bop

Green not working? Try chocolate...
source:cafepress

At a loss for how to explain what I do for a living, my sister once described my work as “something to do with pyramid schemes and poor people.” I can laugh at it now (the base of the pyramid is an awful phrase for a number of reasons), but the incident highlights how contradictory most people find the combination of capitalism and doing good for the world.

Even when familiar with enterprises that use “capitalism for good”, most people generally call to mind a class of companies that fill a small, though often profitable, niche of eco- or socially-conscious consumers. By in large, growth in those markets is defined by how much you can make people care (about the planet, about people, about pandas).

There’s another class of companies, however, who may use green means, but who don’t rely on consumer sentiment about society or the environment to sell their stuff. Among these are many of the companies I have worked with in recent years, where the name of the game has been catalyzing massive new markets, primarily in the so-called base of the economic pyramid. While they used inclusive means to serve poor communities, these companies’ goals were those of growth-seeking, profit-oriented enterprises.

"All learning integrates thinking and doing. All learning is about how we interact in the world and the types of capacities that develop from our interactions." - Presence, Peter Senge et al

A book discussion in the Amazon

One of the benefits of working in the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) has been the opportunity to take deep dives into experiences that were once totally foreign to me. Another benefit has been the long travel times between and across continents; plane flights, bus rides, and boat trips where I can immerse myself in books and articles covering a wide range of topics. [It's a sad fact that in these information-at-the-speed-of-thought days I actually have to be unplugged and forced to sit down before I pick up a good book!] Over the past several years both those benefits have twirled around my head ... like a pair of ballroom dancers continuously exchanging leading and following roles. I've never had a learning experience like my work in the BoP: this combination of thinking & doing and the knowledge that both have created.

About a year ago Ted London, Director of the Base of the Pyramid research initiative at the William Davidson Institute (WDI), kindly asked me to come out to the University of Michigan Business School to do a guest lecture in his MBA class Business Strategies for the Base of the Pyramid. Ted was previously a professor and Director of the BoP Learning Lab at UNC while I was a student there and we had worked together on project to explore innovative business models for renewable energy technologies in the BoP. During my visit to Michigan - which also included a guest lecture for Mike Gordon's Social Enterprise: Innovation in the Information Society course - Ted also interviewed me about my experiences working in the BoP and with the BoP Protocol in Kenya.

I've often said that one of the greatest joys of my work is the exceptional people that I get to meet and to develop friendships with. Whether or not it's Salim Mohamed and Sammy Gitau in Kenya, Murali Ramisetti in India, or Theresa Williamson in Brazil, I have been blessed to know so many people who are busy painting their visions of a better world into reality. So I've often wondered, "What it would be like to just go on a pilgrimage to find and learn from such people?"

This weekend I'm heading out to join another Base of the Pyramid Protocol project, the second ever actually, this time working with the Solae Company in India. You may recall that the first implementation of the BoP Protocol was last year with SC Johnson in Kenya, of which you can see many past articles here on BRINQ.com. The Solae Protocol project is via a partnership between Solae, Cornell University, and Enterprise for a Sustainable World (ESW). ESW has hired me to join up with Protocol co-director Erik Simanis and BoP consultant Tatiana Thieme (both who I worked with on the Kenya Protocol pilot) to facilitate Solae's implementation in low income communities in Mumbai and Hyderabad.

This will be my first trip to India, and besides being personally excited for the experience, I believe the project will be a great boon for the continuing development of the Protocol. Not only are the target region and sponsoring company quite different than the last time around, but the structure of the project itself is an evolution of what we did in Kenya… most significant is the inclusion of local professionals and students on the core Protocol team.

I'll be reporting from the field every chance I get, both here and on other upcoming sites I'll be listing links to.

And of course, I'll always be on the look out for cool innovations and toys too!