The United States is pretty well represented at the Annual Meeting.
Now it’s true that there isn’t someone from Bush’s inner team here this year, but they couldn’t make it for obvious reasons: the new administration is not yet confirmed and the State of the Union address falls after the Annual Meeting in early February…
A quick scan down the programme or webcast list shows a significant US presence: there’s Grant Aldonas, Under-Secretary of Commerce for International Trade; Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor; William Donaldson, Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission; Kristin Forbes, a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers to the US President; John Taylor, Under-Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs; Michael Powell, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and Robert Zoellik, US Trade Representative.
And also there’s a host of US senators: John McCain; Bill Frist; Joseph Biden; Orrin Hatch; Saxby Chambliss; Christopher Dodd; Richard Shelby; Gordon Smith and John Sununu.
No, the U.S. is not really here in the sense that an attendance by Bush or Cheney would have made a major statement to the rest of the world. They are the ones with real decision making power, the ones the rest of the world worries about. Clinton is loved and Bush is hated right now. If Bush came here, perhaps he would have turned the tide his way. Opportunity missed.
Posted by: rony | January 28, 2005 at 02:35
While HP products might be affordable to some NGOs working with the poor, they are definitely out of the price range of the so-called bottom of the pyramid.
What comes to mind more often are the efforts of Coca Cola which has succeeded in marketing to Mexicans who now drink about 100 liters/person/year or the infamous case of Nestle's pushing baby formula in East Africa when breast-feeding was the best for the infants.
At the recent conference on this topic in San Francisco there was no talk of other solutions: cooperatives and empowering really smale scale entrepreneurs.
Posted by: Steve Cisler | January 27, 2005 at 21:36
The subject of the doing business with the "bottom of the pyramid" is a very interesting subject indeed, one that also a lot of multinational corporations are grappling with. Recently I did an interview with Procter and Gamble (http://topics.developmentgateway.org/special/foreigninvestment/template21.do) and as he said, companies such as his, just can not afford to ignore 4 billion people on the planet. Even though they are poor, the volume alone, begs the question of what business models can be created to tap into this market...the other half of the question is of course, how do you do that in such a way that it benefits the poor, and even better, empowers them to increase their income earning potential...lots of challenges here. This is why we recently created a new site that looks at a lot of these issues. Feel free to check it out. We would very much welcome your feedback:http://topics.developmentgateway.org/special/foreigninvestment
Posted by: Ellen | January 27, 2005 at 18:11