the bravado of preparation falls away and I am spanked with my own delightful ignorance.

With these first steps a journey begins that may prove to be the beginning of foundational change in the way business serves the World's four plus billion "poor," in the approach and disciplines applied to innovation, and, on a far more micro scale, in the direction of my career. With my bags now packed, I sense that cocktail of nerves, excitement and anticipation as an experience obscured by unknown opportunity begins. There is a comforting familiarity with this inherently unsettling and exhilarating sensation. It is a heightened version of what I often felt at the start of consulting projects: the timeframe is a fraction of what we'd like, we're not really sure what we're getting into, we're not really sure how we're going to do what we have proposed, but we do have institutional support, theoretical framework, youthful exuberance and positive mindset on our side and, with that, good things are sure to follow.


Here we go! Allons! Vamanos! Tuende!


"Be the change you want to see in the world." -Mahatma Gandhi



OFF THE BRINQ WEBSITE:
Developed by Stuart Hart and the Base of the Pyramid Learning Lab, the BOP Protocol Project is a collaborative effort to develop guidelines and business models for successful Base of the Pyramid ventures, enabling companies to meet the needs of the world's 4 billion poorest people while discovering huge new growth and innovation opportunities. The protocol is a best-practices methodology to discover new business opportunities, create sustainable growth, and incubate disruptive innovations.
The Base of the Pyramid (BoP) Protocol - a collaborative effort guided by the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University, the University of Michigan Business School, and the World Resources Institute and supported by SC Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, TetraPak, and Dupont - outlines a process whereby corporations can engage resource-poor communities in the co-creation of sustainable business models that simultaneously address locally-defined needs, build local capacity, and generate new economic opportunities for all stakeholders. The Protocol was designed in October of 2004 during a 4-day workshop at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, WI which brought together 35 leading academics, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, and corporations from the broad fields of sustainable enterprise and development. (The protocol draft is available at www.bop-protocol.org).


The Field Test
The Base of the Pyramid (BoP) Protocol will be piloted in Kenya during the summer of 2005 in partnership with SC Johnson and ApproTEC. The objective of the five-person BoP Protocol Pilot Team is to test the Protocol process in close collaboration with SC Johnson and ApproTEC and the Team's local partners in Nakuru District and Kibera. The team will recommend actionable, near-term business opportunities that leverage SCJ's and ApproTEC's existing capabilities and complement the organizations' current strategic focus. In addition, the team will work to recommend new strategic opportunities and competency sets that may enhance each organizations' position in serving Kenya's BoP markets.

The learning and insights gained during the pilot project will then be folded back into the Protocol process and serve as the basis for a second Protocol design workshop to be held in October of 2005.

The Project Team
The six member field trial team represents a variety of disciplines with backgrounds in anthropology, business strategy, English, management consulting, computer science, wildlife conservation, agricultural economics, sustainable enterprise, Spanish, financial services, marketing and international development. Interests include women's issues, innovation, creative writing, tennis, rock climbing, SCUBA, playing guitar, Vietnamese cooking, and more. Languages spoken by the team include English, Kiswahili, French, Latvian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian.

· Catherine Burnett - University of North Carolina
· Patrick Donohue - BRINQ
· Nyokabi Kiarie - University of Michigan
· Justin P. De Koszmovszky - Cornell University
· Tatiana Thieme - Cornell University
· Erik Simanis* - Cornell University

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