Professor Iqbal Z. Quadir is the founder and director of the MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship. He is a leading advocate of commerce-based solutions to challenges facing developing countries. In the 1990s, Quadir founded Grameenphone, which provides effective telephone access throughout Bangladesh, based on the principle that commerce can create prosperity in low-income countries. As a result of initiating Grameenphone, he is also credited as the earliest observer that cell phones could be a transformative force for the poor.