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Staff blogger Claudia Martinez says that while many companies are starting to really understand the concepts behind base of the pyramid business models, there are still a few that don't quite "get it" yet.
Opportunities for the Majority research fellow Valentina Echeverry Perez summarizes two recent events at the IDB which brought a variety of experts together to discuss the past, present and future of BOP business models in Latin America and the Caribbean, and beyond.
Mid-February was jam-packed with activity for the Opportunities for the Majority (OMJ) Initiative at the Inter-American Development Bank. On Monday, February 14, OMJ brought together more than 70 experts from multilateral institutions, investment funds, governments, NGOs, academia and private companies for its third annual Strategic Dialogue Partners' meeting to discuss leading trends and recent experiences in the Base of the Pyramid field.
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.
Companies in the food and agro-industry sectors are uniquely positioned to improve lives through their base of the pyramid business projects. At a recent conference on "The Potential of Private Sector Solutions in Nutrition," executives learned about a mapping study and about opportunities for them to get involved.
Last year, Opportunities for the Majority joined forces with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition [GAIN] and the FEMSA Foundation to carry out a regional mapping study of private sector involvement in meeting the nutritional needs of the base of the pyramid in Latin America.
Only 13% of lower and middle-income Mexicans use the Internet, in many cases because computer access in rural areas is limited or nonexistent. Learn about a pilot project that is helping connect villagers in the Yucatan region to the rest of the world through affordable, high quality Internet service.
At about 2:00 pm on Thursday, July 9, I received an e-mail saying, “we are at a store and it works!” I knew exactly what this cryptic message meant and where it was coming from: a remote rural village in Yucatan, Mexico, where many houses do not have electricity and, until that moment, access to Internet was limited only to the very few who could afford a thirty minute walk and a ME$200 taxi ride to the nearest town.
Steven J. Puig, senior vice president for the private sector at the IDB, discusses how the work of Opportunities for the Majority and similar organizations offers opportunities not only to the "majority," but also to the companies and entrepreneurs engaging with the base of the pyramid.
At the IDB, when we talk about the “opportunities” associated with working in majority markets, we usually mean the opportunity for those living at the base of the pyramid to get access to jobs, durable and consumer goods, basic services or financial services. The name of our initiative dedicated to encouraging such efforts in Latin America is, of course, “Opportunities for the Majority.” Such projects also offer great opportunities not only for the “Majority,” but also to the companies involved.
Donald F. Terry, former manager of the IDB's Multilateral Investment Fund, explains why the saying "it's expensive to be poor" is the key to understanding the potential of investing in majority markets.
In my last blog post, I shared one of my favorite sayings about working with the base of the pyramid: “The poor don’t lack intelligence and initiative, what they lack is money and opportunity.” Here’s another one: “It’s expensive to be poor.” It sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s true, and it’s the key reason why entrepreneurial involvement in majority markets can be so successful.
In December 2009, Opportunities for the Majority is holding two roundtable events, one in Panama City and the other in Buenos Aires, at which local business leaders can hear about the challenges and benefits of developing projects that engage the base of the pyramid.
Visionaries, researchers and investors are all crucial to the development of BoP business models, but if businesses aren’t involved, there’s not much of a business model.
For many businesses, entering majority markets makes "business as usual" seem like "business as unusual." Staff blogger Maria Marta Laurito offers some advice on getting started.
For many organizations, a clear way to say that there is nothing extraordinary about what needs to be done is to say that it is “Business as Usual.” However, for a company that has not yet ventured into the low-income market segment, working with the BoP is as unusual as it comes. For a private organization, conducting ‘business as unusual’ means having to learn many things all over again: reaching new customers, exploring new distribution channels, retesting business assumptions and redefining how they market themselves. This can be a steep learning curve.
As you learn about MajorityMarkets.org and Opportunities for the Majority, we thought it would be good to tell you a little about our history. We asked Donald F. Terry, founding manager of the IDB’s Multilateral Investment Fund, to explain how Opportunities for the Majority came to be.
I met with Ambassador Luis Alberto Moreno in the fall of 2005, just before he became president of the IDB. He told me he liked the work we were doing on microfinance and remittances at the MIF, and invited my ideas on taking the bank in other new directions. I told him I’d recently attended two conferences on social entrepreneurship organized by the World Resources Institute, and had been greatly impressed by the enthusiasm and insight of the attendees.
