A curious micro-debate seems to be emerging in the blogosphere on what is more critical to a social entrepreneur’s success — their humility or arrogance. This is an interesting discussion, as both qualities provide varied paths to success and failure. For example, often times organizations are inextricably tied to the charismatic, larger than life personalities [...]

At the risk of overstating the role that mobile phones will play in reaching the BoP, a great post on NextBillion.net talks about how cell phones have reached the level that Malcolm Gladwell would label a “social epidemic.” It is notable that Eric Schmidt, chairman of the board and enlightened CEO of Google has said [...]

We have blogged before about the Piramal Prize and its desire to incentivize people to develop innovations that will democratize healthcare. Well here is one that has emerged west of the Atlantic that needs to figure out a way to crossover to India. Kind of like a WebMD for your phone, the new mobile site [...]

An interesting post on Watblog.com, which came to my attention via Avashya, asks the question: How Will Rural India Deal With Social Networking? It is a very intriguing question to ruminate about as more and more technologies aim to connect the rural populations with the remainder of the country. The article takes a very systematic [...]

World of Good’s newly formed partnership with eBay has set in motion the creation of what is slated to be the largest fair trade marketplace community in the world. Priya Haji, the organization’s founder, unveiled last week the portal, which can be found here. eBay’s Robert Chatwani spoke about the initiative in recent interview at [...]

From Fast Company: The 2008 Social Capitalist Awards Change the world. Make some money. It’s an appealing prospect. Nonprofits were born because for-profits weren’t addressing some market failures–pollution, poverty, illiteracy. Profit won’t cure those ills, but it’s becoming a bigger part of more solutions. Below you will find the organizations that are granted the Fast [...]

From Let Me Know: ThinkQuest inspires students to think, connect, create, and share. Students work in teams to build innovative and educational websites to share with the world. Along the way, they learn research, writing, teamwork, and technology skills and compete for exciting prizes. ThinkQuest is a competition that offers a unique project-based learning experience [...]

This story is inspiring on two levels: 1) that contextually specific hiring practices that are counter the norm are not only possible but scalable and efficient and 2) that caring in know way hinders the ability for this company to be a competitive and viable business. Originally published in Forbes, ThinkChange India picked up the [...]

While much attention has been given to microfinance and its positive benefits when things are going well, a paper recently published by Serajul Hoque, graduate associate at the Department of Economics at Monash University in Australia, shows that such initiatives may actually help people be better off when economies stumble as well. From Microcapital.org: Published [...]

From Atanu Dey’s blog: The latest issue is on the stands. Click on the image to download (pdf) the current issue of Pragati. To get a preview of what’s in the issue, read the excerpts at the Pragati site. Prof Asher’s article on the Gujarat model is a must-read. “Its focus on development, empowerment of [...]