Big Business and Fighting Poverty

Since this topic came up yesterday, I thought this review for Business Solutions for the Global Poor that came in an email today might be of interest. This paragraph contains the book's theory:

"Poverty can only be truly addressed if you meet four conditions," Chu explains. "You must have huge scale to reach the billions who are in poverty; solutions must be enduring and last over generations; solutions must be truly effective and make a difference; and all this must happen efficiently. Only through a commercial approach can you achieve all those things, and the great power of microfinance comes through its ability to generate profit. There is no contradiction between social impact and good profitability; in fact, profitability is central to that social impact."