Topic outline

  • Landing Page

    Welcome to Market-Based Development in the Global South!




    I'm excited to have you in this course; The "Global South" is where the overwhelming number of people live in the world, and yet we tend to not talk about it very much in the business school. More than that, in business schools, we tend not to discuss 'development' or poverty alleviation very much, despite the obvious potential for markets and business to contribute to development. Hence, I developed this course, and I'm very excited you'll be taking part.


    My overarching goal, as with any course I teach, is to make this a good learning experience for you.

    A few important links:

    • You are expected to attend 9/12 of our sessions. In return for having an attendance requirement, my promise is to make class actually worthwhile.
    • Details about how you will be assessed, and of the key course dates can be found here: Course Assessment and key dates. I will add more details about the final project in the first week of the course.
    • The full course syllabus can be found here: Detailed syllabus


  • Detailed syllabus

    The detailed syllabus for the course can be found here.  Minor edits may occur, and will be noted when they happened.

    August 30th update: fixed the table of contents.

    September 7th update: full details on final project added. Minor updates to session readings.

  • Student Questions, General

    This is a place for general questions.

    Unless you have a question involving personal information or a unique situation, please use these fora instead of email.  This helps share information and guidance with the full class.

  • Pre-session assignments (e.g., the work to be done before each session)

    Not available unless: You are a(n) Student

    Note: I've created a DropBox link for session files, such as the PowerPoint slides used for videos, articles, and in class PowerPoints. The can be found here:  MBD 2022 posted files for students. It will be updated throughout the course; post-session files will naturally only go there after the session.


    Below are the separate prep packages for each session.

  • Assignments, grading, and key dates

    Here you can find details on how you will be evaluated in this course.
    The high-level breakdown is:

    You can find further details below.

    Key Dates

    Component Key date
    Pre-session preparation Due by 09:30 the day of class
    Reflections All submitted by Friday, October 14th
    Comments All submitted by Tuesday, October 18th
    Final Project
      Create Group
    		 Thursday, September 15th
      Group contract Monday, September 19th
      Interim report I Sunday, September 25th
      Interim report II Monday, October 10th
      Final written report Friday, October 21st
      Peer Evaluation Saturday, October 22nd



    Note as well:

    Attending (9/12) of sessions is obligatory, as the discussions we have in class are key to learning in this course; put another way, you can miss maximum 3/12 sessions. Moreover, based on prior experience, it is highly unlikely that one missing more than three sessions will be able to contribute meaningfully to the group work.  Resultantly, if you miss more than three sessions, you will be removed from the group work, making it exceedingly difficult to pass the course. 

    These 12 sessions include out core in-class sessions, as well as class time devoted to group work.

    Medical absences, with appropriate documentation, are not counted as absences.  However, to ensure you can contribute to the group work, you will be required to make up the missed sessions by watching the recording, and writing a short reflection on it.



    This course will follow the Aalto University Code of Academic Integrity and Handling Thereof:

    https://into.aalto.fi/display/ensaannot/Aalto+University+Code+of+Academic+Integrity+and+Handling+Violations+Thereof





  • Reflections and Comments Forum (post your thoughts here)

    Not available unless: You are a(n) Student

    See Reflections and Comments (part of Course Assessment and key dates) for more details on grading and what to write about


    Note: You can write reflections about any session you prefer, at any time.  Reflections are not limited to immediately after the session itself.

  • Group Project - Background and descriptions

  • Group Project - Portal for anything you need to submit, such as group choice, reports, etc.

  • Session Schedule

    This is in the syllabus, but for convenience, here it is again.



  • Supplementary topics (from previous versions of the course)

    Here you will find some topics you may find interesting.  They come from previous versions of this course, and for different reasons I had to leave them out of this year's version.

    To that end, I have not 'polished' the material to make note of it being supplementary.  So, the write-up for these topics is very much as if they were an actual session of the course.
    Naturally, these are ungraded, and are just here for your information.