by Amy on May 16th, 2012
Doing business with low-income communities – which academics and practitioners have christened ‘the base of the pyramid’ (BoP) – now includes a focus on creating sustainable markets with the potential to realise future profit – simply ‘milking’ a market for the next quarter’s profits is seen as short-sighted. The status quo is shifting, and the rules of both commercial and social engagement with middle- and lower-end markets in developing economies are transforming. There is keen interest from both local and global businesses and institutions to be involved in these markets. And they care about the practical detail of doing it effectively, and ethically. This new view accords that doing business in a healthier economy benefits firms by lowering transaction costs and the long-term cost of capital.
In South Africa, around 60% of the population is unserved or underserved by current business (and many other providers of support and services). That’s a significant new market, and in the South African context, doing business in this market can achieve a great deal more than simply finding new customers. Regardless of global trends or government pressures, accessing these markets is challenging. Often, customers who survive on minimal incomes seek and will value different market offerings from those traditional customers have purchased. They have unique needs and identities requiring innovative, non-traditional business models and approaches.
New Markets, New Mindsets showcases pioneering businesses and their BoP champions, as well as their experiments, successes, failures and best practices in creating new AND sustainable markets in previously underserved communities.
The book includes top tips for those wishing to tap into these communities in ethical and effective ways, interviews with over 40 role players, and case studies including Nestlé, Danone, Massmart/Walmart, Nedbank, Blue Label Technologies and Capitec, among others.
About the authors
Dr Tashmia Ismail is a fellow at UNU Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, and a senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) where she teaches innovation and BoP strategy. Ismail heads the GIBS BoP Hub, which offers a collaborative multi-stakeholder platform for firms interested in developing and executing BoP strategies. She is interested in how innovative and sustainable business models can be shaped for firms in developing markets. Currently, her research is directed at understanding internal innovation management and the external networks firms must engage with to ensure success in low income contexts.
Dr Nicola Kleyn is a senior lecturer at the Gordon Institute of Business Science where she lectures and researches in the fields of marketing, branding and reputation management. She is both passionate and curious about how organisations can best manage the dynamic tensions that arise when individuals and companies seek to create win-win-win solutions that concurrently enable people, profit and planet. She was instrumental in initiating a stream of BoP focused research and teaching at GIBS and plays an active role in the BoP Hub at GIBS.
Gwen Ansell is a veteran writer, editor and writing trainer. She has written several textbooks, including Introduction to Journalism, which is a set text for the national curriculum and trains scholars, journalists and other communicators in writing skills. As a researcher, Ansell is the author of the South African cultural history Soweto Blues, and has done extensive value-chain and innovation research on the South African music industry.
Book details
- New Markets, New Mindsets: Creating wealth with South Africa’s low-income communities through partnership and innovation by Tashmia Ismail, Nicola Kleyn, Gwen Ansell
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EAN: 9781920292034
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by Amy on Apr 26th, 2012
The Competition Commission (together with its Tribunal) is one of the success stories of the new, democratic South Africa, an institution that has won respect and admiration for its fearless, professional regulation of the market in the interests of the consumer and the citizen. David Lewis was one of the chief architects of the new competition authorities set up after 1994 and then became a leading actor in their work.
Thieves at the Dinner Table is a personal account of David Lewis’s headship of the Tribunal and tells, with insight, lucidity and often a fine sense of humour, of the way this new body dealt with the anticompetitive practices of South African big business. Three main aspects of the Commission’s work are dealt with in the book: mergers, abuse of dominance (i.e. monopolies) and cartels, and with each Lewis provides telling case studies drawn from the experience of the Commission. These are often enlivened by the author’s coruscating wit and by his delightful thumbnail sketches of the characters involved in the disputes, including the powerful and arrogant captains of industry, the wily Johannesburg competition lawyers, and the interfering and self-promoting politicians.
This is a book for people in business and in law, for those who want to understand how a key institution of post-apartheid South Africa came to be so successful, and for all those interested in the story of how some of the country’s most powerful businesses got their comeuppance after years of ripping off consumers.
Praise for Thieves at the Dinner Table
“This is a book on competition law that reads like a thriller. David Lewis has taken what might have been a dry, textbook topic and turned it into compulsive reading. But in giving the history of South African competition law some flesh and colour, he also imparts advice and opinions, which, whilst sometimes controversial, challenge the way we should think of economic regulation and the institutions that regulate.” – Norman Manoim, chairperson, South African Competition Tribunal
About the author
David Lewis, who taught at the Gordon Institute of Business Science after his term at the Competition Tribunal ended, is now head of the NGO Corruption Watch.
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by Amy on Oct 5th, 2011
Jacana Media is pleased to announce the publication of Phumelele Ndumo’s new book, From Debt to Riches: Steps to Financial Success:
In this easy-to-read guide, Phumelele Ndumo addresses the financial problems of ordinary South Africans who are battling with garnishee orders, admin orders, debt counselling, paying university fees, buying homes etc. She talks about finance issues in such a simple manner that you can read it while you are under the hair dryer in a hair salon. This book is for every South African who is in and who wants to avoid debt. It is for parents who have dreams of taking their children to university but battling with finances for that. It is for the young who are still starting out with their own finances.You might also want to buy it as a gift for that taker sibling who uses you as a cash cow, and hopes he / she will get the message.
Most people have always thought that it was only high income people who could end up financially independent. That is not true! All of us can become financially independent, provided we are willing to have self discipline and put into practice the simple suggestions that are in this book.
A simple book that demystifies the myth that you do not have to be rich to become a millionaire! Phumelele Ndumo’s role is to make us fall in love with and keep our money. — Mapula Nkosi, Deputy Editor of True Love Magazine
About the author
Phumelele Ndumo holds a B.Com degree from the University of Durban Westville, a Higher Diploma in Computer Auditing from Wits University and a Masters in Business Leadership from the University of South Africa. She has extensive banking experience having held senior positions in NBS Boland Bank, FNB and Nedcor. She has vast experience in auditing, risk management, strategic management, and financial management. She published her first book 7 Secrets Why the Rich Own their Homes in 2007, which has sold close to 3000 copies.
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by Amy on Jun 14th, 2011
Introducing a brand new Universal Life Cycle (ULC) book by Willem de Liefde, The Leadership Navigator: Governance Without Fear.
“Throughout my life, I have discovered that I always achieve the best results when my actions are based on a combination of intuition, experience and sharing the truth. This way of living has resulted in my becoming a believer in the concept of what I call Embracing Leadership and being able to let go of the past.”
Willem de Liefde‘s groundbreaking management book, Lekgotla: the Art of Leadership through Dialogue, changed how many managers viewed the workplace and the people who worked there. In De Liefde’s latest book, The Leadership Navigator: Governance Without Fear, he continues and expands his ideas of leadership and explains how compassion and forgiveness amongst leaders invariably brings both financial success and wisdom.
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by Thando on Aug 30th, 2010
Jacana Media, in association with Standard Bank and the Gordon Institute of Business Science, invite you to a discussion on Jenny Cargill’s new book Trick or Treat: Rethinking Black Economic Empowerment
Join the author in discussion with director of Kio Advisory Services and author of Making Mistakes, Righting Wrongs: Insights Into Black Economic Empowerment, Duma Gqubule.
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Book Details
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by Thando on May 31st, 2010
Jacana Media and The Book Lounge invite you to the launch of a grounbreaking book that counts as a frank and critical approach to a hugely sensitive subject: Black Economic Empowerment (BEE).
Is South Africa ready to take a fresher look at our economic policies? Are we bold enough to decide whether BEE is a trick or a treat?
Join us for the launch of Jenny Cargill’s Trick or Treat and find out – we’ll see you there!
Event Details
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A second launch for Trick or Treat will take place at Kalk Bay Books on Friday 4 June, where Jenny Cargill will be in conversation with John Maytham:
Event Details
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About the Book
Trick or Treat: Rethinking Black Economic Empowerment is a book that throws into sharp relief what has always been the most tantalising and controversial aspect of BEE policy – notably, black corporate ownership, the asset trading or deal-making arm of BEE that was started as an antidote to apartheid and insurance for future business.
Jenny Cargill offers a unique experiential and analytical journey into the 16-year history of BEE. It is current and critical, challenging the reader to think differently about empowerment and how black South Africans may meaningfully participate in the economy.
The book comes at just the right time. The fault lines in BEE have become increasingly exposed as the global financial crisis has impacted on the South African economy. Government, too, has recently appointed the BEE Advisory Council to monitor and review progress. Internationally, there is a rethink about societal wellbeing and sustainable investment that also has implications for current BEE policy. All this suggests that it is time to expand the horizons of new thinking about economic transformation in South Africa.
Cargill explores these issues, drawing on case studies, both in South Africa and internationally, and puts a compelling case for a through-going review of BEE in favour of an integrated approach to socio-economic transformation. Hard choices will need to be made about priorities, as financial resources are not unlimited. Significantly more capital has been dedicated to the transfer of shareholding than to any other initiative to redress black economic marginalisation, such as land reform and housing – it is not time to change this?
Cargill finds many negative consequences that bring into question BEE ownership in its current form. Inadvertently policy has encouraged what it aimed to prevent: opportunistic, unproductive investment. BEE, too, has become a convenient cover to legitimise political patronage and corruption in the allocation of state resources.
Yet, there are surprises that have not received recognition: the emergence of a core of large black corporations that are growing businesses, some of them new ventures. Many of these are professionally run, broad-based companies that offer new models of social capital – businesses that seek both a financial return and social impact. The book examines in detail broad-based ownership – not always the panacea that many like to think it is.
Trick or Treat speaks to everyone interested in or affected by black empowerment, from economists to policy-makers to the person in the street. It makes an extensive amount of information and analysis easily accessible.
About the author
Jenny Cargill is a writer, a protagonist in an award winning film on the ANC’s underground, the founder of a think tank, as well as a specialist in transformational investment and black economic empowerment. On returning to South Africa from exile, she established an initiative to monitor South Africa’s economic transition, publishing unique research into changing investment trends and promoting dialogue between the new political leadership and the business establishment. She then became an advisor in the deals that result in black share ownership in the country’s major corporations.
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by Emily on Jun 22nd, 2009
Steps to Financial Freedom is the new South African financial handbook, written for anyone who has ever felt that there is just “too much month left at the end of the money”.
This handbook includes a practical guide to drawing up a budget that actually works. It gives you step-by-step help to getting yourself out of the debt trap.
And it’s just R95 for 58 pages of practical, easy-to-understand information plus personal worksheets to get your finances on track!
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by Emily on May 7th, 2009
Jacana is pleased to invite you to the launch of Tony Frost’s After the Rain: Lessons from the Wild for Leaders and Organisations on Thursday 14 May in Centurion.
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by Emily on May 4th, 2009
Jacana Media and Wordsworth books are pleased to invite you to the Cape Town launch of Raymond Parson’s Zumanomics: Which way to shared prosperity?
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