Developmental
Entrepreneurship (DE) was a Fall Semester 2001 seminar lead by Professor Sandy Pentland
on the founding, financing, and building of entrepreneurial ventures in
developing nations and emerging regions.
Summary
Description –
We surveyed developmental entrepreneurship via case examples of both successful
and failed businesses and generally grapple with deploying and diffusing
products and services through entrepreneurial action. By drawing on live and historical cases, especially from South
Asia, Africa, Latin America as well as Eastern Europe, China, and other developing
regions, we sought to cover the broad spectrum of challenges and opportunities
facing developmental entrepreneurs.
Finally, we explored a range of established and emerging business models
as well as new business opportunities enabled by developmental technologies
developed in MIT labs and beyond.
Expected Student Deliverables
– We asked
students to craft a business plan executive summary, something worthy of
submission in the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition $1K Warm-Up in the Fall
of 2001. We further encouraged the
most promising teams to spend IAP internationally further researching and
prototyping the new venture, perhaps under some kind of MIT Developmental
Entrepreneurship Deployment Initiative.
Some 17 teams of over 45 students participated, with some 13 teams
entering the MIT $50K. The winner in
the Developmental / Social Venture category was Dlo Pro / Clean Water, was one
of the teams in DE, proposing a water treatment supply business for the Haitian
market.
Woven
throughout the semester were a series of critical strategic themes and threads,
including broadly,
By embracing live and historical cases drawn from a sampling of developing regions globally, we hoped to cover the broad spectrum of challenges and opportunities facing developmental entrepreneurs. Cases drawn from (although not all covered in depth) include:
Building
On and Complementing Other MIT Development Classes – Many technology students
have participated in Development Technologies, Design That Matters,
and other classes on building appropriate technologies. Developmental Entrepreneurship helped
such students investigate the further challenge of broadly deploying their
technology solution via business action.
Competitions,
Conferences, and Field Trials – Promising students and projects were be
encouraged to participate in the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition, global
business plan contests, development conferences, and in real field trials,
seeking fast iterative feedback on business viability.
Catalyzing
the MIT 1G Developmental Technology Challenge – We challenged our students and people
generally to craft economically viable solutions for problems faced by at
least One Billion people worldwide.
We encouraged students to tackle these big challenges in any of many
possible Problem Domains, but we hope folks will continue to pursue the most
pressing and promising prospects with greatest vigor. Worthy sectors include: Water,
Food, Shelter, Power, Transportation, Sanitation, Health, Communication,
Recreation
Coordination
with Student Extracurriculars – Along with the MIT $50K organizers, the Student
Entrepreneurs for International Development (SEID), and MIT TechLink, we
co-hosted a reception after an early class, for both students in the class and
those drawn from the larger MIT community.
This both introduced these organizations to one another and served to
better connect development-minded MIT folks.