Through the Economic Development Initiative under The U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), WDI partnered with Al Akhawayn University of Ifrane, Morocco, to provide business training to 60 Moroccan entrepreneurs from 2004 to 2006. The goal of the project was to strengthen skills among entrepreneurs and business people working for small- and medium-sized enterprises in Morocco through targeted training of business managers and direct consulting at the firm level in the areas of handicraft, tourism, electronics, agribusiness, offshoring, and textiles.
The overall objective was to help entrepreneurs in Morocco benefit from its recently concluded Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States and provide Moroccan firms with the tools needed to grow into more competitive companies. By equipping the owners of 60 small businesses with management skills in key areas and encouraging participants to share their learning with their employees, the training was projected to impact up to 1,800 people in small businesses throughout Morocco.
The project included a Small Business Training Component (featuring workshops at Al Akhawayn University), a 7-week student consulting project, and three 14-week summer consulting projects featuring students from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. The consultant teams presented their findings to the clients and to the US Ambassador in Rabat and received appreciation for their concrete business solutions.
This non-confidential version of the report presents the research design and methodology used by the Performance Measurement Initiative in an impact assessment study PMI conducted of Semilla, a project funded by Danone Ecosystem Fund with local partners in Mexico City that employed mainly women from low-income households to sell Danone products through a last mile distribution model.
The study was divided into two parts: a strategic analysis to gain a deep understanding of Semilla’s holistic set of impacts, followed by a performance analysis to identify and track potential improvements in key indicators over time. This methodology ensured that all stakeholders’ voices were heard and incorporated into solutions to improve Semilla’s business model. This version of the report also discusses the data collection experience and the analysis strategy used. It also includes the final survey used to collect the quantitative and qualitative data (found in Annex C). Please note that all confidential material associated with the report has been removed in the document.
Rebecca Baylor, PMI Research Associate, shared how WDI guided three micro-franchise organizations in Latin America through a 6 phase research pilot in order to help them internalize their own impact measurement processes at the “Growing the Impact of Microfranchises and Inclusive Distribution Networks in Latin America and the Caribbean” conference in Asunción, Paraguay in July 2017. The international event was sponsored by Fundación Paraguaya, with financial support from Inter-American Development Bank and the MIF, to encourage and promote cost effective impact measurement strategies for scaling up inclusive distribution business models in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Presentation (English Version)
Presentaion (Spanish Version)
For full program of the event, click here.
Heather Esper, Senior Program Manager of WDI’s Performance Measurement Initiative (PMI), in collaboration with IDB’s SCALA Metrics Lab developed a new framework for boosting the impact of small inclusive businesses and their distribution networks. IDB’s SCALA network is a platform to scale the impacts of inclusive and social business in Latin America and the Caribbean. Through SCALA, anchor companies, microfinance institutions, academia, and non-governmental organizations combine efforts to grow micro‐distribution networks based on micro-franchising models.
The SCALA metrics framework includes a mix of standardized social and business metrics and measures short and long term impacts. These indicators can be tailored to each organization in the network. This report explains:
WDI’s PMI team piloted the framework with three different SCALA micro-distribution organizations in Brazil, Nicaragua, and Peru. For additional information about PMI’s work with the three pilot organizations, see this article.
The Social Capital Protocol aims to mainstream the measurement of social capital impacts for business such that it becomes a core part of business decision-making . The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) defines ‘social capital’ as the resources and relationships provided by people and society. Thus social capital includes:
The Protocol provides guidance for companies to measure, value and better manage their social capital. The first version of the Protocol is the result of two years of collaborative development involving input from over 50 WBCSD member companies, four WBCSD Global Network partners, and an Advisory Group of 20 expert partners– including Heather Esper PMI Sr. Program Manager.
For more information related to this burgeoning work, see the article below:
WDI Publishing is organizing and administering a case writing competition to celebrate and commemorate WDI’s 25th anniversary and its long history of developing market-based solutions in low- and middle-income countries around the world.
The global competition is open to individual students or student teams, as long as they enter in collaboration with a faculty member from a degree-granting university or college. Faculty or faculty teams may also enter as long as they are currently teaching at a degree granting university or college. Other individuals may also enter, provided they do so in collaboration with a faculty member from a degree-granting university or college. Case study topics must describe a dilemma or challenge faced by a company or organization related to creating, implementing, evaluating, and/or disseminating market-based solutions in developing countries.
To learn more about key deadlines, entry requirements, judging criteria, and to access entry forms and submission documents, click here. For resources on how to write a case study and a teaching note, along with other helpful information, click here.
“We look forward to receiving case study submissions from around the world which provide examples of identifying, adapting and deploying best practices from the private sector into low- and middle-income countries,” said Sandy Draheim, manager of marketing and case publishing at WDI. “And, by formally publishing the winning cases, these examples can be taught and shared in classrooms globally to better prepare future business leaders as they implement sustainable solutions in emerging markets.”
The first place team or individual will win $3,500. The second place team or individual will win $2,500, and $1,000 will be awarded for third place. Additionally, each winning case will be professionally published by WDI Publishing.
Entry forms are due Sept. 29, final documents need to be turned in Dec. 8 and the winners will be announced March 15, 2018.
Judges for the competition are: Kim Bettcher, senior knowledge manager at the Center for International Private Enterprise; John Branch, clinical assistant professor of business administration at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business; Gautam Kaul, professor of finance and the Fred M. Taylor Professor of Business Administration at Michigan Ross; and, Jordan Siegel, associate professor of corporate strategy at Michigan Ross.
WDI Publishing has organized and administered past case writing competitions. From 2011-2015, NextBillion, an affiliate of WDI, and NextBillion partner Citi Foundation sponsored competitions for the best-written case studies about business strategies aimed at alleviating poverty – especially at the economic base of the pyramid.
In 2017, WDI is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Institute’s founding. The year-long commemoration will culminate with a campus-wide talk by Nobel Laureate Sir Angus Deaton.
From WDI’s “Designing Global Health Supply Chains for the Future” report.
Across the Global South, the coming decades will likely bring rapid urbanization, changing demographics, increased non-communicable disease burden, and a rising threat of pandemics. All of these factors will place unique strains and increased demand on emerging market health systems and their supply chains.
A new WDI report, “Designing Global Health Supply Chains for the Future,” proposes a series of initiatives that governments, global development agencies, and those in the private sector should undertake immediately in order to build supply chain capacity to anticipate these increasing demands in the coming decades. (Read the full report here.)
The report, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Gates Foundation), was written by WDI Research Fellow Maeve Magner and former WDI Senior Fellow Prashant Yadav.
“Important shifts taking place in the economic environment, as well as new supply chain technology and business models, represent a watershed moment in supply chains for health products,” said Yadav, who recently joined the Gates Foundation as a Strategy Leader-Supply Chains. “Unless we pay close attention to these, we risk losing some significant opportunities for supply chain improvement.”
To research and write the report, Magner and Yadav reviewed the future trends reports of various think tanks, institutions, and logistics companies. They also gathered the opinions of experts from numerous industries, including pharmaceutical, consumer packaged goods, high-tech electronics, and logistics. The two then analyzed the implications of these trends and opinions for global health supply chain actors.
From this research, the authors identified six forces that have the greatest likelihood of impacting global health supply chains in 2030 and beyond. They are: economic growth; shifting disease burden; urbanization; increased patient-centric care; proliferation of data; and, the rapid pace of innovation.
Given these upcoming challenges, the authors posed questions that governments, development partners, and private actors should be asking today, which will enable them to make relevant and timely investments to build and strengthen supply chains of the future.
“We identify questions that organizations in this space should be asking now,” Yadav said. “While we don’t always know what the right answers are, just the process of asking these questions and reflecting on them will help organizations become better in their supply chain design and operation.”
By anticipating and preparing for likely future scenarios, Yadav and Magner reason, those leaders charged with managing their health system’s supply chain can more efficiently recognize and adapt to changing conditions.
Since 1999, WDI has been working to improve healthcare in low- and middle-income countries. A critical focus of this work has been shaping the global discussion on the future of the supply chains that deliver medicines and health commodities to patients, thereby improving their access to quality healthcare.
WDI has worked with the Gates Foundation through a 2015 grant to develop strategies for, and build a common vision towards, more effective and efficient health supply chains.
This report, “Designing Global Health Supply Chains for the Future,” advances WDI’s mission of developing knowledge and capability to improve the effectiveness of firms and increase social welfare in low- and middle-income countries.
As the academic year comes to a close, the 13 MAP teams organized and funded by WDI have finished their projects and successfully delivered final reports to their sponsoring organizations.
Multidisciplinary Action Projects, or MAP for short, is an annual, action-based learning course offered at the Ross School of Business in which MBA students work on projects for organizations all over the world under the guidance of faculty advisors. Each project requires analytical rigor, critical thinking, and teamwork among students. Sponsoring organizations receive first-rate deliverables and data-driven recommendations from the teams of students. (Learn more about this year’s MAP projects organized by WDI here; find more information on WDI’s MAP projects over the years here.)
After learning about their projects and conducting secondary research for several weeks, the students then spend two to four weeks working with their organizations in the field.
Two of those projects – in Hanoi, Vietnam and Madurai, India – focused on laying the groundwork for centers designed to support local entrepreneurs and are part of a joint effort between WDI and the Zell Lurie Institute (ZLI). To assist the students on their projects, WDI Education Initiative Vice President Amy Gillett and Program Coordinator Nathan Rauh-Bieri provided advice and guidance based on WDI’s prior work in entrepreneurship development (see WDI’s newly-launched Entrepreneurship Development Center).
Here is a recap of the two projects.
The Vietnam Partners MAP project was co-funded by ZLI, and hosted by Vietnam Partners, LLC. The project’s goal was to create a launch plan for an entrepreneurship service center in partnership with Hanoi Business School (HSB). The student team conducted more than 45 interviews with entrepreneurs, HSB administrators, and other stakeholders. They discovered that Vietnam’s entrepreneurs need help growing their business – not just starting them – and would welcome an entrepreneurship development center.
“The environment in Vietnam is ripe for this kind of organization,” said Bradley LaLonde, the team’s supervisor at Vietnam Partners.
At the end of their project, the students presented a business plan for a Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at HSB. The team identified a local hunger for practical rather than theoretical training, and training customized to the local ecosystem. More specifically, the MAP team identified a lack of local business cases. After a conversation with WDI, the MAP team suggested that a sustained effort around creating local cases, similar to WDI’s Philippines Case Collection, could be high-potential way to train Hanoi’s practice-hungry entrepreneurs.
Team member Juan Recalde said the project taught him that entrepreneurs have different needs.
“That was a very important learning because we could segment different types of entrepreneurs and based on the segmentation, determine which segment to target,” he said.
Recalde said he will take what he learned – specifically market research and creating a launch strategy for an entrepreneurship development center – and try to replicate it in his hometown.
“Formosa is one of the poorest provinces of Argentina and the government plays a big role in the economy, while the private sector is small,” he said. “I believe that entrepreneurship is the answer to the growth issues that my province faces.”
Stewart Thornhill, executive director of ZLI and the team’s academic advisor, praised the team for how well they represented U-M, WDI and ZLI and for their mature analysis of the project.
“They didn’t treat entrepreneurs as a generic class, but were able to identify specific personas,” he said. “Their in-depth qualitative research will serve this center’s clients well in the future.”
WDI President Paul Clyde, who also advised the team, said they gave Vietnam Partners good insights into the current situation with the country’s entrepreneurs.
“There is no substitute for having information from people who have spent time on the ground to get a good feel for what is going on,” Clyde said. “This is exactly the type of situation in which MAP projects are effective tools for us and for sponsors.”
The MAP team, based in Madurai, India, was tasked with setting up a business model for Aparajitha Foundation to provide services to the city’s Madurai’s micro, small, and medium enterprises – or MSMEs. This work builds on last year’s MAP project with Aparajitha.
The student team’s final report outlined the gaps in the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Madurai, the market opportunity, business model, financial model, implementation plan, and key learnings. The team recommended that GROW, a conceptual organization to meet the needs of growth-stage entrepreneurs, be launched. The students also provided an outline of what was needed to have GROW operating within two years and expand to a second locale within five years.
Clyde, the team’s academic advisor, lauded the students’ efforts.
“They were able to get up to speed quickly on the current situation and combined that with some careful thinking about different models for providing services to entrepreneurs,” he said. Aparajitha “has already made significant progress in (its) engagement with the entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu.”
The project left a definite impression on team member Nancy McDermott, who, though having a background in the community development aspects of business, experienced “what a big impact supporting entrepreneurs locally has on the local economy.”
Particularly, the project’s scope exposed her to how entrepreneurship can “spark job creation at a grassroots level,” she said, adding that she saw “what a big impact this is having on Madurai’s economy, and what kind of impact it can have on other economies as well.”
This summer, a WDI intern will pick up where the student MAP team left off and develop diagnostic tools that will identify the challenges a given entrepreneur faces and thus how GROW can work with the entrepreneur most effectively.
Steven Koltai, who served as the senior advisor of U.S. State Department’s Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP), recently sat down with WDI’s Amy Gillett to discuss practical ways in which entrepreneurship and the training of entrepreneurs can be effective foreign policy tools.
Koltai is the author of the book, Peace through Entrepreneurship: Investing in a Startup Culture for Security and Development (Brookings Press, 2016). He is currently a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, and serves as managing director of Koltai & Co., which looks to build a global entrepreneurship ecosystem.
“Koltai’s ideas strongly resonate with our work,” said Gillett, vice president of the WDI Education Initiative. “His work and his book promotes principles we’ve been using in our entrepreneurship development work for years.”
The interview was conducted during Koltai’s recent visit to the University of Michigan, which coincided with the launch of WDI’s Entrepreneurship Development Center (EDC). His argument – that entrepreneurship is a strong and oft-neglected means of building economies and stable societies – aligns closely with the EDC’s mission.
Watch the discussion below:
During the interview, Koltai and Gillett discuss strategies for developing entrepreneurship training and investment in emerging markets. Koltai also shared his Six + Six Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Model. This model, which outlines the six fundamental actions needed to build a successful entrepreneurship ecosystem, strongly overlaps with WDI’s own approach to developing entrepreneurs.
“Koltai’s work provides solid footing for the importance of doing what we do, and why we do it,” Gillett said. “I recommend his framework, and hope it continues to gain the hearing it deserves.”
Koltai has more than 30 years of business and entrepreneurship experience, including co-founding Coronet Television Satellite Company (now SES), the world’s largest commercial TV satellite system. He also has been senior vice president for Strategy and Corporate Development at Warner Bros., a strategic planning consultant at McKinsey & Co., and an investment banker at Salomon Brothers.
His March talk at the University of Michigan, as part of WDI’s Global Impact Speaker series, marked the second time Koltai has visited WDI. In 2011, he was the featured speaker at WDI’s Global Summit on Educating Entrepreneurs, an international gathering of development organizations, government agencies, entrepreneurship trainers, microlenders and academics.
If Bill Davidson’s business philosophy could be boiled down to a single phrase, it likely would have been four simple words: It can be done.
This optimistic, tough-minded sentiment reflected Davidson’s belief that there was nothing that couldn’t be accomplished. This can-do spirit is what helped him take a struggling, family-owned windshield manufacturer in the mid-1950s and turn it into one of the world’s largest glass making businesses in the world. It also was the thinking that guided him to several championships as an owner of multiple sports franchises and one of Michigan’s most generous philanthropists.
William Morse Davidson was born Dec. 5, 1922 in northwest Detroit. He attended Detroit public schools, graduating from Central High School in 1940. He enrolled in the University of Michigan, where he was a business major and a member of the track team. World War II interrupted his studies. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II and played on the Armed Forces football team.
At the war’s end, he finished his business degree at U-M, graduating in 1947. He enrolled at Wayne State University’s Law School and earned his juris doctorate in 1949. He practiced law for three years, specializing in helping companies restructure from bankruptcy. In 1957, he was asked to take over the family’s Guardian Glass Co., the forerunner of what would become Guardian Industries.
“It was a small, struggling family business,” said Ralph Gerson, Davidson’s nephew and senior executive at Guardian Industries. “He had vision. He was willing to take some risks to grow. He was careful but not conservative. He definitely wanted to see his business expand significantly.
“We went into some countries – Hungary before the (Berlin) wall came down, India very early – a number of places that were not low risk,” he said. “But if you could succeed you could do extremely well there, which we did.”
Gerson, who worked alongside Davidson for 21 years, marveled at Davidson’s discipline. Davidson had a daily agenda of what he needed to accomplish each day and didn’t stray from it.
“If it wasn’t on his agenda for the day, he would say you decide or you handle it,” Gerson said. “He knew what he wanted to focus on and stuck to it.”
Davidson wanted to be in touch with a wide variety of people at Guardian so he made sure the company did not have a lot of hierarchy, Gerson said. Every day he would walk around the office, stopping by a cubicle or popping his head into an office to see what that person was working on.
“If there was a tax question, he wouldn’t ask the senior tax person about it he’d go see the tax person working on it,” Gerson said. “He didn’t hide out in his office. He was very approachable. He wasn’t a micro-manager; he hired good people and let them do their job.”
Joe White, who was dean of what is now the Ross School of Business when WDI was established, got to know Davidson well during this time and would often ask about the glass business. He learned about a tough industry with massive capital costs, high fixed costs, and an uncontrollable pricing structure. He came away more impressed with Davidson and a greater appreciation of the man.
“I’ve met a lot of business people, a lot of entrepreneurs,” White said. “I never met an individual who took that kind of risk in building a business. I thought to myself, ‘This man has guts.’ And it turned out to be consistently true. Bill was a guy who was able to take that kind of risk but I think he slept like a rock every night.
“He never looked back, didn’t second guess, never talked about regrets; he was always forward looking. You make intelligent bets, make the best bets you can then you get going.”
As Davidson grew Guardian Industries into a very successful and profitable company, his upbringing and Jewish faith compelled him to give back. Gerson said Davidson and his sister, Gerson’s mother, would collect pennies, nickels and dimes as young children for the Jewish National Fund.
“At a very early age he was encouraged to think about other people and give back,” Gerson said. “It was always part of his family ethos – if you succeed and become prosperous you have an opportunity and responsibility to contribute to the places where you prosper.”
Guardian plant managers were encouraged to donate and become active in civic causes in the communities where their facilities were located.
Davidson donated to numerous organizations and schools during his life. He was one of Michigan’s most notable philanthropists, responsible for more than $200 million in donations to local and international charities and universities.
The William Davidson Foundation continues his charitable giving, making grants and donations to Jewish life and continuity as well as entrepreneurial initiatives in southeast Michigan. The Foundation made a leadership gift to U-M athletics to establish the William Davidson Player Development Center for the men’s and women’s basketball teams. The Foundation also provided significant financial support to the university, both for the Ross School and the U-M health system.
In addition to the $30 million to establish WDI, Davidson gave millions to the University of Michigan and was one of its biggest donors. In honor of Davidson’s 70th birthday, friends and family endowed a chaired professorship bearing his name at Ross. Davidson endowed a second chair at Ross to honor his longtime friend and WDI board member, former Congressman Tom Lantos, with the intention that the president of WDI holds that chair. WDI President Paul Clyde is currently the Tom Lantos Professor of Business Administration.
He also donated millions for construction of new facilities and building improvements at the business school and around campus. The main gathering place at the Ross School is called the Davidson Winter Garden.
In 1997, Davidson was honored for his philanthropy by the Council of Michigan Foundations, and also named one of America’s most generous donors by The New York Times.
In 2007, Davidson and his wife, Karen, gave $75 million to the Hadassah University Medical Center at Ein Kerem in Jerusalem. The gift was given in honor of Davidson’s mother, Sarah Wetsman Davidson, a founder of the Detroit chapter of the Hadassah.
The Davidsons also supported the Israel Antiquities Authority, sponsoring digs around the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which have been named the “Davidson Excavations” in tribute to the couple’s generosity.
Davidson was a sponsor of the Jerusalem Archaeological Park, called “Israel’s most important antiquity site.” Davidson also established the Davidson Visitor’s Center at the entrance of the park.
The Davidsons also were the founders of the Davidson Institute of Science and Education at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Davidson received an honorary doctorate from the Weizmann Institute in 2001. Davidson also funded the graduate school of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and was a partner to the Wexner Foundation to give grants to post-graduate students planning a career in Jewish education.
Other organizations and municipalities that have benefited from his generosity include the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, the Karmanos Cancer Institute, the Children’s Research Center of Michigan, and the city of Detroit’s Parks and Recreation Department.
Another gift from Davidson went to establish the Guardian Touring Fund for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Gerson said Davidson thought culture was important for a region – for business reasons but also for quality of life reasons.
“Having leading cultural institutions, like a world-class symphony, helps businesses hire the quality of people they want. And when these cultural organizations achieve excellence, it’s great for the region,” Gerson said. “It provides a great image of our area, the same way having a winning sports team sets a great example for the area.”
Davidson knew a thing or two about winning sports teams. An athletic child who played many sports, ran track at U-M, football in armed services and tennis later in life, Davidson’s interest in owning professional sports teams grew from his love of the games and of competition.
Davidson was best known as the managing partner of the Detroit Pistons, a team he bought in 1974. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008. He was the majority owner of Palace Sports and Entertainment, which included The Palace of Auburn Hills, the Detroit Shock (Women’s National Basketball Association) and DTE Music Theater, a world-class entertainment venue, as well as management of Meadow Brook Music Theatre.
During his tenure as owner, Davidson’s professional teams won seven world championships, three in the NBA, three in the WNBA and one in the National Hockey League. During a magical and historical run in 2004, Davidson’s Pistons won the NBA championship and his Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup a couple weeks later. His Detroit Shock had already won the WNBA championship in late summer 2003, giving him three championships in a year, a feat no sports team owner has ever matched.
“We logged a lot of air miles from Detroit to LA to Tampa,” said Davidson’s widow, Karen. “It was a hectic but fun time. We had to stop ourselves and say, ‘Wow, this is history going on.’”
Davidson would occasionally ask people from WDI to sit with him courtside at Pistons game, often bringing them along to watch opposing teams he thought they might like. For former Ross School Dean Robert Dolan and former Executive Director Robert Kennedy, it was the Boston Celtics since both taught at Harvard. WDI Board Member Kenneth Lieberthal, an expert on China, would be invited whenever the Pistons played the Houston Rockets because the team featured 7-foot-6 Yao Ming from that country.
Lieberthal remembered one game in which Davidson was fretting that Yao Ming, who had a big scoring game the last time the teams played, would have another good game. When it was over, Yao Ming had hardly scored.
“Bill couldn’t believe it and wondered what happened,” Lieberthal said. “I told him that whenever Yao Ming came down the floor I’d yell at him in Chinese to distract him. He got a big kick out of that.”
White said it was always fun going to Pistons games with Davidson, but he soon learned the owner was all business once the ball was tipped off.
“There was no hobnobbing, he didn’t care about the celebrities there,” White said. “He was there to watch basketball. And did he ever love his Pistons.”
Karen Davidson said her husband realized quickly that owning a sports team was just like running a business. She thinks he was successful at it because of his manufacturing background, which relies on a lot of teamwork.
“And he was definitely competitive,” she said. “I think that was his thing. Bill wanted to win. He wanted to be successful, to be the best, whether it was in business or owning a team. Both brought him a lot of joy.”