News & Views

Ted London, vice president and senior research fellow of WDI’s Scaling Impact Initiative, has dedicated his career to exploring the role of business in alleviating poverty, particularly with respect to the base of the pyramid (BoP), defined as the 4-5 billion people who live on less than $3,000 per year.…

WDI Case Publishing recently exhibited at the prestigious Academy of Management (AOM) conference, the fourth time the case study publisher has had a booth at one of the biggest annual gatherings of students, academics, scholars and professionals interested in the academic study of management and organization practices. This year’s AOM…

WDI is partnering with several U-M schools and initiatives to screen a new documentary film chronicling the brutal repercussions of the decades-long civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as a live discussion with a heroic doctor who spoke up against the atrocities. The film, “When…

Karen Tam spent three months in Rwanda during the summer of 2009 as a WDI intern, returning in the fall to the University of Michigan with valuable work experience in a developing country, a lifetime of memories and a Rwandan nickname: Umutesi. Translated as “treasured or valued one,” the name…

WDI’s Performance Measurement Initiative is partnering with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to pilot test a new framework for boosting the impact of small inclusive businesses and their distribution networks in Brazil, Nicaragua, and Peru. Heather Esper, senior program manager of WDI’s Performance Measurement Initiative (PMI), developed the framework for…

It took an old folk story for Matt Brown, a faculty affiliate with WDI’s Education Initiative, to break through to his students — 30 female entrepreneurs from Rwanda — on how to write a business plan. Brown, as part of a 10,000 Women entrepreneurship program sponsored by Goldman Sachs and…

The William Davidson Institute’s (WDI’s) Scaling Impact initiative (SI) has completed its first year with a sharpened focus on assisting enterprises achieve scale in base of the pyramid markets, while completing several in-depth projects for building a toolkit of strategies, frameworks, and processes for business and the development community. Under the management of…

Business leadership today requires strategic thinking - finding and developing opportunities to create value for combinations of customers, associates, suppliers, and communities. In response to this trend, WDI’s Education Initiative will debut a new program on Strategic Thinking in November at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia (SSE-Riga). Register…

In many emerging market countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the government’s ministry of health traditionally defines how public health systems – as well as the supply chains that stock them – function for doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and patients. However, many countries are rethinking this structure, and are interested in streamlining…

Jack Foreman was one of the first WDI summer interns, when in 1991, he spent three months near Gdansk, a port city on the Baltic coast of Poland. But when he frequently mentions how the internship helped get his “sea legs” in business, he isn’t talking about anything to do…