This article highlights startup companies that believe they can solve serious urban problems such as air pollution, traffic, homelessness, and access to education. I think these startups are pretty creative and this article frames urban problems in ways that I normally would not.

Those articles (Article 1/Article 2) describe a new entrepreneurial approach on global waste management and a possible form of foreign aid that simultaneously creates new jobs locally. The article claims that “There are about 40 million waste pickers around the world” and that “Recycling plastic bottles into filament helps waste pickers increase their incomes by as much as 20 times.” However, the fact that the advanced technology used (the 3D printers) is built and sold by companies in developed countries remains. Nevertheless, it could be seen as an example of a new approach on foreign aid, one that is more diffcult to abuse for local authorities, tries to create local jobs and to solve urgent environmental problems.

While this article is not very recently published, it presents some interesting facts and numbers about the US foreign Aid approach. For example the fact that only around 1% of the foreign Aid budget is spent on promoting entrepreneurship. The article also discusses some hurddles that need to overcome to promote successfully new entrepreneurship, for example the difficulty to engender entrepreneurship in places where government and NGO jobs are much more safer career bets and starting an own business.

There are currently 9 million women who run businesses in the United States today. According to Entrepreneur magazine, women owned businesses in the US are growing at a rate more than 1.5 times other small businesses and provide an estimated 5 million jobs. However, this progress is offset by the fact that female-led businesses only make up 30% of companies throughout the world. As a woman going through the startup process with her own small business, I find myself contemplating these statistics when looking for funding and pursuing network opportunities. Am I being judged on a different scale than that of my male peers?

Women make up more than half of all college students and surpass men in attaining undergraduate degrees, but are vastly underrepresented in the STEM field. In the tech field, in particular, women are outnumbered 4 to 1. This gender gap has very real consequences for the industry as a whole, with user centric approaches ignoring the fact that women account for about 85% of all consumer purchases. This affects companies from the bottom up, with less gender diversity comes less job satisfaction and ultimately less consumer satisfaction. So how can we encourage women to get into the tech industry?

I can only speak from personal experience, but for me seeing women as role models in fields that I want to go into speaks volumes. Mentorship programs are incredibly important for women to see others they admire taking on fundamental entrepreneurial roles. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship for Coursera to learn coding, and I think having free or low cost offerings for women is an excellent way to encourage more women to dip their toes into the tech space.

For more information about how VC funding disproportionally impacts female founded businesses, read this.

India has made several changes in recent years that are paving the way for a boom in small and medium sized business (SMBs)—which, as Poverty, Inc. pointed out, are the meat and potatoes of a developed economy.

For one, the goods and services tax (GST) replaced a complicated set of state and local taxes with a uniform, simplified tax, which has the advantage of predictability for those taking on the risk of starting a business.

Most notably, India’s increased adoption of “Fintech” (unconventional, innovative business models that use technology to enable financial services and disrupt traditional financial services structures). These new financial services models offer small businesses in developing countries the possibility of funding that they would not be able to receive through traditional banking structures. For an example, check out SME Corner (mentioned in the article above) which provides small businesses loans within days with virtually no collateral.

https://hbr.org/2016/12/refugees-need-jobs-entrepreneurship-can-help

Poverty, inc. really helped me see global social problems from a different perspective. It also showed how entrepreneurship can really be the answer in some cases. This article reenforces that idea, promoting some of the foreign development budget be directed toward entrepreneurship. It poses that refugees would have a smoother transition/ would be less of a problem if they could have jobs waiting for them (jobs created by entrepreneurship)

This article speaks to this week’s prompt about steps that countries must take to facilitate entrepreneurship.  It is interesting that it hits on a number of the topics brought up in the Poverty Inc. video, specifically the difficultly small and medium size businesses face when trying to find financing.  Ways that Nigeria has tried to address this is to bring in more experienced bankers from other countries who have a deeper knowledge of all the funding alternatives so that both the banks and entrepreneurs can profit from the rise in innovation within the country.  Another topic brought up in this article that wasn’t necessarily touched on as much in Poverty Inc. is the difficulty in retaining skilled labor.  It explains that skilled individuals in developing countries tend to go work for multi-national corporations because these companies can provide better stability, but more importantly, pay workers more than local start-ups.  Which hurdle do you feel will be the more difficult one for developing nations to overcome, the lack of financing options or difficulty in retaining skilled labor?

After reading Schumpeter’s “The Process of Creative Destruction,” in particular a quote toward the end of the selection stating, “In the case of retail trade the competition that matters arises not from additional shops of the same type, but from the department store, the chain store, the mail-order house and the supermarket which are bound to destroy those pyramids sooner or later,” my mind immediately went to Kodak. Though a perhaps overused example in business courses across the country, the story of Kodak seems to perfectly display the efficacy of Schumpeter’s warning regarding creative destruction.

This article explains how Kodak, the company that essentially created the picture-taking industry, eventually was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2012. Kodak’s downfall came with the invention of digital photography and online forms of sharing photos. As the article notes, “Companies often see the disruptive forces affecting their industry. They frequently divert sufficient resources to participate in emerging markets. Their failure is usually an inability to truly embrace the new business models the disruptive change opens up. Kodak created a digital camera, invested in the technology, and even understood that photos would be shared online. Where they failed was in realizing that online photo sharing was the new business, not just a way to expand the printing business.” This language seems to mirror Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction exactly. The retailer must not be focused on new ways to market an old idea, but must be focused on new ideas entirely.