Roughly two billion people in the world live on $2 a day or less. Of these a staggering 50 per cent are estimated to be micro entrepreneurs, running a small business to make ends meet but employing only a handful of people. If just a small proportion of these entrepreneurs were encouraged to grow and invest in their business, and hire more employees, it could transform the fortunes of the developing economies, and billions of people living in poverty. In this article, Stephen Anderson-Macdonald discusses the "Managerial Capital and Business Transformation in Emerging Markets" project, among others, which examines how transformational entrepreneurs can be identified and nurtured.