Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment, or a verifiable credit history. It is designed to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty. Many recipients are illiterate, and therefore unable to complete paperwork required to get conventional loans. As of 2009 an estimated 74 million people held microloans that totaled US$38 billion. Grameen Bank reports that repayment success rates are between 95 and 98 percent.
The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University is the business school of Northwestern University, a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. It was founded in 1908 as the School of Commerce. Its faculty, alumni, and students have made significant contributions to fields such as marketing, management sciences, and decision sciences.
Muhammad Yunus is a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, banker, economist and civil society leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance. These loans are given to entrepreneurs that are too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. Yunus and the Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts through microcredit to create economic and social development from below". The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that "lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty" and that "across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development". Yunus has received several other national and international honours. He received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.
The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) is a non-profit scientific research organization that conducts research on the use and management of forests with a focus on tropical forests in developing countries. CIFOR, which merged with World Agroforestry on Jan. 1, 2019, is the forestry and agroforestry research center of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a network of 15 research centers around the world that focus on agricultural research for sustainable development, working closely with governments and other partners to help develop evidence-based solutions to problems related to sustainable agriculture and natural resource management.
North South University is a private research university in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was established in 1992 by the Foundation for Promotion of Education and Research (FPER). The FPER later was renamed as the NSU Foundation and is presently called The North South Foundation for Education and Research.
Philip Kotler is an American marketing author, consultant, and professor emeritus; the S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (1962–2018). He is known for popularizing the definition of marketing mix. He is the author of over 80 books, including Marketing Management, Principles of Marketing, Kotler on Marketing, Marketing Insights from A to Z, Marketing 4.0, Marketing Places, Marketing of Nations, Chaotics, Market Your Way to Growth, Winning Global Markets, Strategic Marketing for Health Care Organizations, Social Marketing, Social Media Marketing, My Adventures in Marketing, Up and Out of Poverty, and Winning at Innovation. Kotler describes strategic marketing as serving as "the link between society's needs and its pattern of industrial response."
Rehman Sobhan is a Bangladeshi economist. Regarded as one of the country's top public thinkers, he is the founder of the Centre for Policy Dialogue. Sobhan is an icon of the Bangladeshi independence movement due to his role as a spokesman of the Provisional Government of Bangladesh in the United States during the Bangladesh Liberation War. He was awarded the Independence Day Award, Bangladesh's highest civilian honour, in 2008.
Eduardo L. Roberto or Ned Roberto is a Filipino professor who is considered Asia's foremost authority in marketing. He was the professor of international marketing at the Asian Institute of Management located in Metro Manila in the Philippines. He has written several marketing-related books and is currently a part of the editorial board of the International Journal of Research in Marketing. His areas of interest for teaching and research include marketing research, social marketing, and consumer behavior. He has also taught at the Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management Chicago Campus and at the Euro-Asia Centre of INSEAD Macau.
Hossain Zillur Rahman is an academic, economist and policy maker from Bangladesh. He led the drafting of the poverty reduction strategy of the government in 2005 and was a member of the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation (ISACPA). He founded the Dhaka-based think-tank Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) in 1996 and prior to that was for over twenty years a leading researcher at the Bangladesh Institute of development Studies.
Susan Davis is an author, public speaker, consultant and expert on international development and social entrepreneurship. She is the Chairperson of Solutions Journalism Network, an Adjunct Associate Professor at New York University Stern School of Business, a coach to social entrepreneurs and active on many boards and advisory councils.
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is an Indian-born American economist who is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), an MIT based global research center promoting the use of scientific evidence to inform poverty alleviation strategies. In 2019, Banerjee shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." He and Esther Duflo are married, and became the sixth married couple to jointly win a Nobel or Nobel Memorial Prize.
The Yunus Centre, in Dhaka, Bangladesh is a think tank for issues related to social business, working in the field of poverty alleviation and sustainability. It is 'aimed primarily at promoting and disseminating Professor Yunus' philosophy, with a special focus on social business'. As of 2023 it is chaired by Prof. Muhammad Yunus, and its executive director is Ms. Lamiya Morshed.
Martha Chen is an American academic, scholar and social worker, who is presently a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and senior advisor of the global research-policy-action network WIEGO and a member of the Advisory Board of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). Martha is a development practitioner and scholar who has worked with the working poor in India, South Asia, and around the world. Her areas of specialization are employment, poverty alleviation, informal economy, and gender. She lived in Bangladesh working with BRAC, one of the world's largest non-governmental organizations, and in India, as field representative of Oxfam America for India and Bangladesh for 15 years.
The University of Dhaka is a public research university located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was established in 1921 as University of Dacca and it is the oldest active university in Bangladesh.
Waldemar Pförtsch is a German professor, management advisor and specialized book author for business administration and international management.
The Blu Ribbon Revolution: Co-creating a World Beyond Poverty (ISBN 978-93-5053-306-2) is a book by the Winner of the 2012 Dubai Cares Award and community activist Viswanathan Manikan.
Syed Saad Andaleeb is a Bangladeshi-American academic who served as the 3rd Vice-chancellor of BRAC University.
Sangeet Paul Choudary is a business executive, advisor, and best-selling author. He is best known for his work on platform economics and network effects. He is the co-author of the international best-selling book Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You.
E-commerce in Bangladesh refers to the electronic commerce sector of Bangladesh business.
Marc Oliver Opresnik is a German professor, scholar, author and researcher. He is a professor of business administration with focus on marketing at the Lübeck University of Applied Sciences in Germany and Chief Research Officer at Kotler Impact Inc., the organization founded by the American marketing professor Philip Kotler. His research is about Social Media Marketing and Communication as well as Negotiation and he is the author of more than 30 publications in these subject areas, including Marketing Management, Marketing: An Introduction, Social Media Marketing and The Hidden Rules of Successful Negotiation and Communication.
