PURPOSE

The core purpose of the competition is to document and disseminate those factors that lead to the successful growth of wealth, especially in developing economies, as well as to encourage a greater appreciation of and support for the role that enterprise-based programs can play in alleviating poverty. This grant competition is designed to:

1. Promote high-impact advances in applied research, writing, and effective public communication focused on understanding the potential, power, and significance of enterprise-based solutions to poverty, especially in developing nations.
2. Provide catalytic seed capital to innovative think tanks to expand their donor base in support of research and public education about enterprise-based solutions to poverty.

TOPICAL QUESTIONS

Think tanks may design their proposal to address one or more of the following relevant questions:

• What are the key free enterprise success stories that have been underreported or overlooked?
• What are the lessons that can be gleaned from the economic progress that some countries have made in the last few decades in comparison to other countries from similar or disparate global regions?
• What are the well-documented sources of economic growth that economists and scholars have elucidated yet whose findings are not currently informing public and policy debates regarding development?
• Which economic growth activities are most likely to flourish in the particular social and environmental conditions existing in developing countries?

POTENTIAL RESEARCH SCOPE

Eligible think tanks could focus their research efforts in areas such as:

• Individuals: Case studies of successful entrepreneurs in developing countries
• Companies: Profiles on growing companies and their effects on local economies
• Regions: How regions of sustained economic development have arisen through the engine of free enterprise (i.e. IndiaÕs “Silicon Valley”)
• Policies: How “top-down” policies of governments have led to entrepreneurial wealth creation
• NGOs: How “bottom-up” non-government organizations and grassroots movements (such as micro-finance organizations) have had a beneficial effect on regional or global economic growth
• Other

POSSIBLE GRANT PRODUCTS

The following is a partial list of potential grant products that recipients could produce as a result of this award:

• A new center for publicizing enterprise-based methods of economic development
• A new website to promote exemplary free enterprise efforts for alleviating poverty
• Policy briefs documenting entrepreneurial innovation as a means of wealth creation
• Editorial, newspaper, magazine or journal articles demonstrating the role that free enterprise can play in the developing world
• Television and radio segments on stories of free enterprise success in developing countries
• New books on related topics