Paul Polak is president of International Development Enterprises (IDE), a nonprofit, poverty alleviation organization he founded in 1981. IDE pioneered the development and marketing of affordable technologies within developing countries. The Technology Museum of Innovation named IDE-International a Laureate for its development of "Easy Drip" a truly affordable micro-irrigation system for the rural farmers in developing countries. In 2004, Paul was awarded Ernst & Young's "2004 Entrepreneur of the Year" award in the category of social responsibility. As a result of technologies like "Easy Drip" and facilitated market entrance, IDE families have increased their net annual income by more than $200 million annually. Recently Polak was honored by Scientific American as one of the Top 50 innovators in 2003 for his work pioneering poverty alleviation worldwide. In 2007, Polak founded D-Rev, an organization created to design affordable technology for dollar-a day customers and developing markets where they can be sold profitably and sustainable at a fair market price. Paul Polak received his MD from the University of Western Ontario and practiced psychiatry for 23 years.
My belief is that we're just now beginning to emerge from a recession and all of the things, with the exception of energy, as strategies to end the recession, are bringing us back to the same over-consumption financed by the Chinese that led to the recession in the first place. At the same time, the...(Full transcript available to logged in subscribers.).
Register & Subscribe
Login
