The Wild Blue Yonder

“It is, as Intel's press release put it, ‘one of the most remote inhabited places on earth.’ Parintins, Brazil, is on the outskirts of nowhere... So in 2006, when Intel wirelessly connected the Amazon city to the rest of the online world, chairman Craig Barrett promised that the venture would ‘bring the expertise of specialists, sophisticated medical imaging, and the world's libraries to a community reachable only by airplane or boat.’

“The city's ‘digital makeover’ was widely reported, publicizing Intel's billion-dollar, five-year World Ahead Program. The message: Intel is doing good, improving the health and education of the poor around the globe.

“But Intel's corporate benevolence is also a shrewd investment... The company is nurturing its next crop of customers in Parintins and nearly 200 other places in the developing world. The World Ahead Program is very much about building Intel's future markets... As with so much corporate responsibility, it is a fine example of enlightened self-interest.

“‘We're not a charitable organization,’ says Barrett... Inside Intel, Barrett is seen as a supporter of World Ahead. He is refreshingly candid about just what the program is after. Intel is not, after all, putting its money into the globe's least-developed nations – it's active in Mexico but not in Malawi, in Nigeria but not in Niger. Explains Barrett: ‘We're trying to foster the continued growth of our products.’

“Today, more than half of Intel's revenues come from the less-developed countries in Asia and the Americas, up from less than a fifth a decade ago... Half of the global middle class lives in the developing world today. Within 25 years, that figure will be 90%, according to the World Bank's latest forecast. That will more than double, to 1 billion, the number of potential buyers for products that today are considered luxuries, including not only cars and refrigerators but also computers.

“‘We're taking this tier by tier by tier,’ Barrett says. In other words, Intel is pursuing not the so-called bottom of the pyramid, or BOP… but the next billion, consumers who rank economically just below those it serves today...

“Intel's immediate goal is to win over governments whose purchasing and policy decisions could drive the company's business forward. World Ahead operates primarily in industrializing and resource-rich economies – in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, as well as in smaller but fast-growing markets such as Vietnam and Pakistan.”

(“Intel’s Amazon Ambitions.” Richard Shaffer. Fast Company: February 2008., Iss. 122; pg. 86)

LOTS OF BUZZ perhaps, and how much impact on the community and the corporation?

The future of your corporation lies in remote exploration or incremental expansion and advancement?

(ooops! change that "or" to "and"!)