MIT's Development Ventures

If you read this blog, it would be hard for you not to know about MIT's D-Lab. What could be forgiven is that you may not know about the newest newest member in the D-Lab family of classes: MIT's Development Ventures.

Development Ventures (DV) is an exploratory developmental entrepreneurship seminar on founding, financing, & building viable ventures in developing nations and emerging regions. DV is a member of the larger D-Labs family of classes addressing Development-Design-Dissemination at MIT. Since 2001 we have challenged students to use business methods to tackle the UN Millennium Development Goals by crafting enduring, scalable, and economically viable solutions to problems faced by at least One Billion people worldwide.

This is the 7th year the class is offered, spinning out about 12 real world companies focused on international development challenges. Under the careful guidance of Joost Bonsen and Sandy Pentland, the class, taught in the heart of the MIT Media Lab, combined top flight technologists with saavy business strategies that are incredibily informed about doing business in emerging economies.

I'm going to be attending the class all semester and hope to give you some weekly insights as I learn from the next crop of companies addressing the millenium development goals.

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