I remember a time when word of mouth used to be this highly esoteric thing everybody feared and nobody could really describe.

Not any longer.

According to this new version of the “Did you know” video, social media is the connection between word of mouth and real money.

25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. 34% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertising!

In the future we will no longer search for products and services…. they will find us through social media, similarly to what is already happening to news.

And if you still have doubts about the power of online word of mouth… check out this wisdom from the # 1 internet content creator in the world (China!).

It’s so exciting! My friend and fellow CWN member India Gary has been included on the Powerlist 2010, a list of the 100 most influential black people in the UK.

Her citation describes her as “one of the most senior black women in UK banking.”

Today, India is visiting 10 Downing Street  with others who have been similarly recognized. The Powerlist is topped by Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General and Tidjane Thiam, chief executive of Prudential.

Awareness of the business case of diversity seems to be growing these days in Europe – also thanks to fierce competition coming from emerging economies. 

One of the main points Bieneosa Ebite and I made on Monday during our talk at the CIPR is that homogeneity leads to blind spots.

Organisations need diverse teams if they want to be able to look beyond the conventional frames of reference and innovate.

(in the photo with me from left to right, Sung-Joo Kim, CEO of MCM Holdings and PAWA Founder & President, Betty Yao MBE, PAWA Co-Founder & Chair of the Management Committee, Mei Sim Lai OBE, Diane Morris, TIAW President and Yang-May) 

Did you know that 2/3 of the world population live in Asia and half of them are women?

Yang-May and I attended the launch of the Pan Asian Women’s Association (PAWA) last night at Asia House.

PAWA is creating a platform for women from across Asia – from Japan to Iran – to share ideas, talk about common concerns and mentor the next generation.

A number of highly accomplished female business leaders these days come from Asia. Thirty five per cent of the 50 top women in world business featured on Saturday in the Financial Times come from the region.

At the launch, I enjoyed listening to Sonia Lo. Sonia was born in Korea and has worked in international finance for Google and United News and Media. She is the founder of London-based Chalsys Capital Partners.

Her advice to professional women is that “pushing a closed door sometimes is not the answer”. Sonia uses self-esteem as her strongest motivator.

I just learned on Twitter  that today is Interdependence Day, the idea being that what one person does has an effect on the entire world.

I guess we really learned that lesson during the subprime crisis  and its aftermath, which is still wreaking havoc.

It is not surprising that, with the international banking community still traumatised, microcredit  is experiencing a revival.

Given its high repayment rates and social character, the microfinance industry is attracting a new influx of private capital with institutional investors transforming microcredit institutions, previously run like NGOs, into more formalised entities.

Good news for the poor and in particular for women?

Not so sure.

Women’s World Banking (WWB) has been studying this phenomenon and is warning the microfinance world against the dangers of the “mission drift” this transformation is causing.

WWB has discovered that the percentage of women clients served by formalised microfinance institutions tends to decline after their transformation.

In the fourth year after transformation, the average percentage of women borrowers usually drops from 77 to 60 per cent. This is due to lenders migrating from their original mission to serve low-income clients towards generating profits for their new shareholders and maintaining high-interest rates.

Women in the developing world, who are often illiterate and own no collateral, are the most vulnerable client group.

Microfinance  works. It provides communities with viable structures. The challenge of the coming years will be to make sure that it remains true to its roots. For multinationals operating in the developing world this challenge represents a unique opportunity to become involved in new type of initiative with the potential of ending poverty.

This is what Corporate Social Responsibility in the era of global interdependence is all about.

We all know what fairy tales can do for comfort. How about what they can do for women?

I met last week with Laura Albornoz, the Chilean Minister for Women’s Affairs.

Her National Service for Women (SERNAM) is doing a great job training girls from a young age to consider professions traditionally regarded as “unsuitable” for women. SERMAN has published a series of booklets of “alternative” fairy tales.

In “My friend from the blue planet”, a star tells the story of Cuca, a girl who wants to be an astronomer and goes on to become the first person on Earth to see a brown dwarf star. It is based on the life of Maria Teresa Ruiz, the first person to graduate as an astronomer from the University of Chile and the first woman to receive a PhD in astrophysics from Princeton University.

Chile, which elected its first female president in 2006, is doing great work to fight stereotypes against women.

It was wonderful to have the opportunity to discuss with Laura and with my fellow TIAW member Ingrid Antonijevic, Former Minister of the Economy of Chile, the role played by international women’s networks in telling the stories of successful members and converting these experiences into concrete advice and encouragement for other women.

Never before have I felt so pround to be a writer and a story teller…

Photo: thanks to Patricia Andrade (from left to right: Silvia, Laura and Ingrid)

I did not know that women use 20,000 words every day, while men use only 7,000.

But I did know that half a billion women worldwide are still illiterate and 41 million girls are shut out of school gates because of poverty and prejudices.

I have blogged before about Queen Rania’s YouTube channel. I am a great fan.

This video makes a strong point about the advantages of female education in the developing world.

Educating girls is important and makes a lot of sense in both economic and geopolitical terms. Is the solution to the problem of female illiteracy going to come from governments? Or is social entrepreneurship going to provide the answer?

This week, I will be following the live video streaming of the Skoll World Forum on Social Enterpreneurship broadcasted from Oxford and I’ll be looking for ideas.

Never felt your blogging mojo running out…?

All you hear these days is talk about the economic crisis. It is difficult to think that people could be interested in topics not related to the current atmosphere of gloom and doom.

I feel that what people need most these days is comfort and inspiration.

I heard an encouraging speech the other week in Paris by Sheikha Hanadi Nasser Bin Khalid Al Thani of Qatar, founder of the investment company AMWAL.

She believes that when doing business, you might fail 80% of the times. But you will succeed 20% of the times and, ultimately, this is what counts.

Here is her advice to professional women:

• Women are often not sufficiently clear about their vision. Dreams have to be combined with tactics.
• Women also need to have full clarity about their brand and what they stand for.
• They need to understand that being an entrepreneur is about discipline and overcoming the feeling of isolation.
• Inspiration is important. Visualise where you want to be and what you want to do!

Last night, I attended a talk by Professor Malcom Harper organised by City Women’ s Network on the topic of microfinance.

Microfinance was pioneered by Professor Muhammad Yunus during the 1974 famine in Bangladesh. Prof. Yunus started by lending $27 to a woman who made bamboo furniture. He then went on to establish Grameen Bank, which continued lending small sums of money to the poor and unemployed. In 2006, Yunus and Grameen won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Since the 1970s, Grameen has lent more than $5 billion to five million borrowers (more than 95% women).

Professor Harper, co-editor of the book “What is wrong with microfinance?”, is a staunch critic of a model that, he believes, drives poor people into debt. The problem, he says, is that microfinance starts from the debt end instead of educating people to save first and then take a loan. Prof. Harper compared microfinance institutions with the Raiffeisen Banken, which started off as cooperatives in rural parts of Germany and Austria, collecting money from the farmers and turning it into loans.

The problem is that you cannot compare the poverty of Bangladesh with that of the German or Austrian countryside in the 19th century. Bavarian farmers might not have been wealthy but they certainly had property (a cow, land, a farmhouse, seeds, etc.) that could be used as collateral for the loans they received from their Raiffeisen Bank. Poor people in Bangladesh don’t have this luxury; most of the times all they own are the clothes they have on their body.

Another criticism moved by Professor Harper  is that women are forced by the microfinance model into peer groups, which oblige them to cross-guarantee each other and to share the most intimate details of their financial situation. This shows how little Prof. Harper understands the dynamics of women’s groups. Women have a need for a sense of belonging. Even in industrialised countries, women get together in support groups to share intimate details of different aspects of their lives (career, child education, aging parents, etc.) and to receive support. In developing countries, organisations like Grameen Bank given women a support structure that strengthens their self-esteem and gives them the opportunity to make a living.

I guess there is a need out there for critics of microfinance like Prof. Harper to highlight the weaknesses of the model. However, the problem starts when critics resort to impossible comparisons and forget the circumstances under which microfinance organisations have to operate.

In my previous job, I had the enormous fortune to work with Prof. Yunus. I found his faith in humankind’s potential and the ability of poor people to work their way out of poverty highly inspiring. I remember how he told me that poor people have no memories of success and this is why they do not believe that their lives can change. Grameen has faith in people who have been taught for generations not to have faith in themselves.It is a pity that the importance of this message is lost on microfinance ‘insiders’ like Prof. Harper.