The annual TED conference brings together leading thinkers and doers who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). Attendees have called it “the ultimate brain spa” and “a four-day journey into the future.”  This year, TED travels across the globe for the first annual TEDIndia conference.

It’s been great to see business school faculty take an interest in microfinance.  Gabriel Natividad of the strategy group at the Stern School of Business at NYU just published an interesting new paper that links asymmetric information, third-party credit ratings, the price of credit and the operations of microfinance inst

With the global financial crisis still rippling across front pages of newspapers around the world, it may not seem like the moment to further open the doors to the financial system. But this gets it backward. As experts focus on shoring up financial regulation, this is precisely the moment to simultaneously craft a new financial framework that expands access to the billions of people who are currently unserved.