by Paul Polak and Sydney Bergen Over the last 30 years I have found it useful to constantly and obsessively “Run the Numbers” when I look at any business opportunity. I try to do this in a way that quickly strikes to the heart of any business. Running the numbers can identify key transformative opportunities… Read More »
Re-posted from NextBillion Blog, Next Thought Monday: Who Will Grab the Fortune at the Base of the Pyramid? by Paul Polak and Mal Warwick In a recent post on NextBillion, Stuart Hart, who coauthored The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid with C.K. Prahalad, wrote with concern about the potential of creating disruptive innovations for poor customers that can trickle up… Read More »
Re-posted from the Harvard Business Review Blog Network. See the original post here. Why Entrepreneurs Will Beat Multinationals to the Bottom of the Pyramid by Paul Polak and Mal Warwick C.K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart’s seminal book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid gained a wide audience when it was published in 2004 and has continued… Read More »
April 7, 2014 Larry Page 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy Mountain View, CA 94043 Dear Mr. Page, We are writing to you on behalf of a group of over 100 student leaders from around the country to express our support for Paul Polak’s ambitious challenge to Google to help end poverty. We are the University Innovation Fellows…. Read More »
In response to a recent article in which Larry Page, CEO of Google, stated, “I would rather give my billions to Elon Musk than charity” Paul Polak wrote Larry Page this open letter: Dear Larry, In your recent conversation with Charlie Rose at TED, you said you’d rather hand over your cash to Elon Musk (Tesla,… Read More »
Mohammad Yunus is a nice man. He’s also very smart, innovative, a risk-taker — and a winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. However, he is sometimes wrong. And he’s most certainly wrong when he insists, as he has done so frequently in recent years both in his books and in public appearances, that the… Read More »
By Jack Keller, P.E., Paul Polak, Paul Storaci, and Robert Yoder A note from Paul Polak: This is the last paper my dear friend and soul brother, Jack Keller, wrote, He died recently at the age of 85 at an IDE social gathering, in the middle of an animated discussion on politics, He put down… Read More »
Spring Health, our rapidly scalable safe drinking water company designed to go global, has now started its commercial rollout in India by recruiting and training 90 new full-time staff, and expanding from 35 villages to 105 villages in three months. As the months go by, we have learned more and more about the fundamental importance… Read More »
Developing practical and profitable new ways to cross the last 500 feet to the remote rural places where poor families now live and work is the first step towards creating vibrant new markets that serve poor customers. Fortunately, it’s not that difficult to transport 100 kitchen drip kits from Kathmandu to Pokhara on the roof… Read More »
Creating a Runway for Profitable New Multinational Businesses to Transform Poverty By Paul Polak Five years ago, Steve Bachar and I decided to create a venture capital fund that would only invest in companies capable of achieving three goals: Transforming the livelihoods of at least 100 million customers living on $2 a day or less;… Read More »
