Resources for Business at the Base of the Pyramid (BBOP)

[Jenara Nerenberg]

Here are a few resources for BBOP:

NextBillion.net - a great site for analysis, news, events, and people working on BOP issues
MobileActive.org - a dynamic site with news, resources, and publications on mobile applications for development
Base of the Pyramid Protocol - The founders of the BOP Movement share field projects, publications, and analysis on the ongoing development of BOP best practices.

[Amit]

Two weeks ago, Mr. Bill Kramer (author of the Next 4 Billion book) lectured in CSU. He was highlighting about the market size in BOP. The market is about $5 trillion dollar and Asia has the largest share in that equation. The interesting part of the research was as the income of the people of the BOP increase, the highest percentage of their income is spent on IT such as mobile phone etc.

[Amit]

A week ago, Mr. Paul Polak author of the book Out of Poverty and founder of IDE visited CSU. He talked about the low cost treadle pumps and the drip irrigation products. In his book Out of Poverty he described about the situation of a farmer in Nepal Mr Krishna Bahadur Thapa. The introduction of the drip irrigation in his farmland uplifted him and his family to middle income groups from a Dollar a day farmer.

[Jorge C. Starr]

Hello Jenara. I have just joined BOP Source. My company is soon to inaugurate a network of Digital Centers near and in Mexico City. I recommend you focus heavily on site metrics and some sort of trackware (understanding user preferences when not in the internet). A great tool to measure site traffic is Google Analytics. Tools like these allowed us to be very sensitive to cultural preferences and BOP users´relationship to technology (some of our users had never sat in front of a computer).

[Anand Sheombar]

Hi,

Other resources are:
http://www.wri.org/publication/the-next-4-billion The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid
http://bopnetwork.org/ The BOP Learning Lab™ Network
http://www.inclusivebusiness.org/ the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and SNV Netherlands Development Organization created a strategic Alliance to work together to address sustainable poverty alleviation through the involvement of the private sector.
http://www.undp.org/gimlaunch/ Creating Value for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor is a report by the UN Development Programme.
http://www.icco.nl/documents/pdf/BoP_as_Dvlpmnt_Strategy_2008_ICCO_... The Base of the Pyramid as a development strategy
About design for BOP:
http://www.id.iit.edu/100/index.php?id=571
http://www.io.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=01da40ff-7c18-4f73-a3d6...〈=en
http://www.hse.fi/EN/research/programs/globalization/events/bop/
Academic resources:
Of course books and articles for C.K. Prahald and Stuart Hart like http://wdi.umich.edu/ResearchInitiatives/BasePyramid/Resources/ and another interesting one
http://www.jamieandersononline.com/FreeArticles.html

[Nathan Ketsdever]

Book wise "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" and "Out of Poverty" are both quite good. "Bottom of the Pyramid" has fantastic and fascinating case studies. "Out of Poverty" cites individual examples from Paul Polak's and International Development Enterprises' past. The unique niche "Out of Poverty" fills is that is deals with those that live on only a $1 a day while Prahalad in BOP deals with a slightly different level of affluence (I believe $1 to $3)

Next Billion is quite good. What a great resource! I think the micro-enterprise case studies can provide some initial help and guidance for what works: http://www.digitaldividend.org/case/case.htm

Social Edge from the Skoll Foundation, isn't perhaps as info rich as Next Billion but deserves mention. I particularly like the Social Edge wiki (which has a ton of cataloged resources)

It looks like micro-franchise could play a big role in micro-enterprise in the future (to create better scalability and sustainability) And if you Google it you will find the microfranchise blog + wiki.

[Nathan Ketsdever]

I posted these Bottom of the Pyramid resources which summarizes this conversation and adds a couple extras. Feel free to leave a note in the comments section with extra resources.

Fantastic discussion!

[Jianghua]

There is a Platform for Strategy and Sustainability in IESE who also do some research on BOP and social entrepreneurship. Here is the website: http://www.iese.edu/es/Research/CentersandChairs/Centers/IPSSIESEPl...
And some working papers of IESE can be downloaded Here:
http://wwwapp.iese.edu/research/res_index.asp?lang=en

[Nathan Ketsdever]

Here are some free education resources and case study resources recommended by Jill at Social Edge

[Nathan Ketsdever]

Of course there is also the Sustainable Innovations Ning group.

[Nathan Ketsdever]

I linked to two published reports on social impact assessment. Social entrepreneurs often have to justify and explain the return on investment from their projects for the base of the pyramid, and hopefully a holistic impact assessment and analysis can help.

[Anand Sheombar]

Maybe this on is useful too, although I haven't tied it.

Database Developing World - Data Infrastructure for Research and Policy Analysis
http://www.databasedevelopingworld.org/