Pranay Gupte isn't so impressed with Bill Gates's “creative capitalism. He rightly points out that Gates isn't being quite so creative as the press corps thinks.
But I’m personally not convinced by the reductio ad absurdum that Gupte uses to imagine corporate CEOs tromping through the “mud of Madagasgar” with tins of foie gras strapped to their backs. We should give Gates a little more credit than that. His idea is considerably more complex than a corporate Peace Corps. I think he is more talking about changing the incentive structures that drive corporate life in order to better serve the poor.
Gupte also points out that Foreign Direct Investment has great potential to create jobs. His analysis is worth reading, but I worry that like Gates is with a new kind of capitalism, Gupte is setting up FDI as a silver bullet.