ABSTRACT
This chapter explains about using an understanding of poverty to develop profitable business opportunities. The author has once worked with a multinational company whose operations in an Eastern European country were heading into difficulties. Their fast-moving consumer goods were becoming decidedly slow-moving despite a strong international brand, highly trained expatriate managers and an impressive track record of establishing new operations in emerging markets. Linkages offer benefits to foreign affiliates and domestic suppliers, as well as to the economy in which they are forged as a whole. The UN's Commission on the Private Sector and Development recently released a report that, a few hundred years after Adam Smith came to a similar conclusion, finally acknowledged that 'the savings, investment and innovation that lead to development are undertaken largely by private individuals, corporations and communities'. Thus, an understanding of poverty might have helped them come up with the idea, implement it effectively and manage the risks.
