Welcome

The Next Billion Network
at the MIT Media Lab

“How increasingly pervasive mobile communications in developing countries can enable new models of peer-to-peer collaboration that expand opportunities for self-reliance from the bottom up.”
The exponential growth of connected, mobile devices among low-income people across the developing world can yield the framework for a second approach to research in information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D). This new approach addresses developmental concerns hand-in-hand with sustainable forms of entrepreneurial collaboration and promotes Web2.0-type, bottom up business models as much as the grassroots implementation of low-cost technologies.

Citizen:
Mexico Education:
B.Sc. Social and Cognitive Psychology,
Brown University, USA, 1991
Masters in Corporate Law,
Universidad Anáhuac, Mexico (Pending)
Contact:
jrotberg at mit dot edu

Current Position:
Director, Next Billion Network
Telmex Visiting Scientist at MIT Media Lab
Lecturer, Program in Media Arts & Sciences
Instructor, NextLab Course Series
NextLab I. Designing Mobile Technologies  for the Next Billion Users (Fall 2008)
NextLab II: Deploying Mobile Technologies
for the Next Billion Users (Spring 2009)
MAS.962: Information and Communications   Technologies for Development   (ICT4D, Spring 2008)
MAS.664: Digital Innovations (Fall 2007)

Experience:
Telecoms New Businesses Unit (4 years)
Financial Entrepreneur (9 yrs)
Hi-tech Entrepreneur (8 yrs)
Equity Research/Investment Banking (4 yrs)
Management Consulting (3 yrs)