Knowledge at Wharton

Five years ago C.K. Prahalad published a book titled The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid in which he argues that multinational companies not only can make money selling to the world’s poorest but also that undertaking such efforts is necessary as a way to close the growing gap between rich and poor countries. Key to his argument for targeting the world’s poorest is the sheer size of that market -- an estimated four billion people. How has Prahalad’s book -- a revised fifth-anniversary edition of which has just been published -- affected the behavior of companies and the well-being of consumers in the years since its publication? Knowledge at Wharton checked in with the author for an update including examples of specific companies that are implementing Bottom of the Pyramid strategies.

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According to some estimates high-frequency trading by investment banks hedge funds and other players accounts for 60% to 70% of all trades in U.S. stocks explaining the enormous increase in trading volume over the past few years. But critics of the practice worry that those profits are coming out of ordinary investors’ pockets. Defenders on the other hand say high-frequency trading improves market liquidity helping to insure there is always a buyer or seller available when one wants to trade. Wharton faculty and others weigh in.

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Unlike micro lending -- the better-known side of micro finance -- micro insurance has been a hard sell among the world’s poor. The reasons why include a lack of understanding of how insurance products work a general reticence on the part of poor populations to part with their meager financial resources badly designed products and a shortage of localized risk management knowledge among providers. What needs to happen for micro insurance to prove that it can be both socially beneficial and economically viable?

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Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski in late September outlined principles of net neutrality to promote more open use of the Internet. What will these developments mean for business in the U.S. and other parts of the world? In a new interview format called Five Questions Rajesh Jain CEO of India-based Netcore asks Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach about net neutrality. In the second part of the interview roles are reversed and Werbach poses five questions to Jain about opportunities in the Indian mobile market which is going through explosive growth.

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On September 14 President Barack Obama gave a speech in New York to mark the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers failure. It was a year ago when -- during the course of a single jaw-dropping week -- the investment bank declared bankruptcy; Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch; and the U.S. federal government bailed out American International Group. How has Wall Street changed during the past year and what will these changes mean for investors? What new financial regulations have been discussed and how much longer will it take the U.S. economy to emerge from the woods? Knowledge at Wharton posed these and other questions to finance professors Jeremy Siegel and Richard Herring.

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Thailand’s Bumrungrad International Hospital is one of a growing number of institutions making a name for themselves among ”medical tourists” by offering patients from Boston to Bahrain a combination of lower-cost state-of-the-art medical care along with service worthy of a five-star hotel. But what will it take for such hospitals to gain acceptance among national policy makers major insurers and employers? Mack Banner CEO of Bumrungrad and Kenneth Mays the hospital’s director of marketing recently met with Ravi Aron a senior fellow at Wharton to discuss the future of offshore health care.

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For cable TV companies in the U.S. August 28 was a day to celebrate. Ending several years of regulatory battles a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals came down in favor of Philadelphia-based Comcast which sought to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s contentious 30% market share limit on cable TV operators. Not everyone is happy about the ruling fearing it will lead to cable monopolies. In contrast Peter S. Fader professor of marketing and co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative sees this as a ”golden age” for the industry and consumers alike. Fader spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about why the recent ruling is likely to make the landscape more not less competitive.

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When the United Arab Emirates (UAE) became a nation in the early 1970s it had neither a formal education system nor a university to call its own. Today however with new private and public universities springing up across the emirates the UAE sees a larger role for itself as a promoter of peace and economic development through education according to Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan the nation’s minister of higher education and scientific research. In an interview with Knowledge at Wharton Sheikh Nahayan discusses various UAE education initiatives the impact of technology in and outside the classroom and what he would envision to be an ideal education system.

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Entrepreneur Farhad Mohit is hardly resting on his laurels although he could. In 1996 he launched BizRate a consumer rating site and then in 2004 Shopzilla a shopping search engine. His latest venture is DotSpots a service that lets people update the news in real-time with dots or distributed objects of thought. These could include mini-blog posts containing text videos images documents perspectives from the blogosphere or eye-witness accounts from the scene. Mohit talked with Knowledge at Wharton about DotSpots the publishing industry the wisdom of crowds what he learned from his previous successes and the importance of finding the right team among other topics.

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Although some upbeat economic news in recent weeks might indicate the beginning of the end of the recession there’s still plenty of ”wreckage” to deal with says Wharton real estate professor Peter D. Linneman. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the housing and commercial property sectors which have taken one of their worst beatings ever. In an interview with Knowledge at Wharton Linneman draws on policy missteps of the past to caution the Obama administration to tread carefully and avoid ”trying to cure things they can’t cure ” while contending that the U.S. might have more in common with countries like Venezuela Russia and Japan than most observers think.

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