Brainforum

There is no alternative to regulation

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in midst of September 2008 made people become sensitive towards bonus payments in the investment banking sector.We all know that they are different from the ones in middle sized or big companies.
Of course, everyone was aware of the fact that investment bankers receive an especially high remuneration – but until the beginning of the crisis, it did not matter to anyone but a few people outside the sector.
With the collapse of Lehman and the start of the financial and economic crisis, lots of credit institutions had to get back to governmental interventions in order to not break down Lehman style.
It was then that the public realized what the bonus system in the investment sector really was about and how it worked.

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StartingBloc

After attending the student convention, which was as awesome as World Business Dialogue, I have been thinking about the other such engagements that a university student like us can take advantage of which talks about the structural constraints and the possible solutions that prevail in the Development through Enterprise sector.

I hope that organizations or institutions or mere individuals working actively in various nations take a hint and initiate a BoP activity/ Development through enterprise initiative within their borders. It need not be a direct set up of an institution/organization but trying to promote the very idea by exploring different ways. Something that doesn’t restrict the selection criteria by giving privilege to an MBA over a fresh college graduate just because the former one has experience in business equity and venture capital. Something that hires, trains and retains a youth community into its operations and attaches youth to such opportunities at a much bigger scale.

In the list of such organizations, one that I think is brilliant is StartingBloc. StartingBloc educates, inspires and connects emerging leaders to drive social innovation across sectors. The Institute for Social Innovation, their leadership development program, exposes emerging leaders (“Fellows”) to new models for achieving social impact.

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Sustainability sucks!?!

Sustainability sucks? At least that´s the impression we get when thinking about the social, economic and ecologic problems we are facing and the things people do or don´t do to change the way the world moves.

Even single persons struggle with integrating sustainability into their daily life. Public transport to get to the office? Recycling? Car-Sharing?
When it is not even possible for private persons to make the step towards sustainable behaviour, how should this work out for a global company? Even more: Do we then have the right to demand this kind of attitude?

When looking at corporate homepages, the first thing that comes into view most of the times is a big and shiny button screaming “Corporate Social Responsibility”. The flash video next door talks about sustainability. In my opinion, these two terms seem to have evolved to the new and hip gadget in the world of corporate communication. The true motive rarely is an altruistic one, but the fear that some day society will deprive the company from taking action and drift over to competitors.

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What western economic systems can learn from micro-insurance and micro-credit

The concept of micro-credit has been praised throughout the past years, leading even to a Nobel Peace Prize for one of the founders of a successful micro-credit scheme.

One of the recent discussions in the “micro” segment is the one lead about micro-insurance. Such models are supposed to provide affordable insurance for the informal sector in different areas such as health or agriculture. Most of the time, these insurance schemes are realized as group policies on a community base.

As one of the members of the BRIC states, India has reclaimed the “Health for All” aim.  Given that neither the private supply of health facilities nor the public ones have been able to significantly bridge the gap in health insurance for the poor, micro-insurance plays an important role for being able to achieve this goal.

Their trait of being community based implies that every action of a member has consequences for the group as a whole. The premiums of every member are collected in a common pot and used in the case of the incidence of risk. This requires a high responsibility of every individual involved. The concept not only enables insurance for a part of the population which was seen as uninsurable, but also weakens or even avoids aspects such as fraud, moral hazard or adverse selection.

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