The Information Environment of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs)
People
Businesses with five or fewer employees, called micro-enterprises, support many rural and urban households in developing nations. Microsoft Research India is conducting qualitative and quantitative research to explore the overall information and communication behaviors of micro-enterprises. The main research in India has included a photo-intensive qualitative analysis of 49 small and informal businesses in Bangalore (April 2006), a survey of 347 similar businesses in Hyderabad (January 2007).
Publications
- Jonathan Donner and Marcela X Escobari, A review of evidence on mobile use by micro and small enterprises in developing countries, in Journal of International Development, vol. 22, no. 5, John Wiley & Sons, 30 June 2010
- Jonathan Donner, Mobile-based livelihood services in Africa: pilots and early deployments, pp. 37-58, 30 December 2009
- Jonathan Donner and Marcela Escobari, A review of the research on mobile use by micro and small enterprises (MSEs), in Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, IEEE, April 2009
- Jonathan Donner, Mobile media on low-cost handsets: The resiliency of text messaging among small enterprises in India (and beyond) , in Mobile technologies: from telecommunications to media , pp. 93-104, Routledge, 2009
- Jonathan Donner, Blurring livelihoods and lives: The social uses of mobile phones and socioeconomic development, in Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 91-101, MIT Press, 2009
- Jonathan Donner, Customer acquisition among small and informal businesses in urban India: Comparing face to face, interpersonal, and mediated channels, in The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, vol. 32, pp. 1-16, 2007
- Jonathan Donner, The social and economic implications of mobile telephony in Rwanda: An ownership/access typology, in Knowledge, Technology, and Policy, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 17-28, Springer-Verlag, June 2006
- Jonathan Donner, The use of mobile phones by microentrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda: Changes to social and business networks, in Information Technologies and International Development, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 3-19, MIT Press, 2006
- Jonathan Donner, The mobile behaviors of Kigali’s microentrepreneurs: whom they call - and why, in A Sense of Place: The Global and the Local in Mobile Communication, Passagen Verlag, Vienna, 2005
- Jonathan Donner, Microentrepreneurs and mobiles: an exploration of the uses of mobile phones by small business owners in Rwanda, in Information Technologies and International Development, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-22, MIT Press, 2004