Iqbal Quadir, Professor of the Practice of Development and Entrepreneurship and Founder and Director of The Legatum Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will present a public lecture titled, "Bottom-up Entrepreneurship for Democracy and Development" at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 2, in Bowl 016, Robertson Hall on the Princeton University campus.

The Legatum Center promotes innovation and entrepreneurship in low-income countries. Established in 2007 with a gift from Legatum, a global investment firm, the Center runs a competitive fellowship program to prepare MIT students to create enterprises in developing countries. Current and future fellows seek to implement for-profit businesses that empower ordinary citizens and virally spread prosperity and development.

For four years, Quadir taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, focusing on the impact of technologies in the politics and economics of developing countries. In 2005, he moved to MIT. His particular research interest is in the democratizing effects of technologies in developing countries.

In 2006, Quadir co-founded the journal Innovations, published by MIT Press, which highlights private efforts in public service. Quadir spent most of the 1990s founding and building GrameenPhone Ltd., which has now become Bangladesh’s largest telephone company. His childhood exposure to the conditions in rural Bangladesh combined with his later venture capital experience in New York led Quadir to recognize that the ensuing digital revolution could facilitate the introduction of telephony to 100 million people living in rural Bangladesh. In 1994, he formally launched this effort by convincing investors to establish a New York based company, Gonofone Development Corp (meaning “phones for the masses”) to help him organize what subsequently became known as GrameenPhone.

Quadir’s vision of a large-scale, commercial project that could serve all urban areas and 68,000 villages in Bangladesh led him to organize a global consortium including Telenor AS, the primary telephone company in Norway and an affiliate of micro-credit pioneer Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. With the support of investors, GrameenPhone, established in late 1996, started building a new cellular network and providing services to the public soon thereafter. To date, it has built the largest cellular network in the country with investments of nearly $2 billion and a subscriber base of nearly 20 million. Its rural program is already available in more than 60,000 villages, providing telephone access to more than 100 million people, while helping to create 250,000 micro-entrepreneurs in these villages.

This event is co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affair and the Davis International Center. It is also part of the “Emerge! A Global Bazaar,” a student initiative designed to increase awareness and interest, and provoke action in international development. It presents issues such as poverty, healthcare and human rights.