Bottom, Middle, Top of the pyramid

A project I worked on last semester parallels work that is being done at google.org - my project for Larry Keeley's class (dqe1.com/files/juncture-proposal.pdf) focused on creating an 'opportunity engine' that connects various NGOs like Kiva, Grammeen Bank, and Heifer Intl. to let them share data and get better coverage of their customers. The Google project (http://blog.google.org/2008/09/how-to-assess-entrepreneurial-potential.html) is more than a proposal - they of course have funding. They are aiming for a much higher spot on the small-business ladder, funding in the half-million dollar and up range. But the perspective and the goals are closely aligned: scaling down our immediate ambitions to reach out to a larger number of potential customers.

This is also the case in a new class I'm very excited about with Patrick Whitney this semester. We're examining why CK Prahalad's "Bottom of the Pyramid' theory isn't working out. He proposed in his 2006 book that large multinationals should consider serving people who make less than a few dollars a day - there are so many of them that even if we sell them a product for $.01 every day, we can make a killing over the course of a year with 4 billion customers. While this has worked out in a few isolated cases (Hindustan Lever, Mo Ibrahim's cell phone networks), in general it's taking longer than expected and companies are having a rough time with it. So my classmates and I are going to contact some of the leaders of organizations which have attempted and failed to try to develop a framework to help make this effort more reliably successful.

At this point in the process, we're still looking for organizations with experience reaching out to the BOP market and leaders to contact who might give us some perspective on the problem at hand.

Official google.org Blog: How to assess entrepreneurial potential? A new tool for SME lenders