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Fortune
at Bottom of Pyramid is a culmination of CK Prahalad's
learning curve and passion as a strategy writer. In 1994 he
co-authored with Gary Hamel on the Harvard Business Review
papers which later evolved into book called Competing for
The Future 1994 with a more human/service/diversity context
in it than Porter's 2000 page tomes of the 1980s.
Fortune at Bottom of Pyramid focuses only on strategy, design,
knowledge, management, and marketing focused on serving the
world’s developing country majority, starting with the
poorest. In the book he encourages us to change the image
of the very poor - they are in reality resilient entrepreneurs
and fussily value conscious consumers.
The book's 10 extensive cases show that reality-making not
image-making is vital for serving the poorest needs whether
this is with amputated legs, iodized salt, eye care, or soap
that disinfects, micro finance- in other words the way
advertising in America worked 100 years ago. The founders
of these companies loved the societies they were dedicated
to serving, usually coming from them and so the explains in
large part why they were successful. Thus while BOP corporations
can sustain far more wealth and productivity for all involved
they must be convincing in terms of basing themselves on a
authentic commitment to the people they serve and simply the
desire of those who control these companies to become incredible
wealthy and powerful.
Hamel & Prahalad always talk about core system designs
that leaders who want a future should transparently attend
to unique relationship dynamics of - be these the knowledge
productivity flows of Core Competencies or the reputation
demand relationships of the banner brands. Cross-disciplinary
connections were already valued more than separate tangibles
back in 1994, and are sustained by context-specific governance
not standard measures. Pralahad doesn't separate knowledge
or brand seeing both as integrating trustworthy leadership
communications with service and other learning from community
roots up. In BOP Prahalad calls for civil society across nations
to end market corruptions and for the love of diversity to
question global professions who sell their one way as best.
Chris Macrae notes that Prahalad points out that 4 billion
out of 6 billion people in this world are at Bottom of the
Global Socioeconomic Power Pyramid and none are served by
global corporations. Even worse they are not represented in
western media as the resilient entrepreneurs and value conscious
customers they are. To address this, Chris Macrae is seeking
to catalogue discussions where Bottom of the Pyramid and related
genre are being discussed; and to start seeing how to get
different hemisphere perspectives debated. For more go here.
Chris adds that “Prahalad's book is big with many
different angles, so I am sure there are more relevant starting
points than my generic attempt for each particular community
but let's just start by seeing who and where people are talking
about the book.” If you or your projects are already
discussing/connecting with BOP insights at some other bookmark
please send us this info and join the mice trail at Disruptive
MICE.
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