PSD Blog - World Bank Group

Starting a business: help from Harvard Business School

Harvard University's Working Knowledge compiled resources for those thinking about starting up their own business. Topics include legal issues associated with new enterprises, managing resources, product development, and keeping owner control.

As a bonus here's other useful information for entrepreneurs on the ease of doing business across 178 economies.

How can we improve?

It's that time of the year again when the Rapid Response Unit – a joint World Bank and International Finance Corporation initiative, which hosts the PSD Blog – asks its users for feedback. The survey is short (took me 42 seconds to answer all questions) and as a thank you perk, two responders will win an iPod shuffle red.

Privatization in 2006 - the year of Chinese IPOs

Our privatization database – listing transactions of at least $1 million from 2000 to 2006 - has been updated again.  In 2006, 48 developing countries carried out 249 privatizations for a total value of $105 billion – a figure comparable to the record year 1997.

The graph below depicts the value of privatization transactions in developing countries between 1990 and 2006. The figure excludes the two IPOs of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Bank of China, which combined accounted for $35 billion - one-third of all proceeds in 2006:

Russia and Turkey followed China into the second and third place, while Poland bucked the general trend toward privatization that year.

Our interactive map has the full picture.

Where does the aid go?

If you believe that a picture is worth a thousand words, this interactive aid map is for you.

Critical thinking at the bottom of the pyramid

Can information and communication technologies (ICT) foster critical and entrepreneurial thinking at the bottom of the pyramid? This was one of the key themes that emerged from the GK3 conference last month.

Take for example the One Laptop for Child initiative. Interestingly, the debate did not center around the long-term sustainability of the project, but whether it can help move education systems in emerging markets away from the hierarchical, rule-memorizing approach.

Once you start seeing users of ICT in developing countries as creative contributors, a whole new world of opportunities emerges. Backed by InfoDev, the Equinox project allows teachers, trainers and companies in emerging markets to build and share e-learning curricula.

Davos 2008

It's that time of year again. In the sleepy alpine town of Davos, business, government and civil society leaders have come together for the 38th annual World Economic Forum. This year's theme is "The Power of Collaborative Innovation."

The forum has its own blog and the past events are availalbe through webcasts. See also Forbes ask CEOs the Davos question: "to go or not to go?"

Climate policy map

Econsense created an interactive database for all-things climate. Much like our Do-Your-Own-Analysis, it allows to compare and contrast data across countries, in this case, on topics such as greenhouse gas emissions, fuel tax, emissions trading and biofuel production.

A sign of things to come?

Earlier this week IBM and Nokia let go of 31 "eco-patents" and released them to the public. By doing so, the technology giants hope to tap into the wisdom of the crowds. This very web 2.0 move is a sign of their recognition that when it comes to complex issues, such as spurring innovation or identify new business opportunities in the area of clean technologies, the best knowledge may well reside outside their organizational boundaries.

Also recently McKinsey added its voice to the choir of the wikinomics prophets and included "distributing cocreation" and "using consumers as innovators" among the eight emerging trends to watch in business technology. The global consulting firm predicted that "in the US economy alone roughly 12 percent of all labor activity could be transformed by more distributed and networked forms of innovation."

Intuitively, the development sector should be at the avant-garde of the adoption of openness, peering and sharing - the cornerstones of the web 2.0 era. And yet, ironically, the private sector seems to be ahead of the game.

Big thoughts on BigThink

Dubbed "YouTube for ideas," BigThink - the brain child of Peter Hopkins with backing from Larry Summers - is a place where leading public intellectuals answer questions asked by an unseen interviewer.

For a starter see Bill Easterly opine on Jeffrey Sachs' approach to aid.

Withdrawing the claws from data: a new year's proposal for the private and development sectors

Now, here's a mash-up that got me really excited. Mapecos provides information on the environmental performance of more than 20,000 industrial facilities across the US. Interestingly, government data on toxic pollution for each facility are displayed side by side with the data provided by the facilities' managers themselves.

PR vs. reality, the malignant might say. The site, however, is designed to move beyond finger-pointing "to provide an even handed view of industrial environmental performance": a "natural experiment" with increasing access to information, as one of its founders put it.

Creating incentives to publish "hidden data" and combining data sets from different sources - it is this type of "natural experiments" that the development (and private) sector needs more of to increase transparency and citizens' empowerment.

I say development, you say développement

Maybe it's because I am under the influence of Spoken Here, but one of the key messages coming out of the GK3 conference last week was the increasing importance of promoting local content and language to address the digital divide.

It is well known that out of the 6,000 languages spoken on the planet, only a tiny percentage is represented on the web. Perhaps less intuitive are the factors that preclude multilingual digitization of content.  They range from the problems of recognition of minority languages, the lack of local language computing capacity, through the plethora of internet governing bodies involved in encryption projects, to the lack of interface between linguistic and IT expertise.

History didn't help either. 

New planet in the World Bank universe

Our most requested databases: the Doing Business, Enterprise Surveys, Financial Indicators, Private Investment in Infrastructure Projects and the Privatization Database, can all now be browsed from a one convenient location - the Business Planet.

The filters allow for exploration by topic, region or a country.

Development in 3D

What do a community project in the Philippines and the U.S. Air Force have in common? An appreciation for the power of 3D modeling to visualize and manage information.

The project from the Philippines is based on Participatory 3D Modelling "aimed at facilitating grassroots participation in problem analysis and decision-making." One has to wonder whether providing communities with a chance to see the impact of future projects on their land would engage them.

And this is what the U.S. Air Force is up to, according to The Economist:

Last year Waterstone, a consultancy, assembled the geodata for 13 American air-force bases and wrapped them up in a modified version of NASA's World Wind geobrowser.

Improve the practice of business environment reform - be a (constructive) critic

Informally existing since 1978, the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) is a group of donors and inter-governmental agencies who share our mantra: sustainable poverty alleviation through development of the private sector. IFC co-chairs this 45-member-strong Committee.

Throughout last year, the Committee has been working on the "Donor Guidance on Supporting Business Environment Reform" – a practical guide for staff of development agencies to help them do a better job improving business environment around the world.

Now that's the 30-pager is almost ready, the Committee counts on you for constructive feedback before sending it to the publisher. Bring out the Bill Easterly in you and email your comments about the content and usefulness of this guide to Simon White (simon@blueprintgoup.co.za) and Andrei Mikhnev (amikhnev@worldbank.org) by December 21, 2007. More info on their blog.

It's a report, it's a ranking, it's a blog

The makers of the World Bank's flagship report ranking 178 countries on their business environment, the Doing Business team, enter today a new realm – the blogosphere.

Meet the Doing Business Blog and the personalities behind the ten indicators, credited with inspiring 115 reforms worldwide.

We are looking for experimental research in entrepreneurship

The 2007 World Bank Entrepreneuship Database finds significant relationships between entrepreneurial activity and the quality of the enabling environment. The bank and the Kauffman Foundation are now jointly offering funding of up to $35,000 for research projects that will study what contributes to greater entrepreneurship and formal sector participation.

Research proposals are due by January 15, 2008. A pre-conference is scheduled for fall 2008 and the main conference for 2009. Detailis are here.

Global development matters

The Center for Global Development – the publisher of the Commitment to Development Index (CDI), which ranks 21 richest countries on their policies' effect on poor countries - launched Global Development Matters.

The new site, designed with the U.S. audience primarily in mind, has five new short videos on the topics ranging from health issues to global trade and subsidies. Microfinance video below:

See also their new GDB Blog. It tracks each of the U.S. 2008 presidential candidates and their stance on global development issues.

Carbon CARMA - who's been good or bad

So there are 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere every year. But who's exactly producing it and in what quantities?

Carbon Monitoring for Action Database (CARMA) - a new online-database containing information from 4,000 utilities and 50,000 plants – has the answers by country, city, company or a single plant.

Development 2.0: a recipe for the UN

What opportunities are opening up for the UN (and, one might add, the World Bank) in the web 2.0 era? What is the long tail of human rights? What is the potential of crowdsoucing for development?

An inspiring post from the Internet Artizans blog has some suggestions. While the UN is thinking about it, the latest web 2.0 platform for development has been launched. For budding social enterpreneurs, more Development 2.0 ideas can be found here.

Finance for all? Policies and pitfalls in expanding access

Fresh from the press, this Policy Research Report takes stock of our current knowledge of access to financial services. It analyzes indicators and determinants of access to finance and discusses the role of government. Be ready to see some of your priors confirmed and others questioned.

In many developing countries, 50 to 80 percent of the population has limited access to finance (the graphic below shows the fraction of households with a banking account).

Finance is not only pro-growth, but also pro-poor. Greater access to credit, through indirect effects in product and labor markets, also benefits the poor who are able to obtain better quality savings and payments services.

Does money = happiness?

Legatum Institute - the creator of the intriguing 2007 Prosperity Index, a new measure based on 40 years of available data on material wealth and life satisfaction – joined MIT to build on the idea of bottom-up entrepreneurship and commercialization of new enterprise-based technologies.

The new Center hopes to turn out 30 for-profit companies a year for the next 10 years. The deadline for fellowship applications is January 31, 2008.

Given enough eyeballs, development is a shallow problem

Not to be outdone by their UK counterparts, George Mason University has recently published a paper on "Crowdsourcing Government Transparency." The author notes that the US government data is often not online, and, when it is, it is seldom easy to access or use. The solution? "Hack, mash & peer."

By providing information through the web in the form of structured data, government agencies can increase transparency and open up opportunities for citizens to interact with data in innovative and useful ways. Mash-ups such as Maplight.org, a website that "illuminates the connection between money and politics," are a point in case.

Even more telling is the example of a blog that recruits hundreds of volunteers to sift through 3,000 pages of a "document dump" from the Department of Justice overnight, to hit the headlines with their key findings by 7:30am the following day.

Online career network for India's poor

Anirudh Krishna found that the lack of connections, rather than a shortage of better jobs, is what keeps poor Indians from escaping poverty.

Inspired by this research, Sean Blagsvedt co-founded babajob.com, an online marketplace for low-skilled workers. The company managed to overcome the main barrier to online networking – the lack of computer access by the poor – with a simple incentive. Babajob pays people to help others find jobs.

World Bank, mapped

Trying to navigate the World Bank's data on lending and country projects? Check out our new interactive map – it's an easy way to get the full picture.

Microfinance - buy it on eBay, part II

MicroPlace, the fully-owned subsidiary of the internet-giant eBay, is finally open for business.

Described as "Kiva.org with a touch of Prosper.com," the microlending site offers lenders interest rates between 1 and 4 percent.

Rob Katz has a good post comparing the two.

Second Life for Doing Business

The Doing Business team will present its 2008 report - which ranks 178 economies on the ease of doing business - to the Second Life residents at the Activ8 Island Theater tomorrow at 3pm GMT (11am eastern).

If you're an avatar, don't forget to bring your questions and come early, seats are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Those without an established online presence will be able to listen to the entire event here.

iSimulate from World Bank

If you are interested in web 2.0 and its potential applications to the development sector, the latest issue of the MIT Press' Innovations makes for some interesting reading.

Take for example the article on climate change. The authors argue that "it is now possible to harness computer technology to facilitate 'collective intelligence' [...] to address systemic problems like climate change." They envisage a virtual Climate Coolaboratorium where global conversations with "high social return" replace "complex, cumbersome and slow" policy making process. A collaborative tool to co-create and compare climate change scenarios.

Their dream might have just come true thanks to two highly innovative World Bank colleagues who recently launched iSimulate @ World Bank, a very "web 2.0" platform that allows users to organize collaborative economic forecasts (the platform is still in beta version, but interested users can pre-register to get an account).

IMF joins blogosphere

Always wondered what goes on in the World Bank's sister organization? Today the IMF launches its very own Public Financial Management Blog (PFM Blog). It is run by the staff from the Fiscal Affairs Department, responsible for the Fund's work on income distribution and poverty.

Despite the name, the topics are unlikely to include accrual accounting and medium-term expenditure frameworks but rather news, resources and ideas relating to financial stability.

Don't even think about it - Facebook at work

Are social websites a major damper to productivity? A new report finds that 233 millions hours are lost to Internet networking every month.

World Bank meets You Tube

Next time you browse the fastest-growing video sharing website on the Internet – which uploads 65,000 every 24 hours and averages 20 million visitors a month - be sure to check out the new World Bank channel.

And because a picture is worth a thousand words, the bank has also joined flickr.

South Asia Chief Economist starts a blog

How to end poverty in South Asia? No one knows for sure, but Shanta Devarajan wants his new blog to be a free market of ideas on the subject.

See his latest post explaining the impact of GDP growth on poverty in Sri Lanka.

Reducing costs and increasing reach - get the skinny on CGAP

Co-funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation the CGAP Technology Program is applying innovation to advance their ambitious agenda - this time with a new blog.

Among the six authors you will recognize Jim Rosenberg who also writes for us. The group uses their blog to communicate how the latest technology is making the broader access to finance for the poor possible. Read the latest post here.

Social networks: friends or foes?

So the latest social networking site is here.  It is accompanied by a constellation of related platforms, including Speed Granting "an online and offline platform that encourages and rewards social entrepreneurs for their social initiatives, and allows their peers cast votes to determine the recipients of the grants." The associated Facebook application - yet another application of the decision market concept to the non-profit sector - is de rigeur.

But is the hype about social action networks justified? Dan McQuillan from Amnesty International argues in a recent post that we are still to understand and exploit their full potential. He invites people to explore the "possibilities that are more disruptive and creative than simply using social networks for social marketing". He quotes Allan Benamer of Nonprofitechblog:

Doing e-business

The Doing Business database shows how to start a business from scratch in 175 countries around the world. When it's time to open an online store safeselling.org has the information.

From obtaining and protecting a domain name to selling internationally, this guide is designed for SMEs looking to sell their goods and services online.

Google Earth for risk management

Allianz, a global insurance company, will use Google Earth to more effectively manage risk. This is just one of many examples where mixing-and-mashing of available data creates new useful information.

By looking at the broad picture (literally), Allianz and other insurers can recognize overexposure to risk and through reinsurance, for example, avoid excessive losses in a case of a catastrophe.

Conservation gets a second life

If, like most of us, you didn't have a chance to see a panda in the wild, you might want to try this: WWF's Conservation Island - a virtual presence in Second Life. It doesn't quite beat the real thing, but it's fun to walk around the island surrounded by pandas and an (seemingly oversized?) orangutan.

WWF hopes that "Second Life residents will become a community that helps [them] build and develop the island and at the same time learn about conservation in a fun, engaging and interactive way." It's yet another example of the development world adopting web 2.0 technologies.

Perhaps not as engaging, though very useful, is the recently launched World Water tool from the WBCSD. Based on Google Earth, it allows companies to mash water use in their operations and supply chains with datasets of water-stressed areas to estimate their "water risk." It's a useful reminder that water scarcity is an important risk factor for private sector investments.

Buy online, pay cash

In Malaysia the world of online shopping will soon open for the unbanked and those without credit cards. Tune Money, a financial services provider, will set up over 14,000 access points where shoppers can pay offline for online products and services.

Information technologies for development: a quick round-up

What a difference a month can make! Only a few weeks ago I was dreaming about the establishment of a decision market for development projects. As if to provide comfort to my employer that I was not hallucinating, Globalgiving have now launched a pilot online decision market "to help identify promising ideas and interventions in the arena of international development."

Those who decide to take part can trade their stock in 22 development projects and cast their vote on a project's likelihood of success. Check out their FAQ for a jargon-free explanation of how decision markets work. It will be interesting to see whether the model will catch on.

On a related note, the Philanthropy Journal recently featured an special on non-profits and technology, which looks at how these organizations use social media for mobilization and fundraising.

Do your own analysis

"If you want something done right, do it yourself" says an old adage. The team responsible for Enterprise Surveys has taken this concept deep to its heart when it created the new custom query tool.

Do Your Own Analysis lets you slice and dice firm-level, microeconomic data across 172 indicators from over 100 developing and developed countries. Best of all, each query produces a custom graph that's ready for cut and paste.

Clearly, doing homework will never be the same. Do Your Own Analysis, where were you two years ago?!

Got game?

Can video and computer games help people manage their health? The Changemakers at the Ashoka Foundation think so. "Why Games Matter: A Prescription to Improve Health and Health Care" seeks innovation, along with a potential for social impact, and sustainability.

The rules are simple and the deadline is on September 26, 2007, coinciding with the release of the 2008 Doing Business report which will focus on gender.

Bank regulation around the world - for better or worse?

The third round of a comprehensive database on bank regulatory and supervisory practices around the globe has just been released. It allows policymakers to compare their own regulatory and supervisory framework with other countries and gives researchers ample opportunity for work.

A companion paper demonstrates that some recent regulatory reforms may not have necessarily led to improvements, but instead strengthened elements that have been shown to be less important or even counterproductive to the stability and efficiency of the banking system.