Iqbal Quadir, a Bangladeshi who emigrated to America to become an investment banker and then a business academic, had a dream of bringing mobile phones to his homeland.

ECONOMIST: Entrepreneurialism has become cool

By Iqbal Quadir, a professor of the practice of development and entrepreneurship at MIT, the founding director of its Legatum Center, and the founder of Grameenphone, in Bangladesh.

FORBES: Two Technologies Propelling India Forward

And advocates of mobile phones, including Iqbal Quadir, who has sparred with Mr Negroponte on the subject, point out that mobile phones provide immediate economic benefits, which enables them to spread in a self-sustaining, bottom-up way, without the need for massive government funding.

ECONOMIST: Finishing the job