Development experts and companies that are seeking to engage with the base of the pyramid are seeing great potential in mobile phones, the Internet and other technologies. Staff blogger Valentina Echeverry Perez talks about how a recent presentation from Microsoft's Akhtar Badshah got her thinking about the possibilities.
A few months ago, as part of Opportunities for the Majority’s lecture series, we had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Akhtar Badshah, Senior director of Global Community Affairs at Microsoft Corporation and co-author of the recent book Technology at the Margins: How IT Meets the Needs of Emerging Markets. An architect by training, Mr.
Luiz Ros, manager of the IDB's Opportunities for the Majority Initiative, talks about his roots in Brazil and his hopes for the upcoming BASE Forum in Sao Paulo.
Luiz Ros has been manager of the IDB’s Opportunities for the Majority Initiative since 2008. Before coming to the IDB, he worked on sustainable enterprise investments at the World Resources Institute and directed community projects at Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment.
Staff blogger Francisco Mejia looks at why impact measurements have not been a large part of BOP business projects to date, and describes a variety of approaches that can be used. Part one in a series.
C.K. Prahalad's seminal book “The Fortune at the Base of the Pyramid,” published over ten years ago, emphasized that innovation and fresh thinking were needed to harness the enormous opportunity represented by the BOP.
A blogger shares links to several recent stories that caught her eye, on topics ranging from microfinance to impact investment to financial services for low-income customers.
This summer, I got into the habit of posting some of the most interesting articles I come across on my Facebook page -- in the last two months I reposted over 100 links that I thought were worth reading. These stories ranged from interesting developments in microfinance, to new debates about international aid and the role of financial markets. In this blog, I share a selection of some of those posts from September and October.
Consultants from Dalberg Global Development Advisors talk about their role in advising the companies selected to participate in the Corporate Leaders Program for Success in Majority Markets. In the coming months, they'll provide regular updates on their work helping these companies develop their business plans.
Staff blogger Francisco Mejia looks at some of the lessons companies who want to serve the base of the pyramid can learn from the business tactics of Coca-Cola.
It was inspiring to watch a recent lecture in the TED series by Melinda French Gates on the lessons that emerge from the incredible success of Coca-Cola.
Dr. Ashraf Ghani of The Institute for State Effectiveness discusses the important role the private sector plays on creating stability in a country, shares an interesting story from his time as Afghan finance minister about the perils of underestimating the BOP market, and more.
Recently, Dr. Ashraf Ghani visited the Inter-American Development Bank to give a presentation entitled “State-Building as Market-Building.” Dr. Ghani has a unique and wide-ranging perspective on what makes a state effective. A native of Afghanistan, he served as the Afghan finance minister from 2002 to 2004. Previously, he worked as a university professor, spent a decade at the World Bank, and was a special advisor to the United Nations in 2001 for matters related to the transfer of power from the Taliban to the Afghan people.
Julián Ugarte of the Un Techo Para Mi País Innovation Center talks about how he got interested in using his industrial design skills on behalf of the base of the pyramid and his work consulting with companies on their BOP product designs.
Last year, MajorityMarkets.org told you about an event organized by Opportunities for the Majority and the Un Techo Para Mi País Innovation Center in Santiago, Chile, which was meant to get engineering professors and their students excited about using their skills on projects that benefit the base of the pyramid.
Guest blogger Heather Esper of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan offers advice on measuring and understanding the impact of BOP business projects on poverty.
Hearing the Voices of the Poor through Impact Assessment
When developing business models that engage with the base of the pyramid, companies are, of course, looking for sustainability and profitability, but they also want to know what effect their work will really have on people’s lives. We invited Heather Esper, a research associate at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, to tell us about the institute’s Impact Assessment Workshops, which are designed to help answer that very question.
On Monday, July 19, 2010, Opportunities for the Majority held a "BOP Modeling Workshop" to teach executives from a range of companies about the elements of base of the pyramid business models.
On Monday, July 19, representatives from dozens of companies gathered in Miami for a Base of the Pyramid (BOP) Modeling Workshop organized by the Inter-American Development Bank’s Opportunities for the Majority Initiative and Dalberg Global Development Advisors. The participants came from a wide variety of sectors, including construction, manufacturing, agro-industry, financial services and business consulting. But they all shared an interest in learning more about BOP business models – that is, how companies are finding new ways of engaging with low income communities.
