Base of Pyramid (BoP)

Check out this link:
http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/sge/docs/BoP_Protocol_2nd_ed.pdf

Fascinating attempt to build radically new kinds of business models for corporations to 'sell to' the world's poorest (Base of Pyramid) in a win-win way. I like the way they are thinking about their process as a whole...re-thinking models from the ground up. Here's an excerpt:

"The BoP Protocol is a co-venturing process that integrates within a corporate entrepreneurship framework leading-edge thinking across a range of fields, including economic anthropology, international development, empathy-based design, and environmental management. As one senior manager familiar with the process describes, “it is a structured approach to a non-structured challenge.”

Central to the BoP Protocol are the principles of “mutual value” and “cocreation.” By mutual value, we mean that each stage of the process, not simply the new business, creates value for all partners in terms important to each.

The “co-” component of “co-creation” captures the need for the company to work in equal partnership with BoP communities to imagine, launch, and grow a sustainable
business. Co-development catalyzes business imagination and ensures the business model is culturally-appropriate and environmentally sustainable by building off of local resources and capabilities. Importantly, it also expands the base of local entrepreneurial capacity. Key principles, techniques, and methods have been adapted from the fields of “participatory rural appraisal” (PRA) and “asset-based community development” (ABCD).

The “-creation” half of this logic reflects the view that a co-generated business concept has to be enacted through an evolutionary and highly interactive approach that ultimately crystallizes the new value proposition. In the absence of an existing product market that can be researched to reveal customer preferences and needs, the BoP Protocol uses action-learning techniques to roll-out a business concept in a low-risk manner. A “seed” value proposition is progressively evolved by the corporation together with community"