Next Stop - The 21st Century

Muhammad Yunus

Founder and managing director
Grameen Bank
Dhaka, Bangladesh

American businesspeople have thought too small: They've focused almost solely on the United States and Europe. But for every person in one of those markets, there are three people in the developing world. What a missed opportunity!

In the 21st century, we will have a chance to reverse that trend. Technology allows companies to hire people from anywhere. A U.S. security company, for example, can hire villagers to monitor its systems in homes and offices. What difference does it make if the person monitoring such a system is sitting in Illinois or in India?

There's another way to plug into the developing world: Turn the people who live there into entrepreneurs. Don't just offer poor people charity -- offer them credit. Grameen Bank started out in Bangladesh by offering loans as small as $30 -- just enough capital to get a microbusiness off the ground. Over the past two decades, we've made loans that are worth a total of $2 billion. Through GrameenPhone, we've also distributed more than 4,000 phones to villages. Many of our borrowers have become entrepreneurs. They buy a cell-phone, sell the service to villagers, and use the income to repay their loan.

Poor people don't create poverty. The more we can use the Internet and the power of entrepreneurship to connect villagers to the rest of the world -- the more we can eliminate their sense of isolation -- the sooner they'll be able to work themselves out of poverty.

Muhammad Yunus (yunus@grameen.com) pioneers business models that combine economic growth with social justice. He is the author of "Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty" (Perseus Books, 1999).

Andy & Kate Spade

Cofounders
Kate Spade
New York, New York

The biggest challenge facing companies in the 21st century will be to differentiate themselves from everyone else -- to create a passionate following among customers who have too many choices.

How do you create that kind of following? For one thing, by treating customers well. Simple politeness has become a lost art -- especially in the fast-paced fashion industry. That's why, when we hire people, we give them a copy of Emily Post's Etiquette. We remind our salespeople that customers are spending their money with us and that we should show our appreciation. That sounds obvious. But the more popular you become -- the hotter your products become -- the easier it is to forget such a basic principle.

As important as it is to treat customers with respect, it's even more important to respect what they say. For us, that means designing handbags that are not only functional and stylish, but also graceful and elegant. Customers have made it clear that they want to bring a sense of grace back into their lives. So we design bags around the idea that elegance, not just edge, is cool.

We had one big advantage when we started our company: Neither of us came from the fashion-design industry. We didn't take our cues from the design industry; we took our cues from customers.

Great design doesn't have to be complicated. The best designs are those that show restraint. We've found design inspirations in umbrellas and in men's suits of the 1950s, for example. We also use fabrics that people haven't seen in handbags (such as seersucker, pink velvet, and bouclé wool) but that they respond to once they see our designs. We use fabrics that are rooted in tradition -- but we shape them in ways that are modern. That's not a bad approach to design in general.

Kate Spade (kspade@katespade.com) and her husband, Andy Spade (aspade@katespade.com), launched Kate Spade in 1993. Kate was a fashion editor for Mademoiselle, and Andy was an advertising copywriter. In 1995, Kate received the Perry Ellis Award for New Fashion Talent from the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Last year, CFDA named her the year's Best Accessory Designer. Early this year, the company announced a strategic partnership with the Neiman Marcus Group, along with plans to expand its product line into shoes and clothing.