bop-protocol

Creating markets for the base of the pyramid

Posted Wed, 10/28/2009 - 15:02 by Patrick@BRINQ
Creating markets for soy protein in Andhra Pradesh, India

Where was the market for Solae's protein in rural India? It needed to be created.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published an article by my colleague Erik Simanis about our work developing new markets in the base of the world's income pyramid. Erik is a pioneer in business development methodologies for the BoP.

The Base of the Pyramid is not actually a market. True, those billions of low-income people have a lot in common. But they don't have two of the vital characteristics you need to have a consumer market. They haven't been conditioned to think that the products being offered are something one would even buy. And they haven't adapted their behaviors and budgets to fit the products into their lives. A consumer market is nothing less than a lifestyle built around a product.

Erik uses a range of examples including bottled water in the U.S., P&G's PUR water cleaning powder, KickStart's MoneyMaker pump, and our own work with Solae in India to demonstrate that companies should think twice before assuming a market for their products exists, even if those products are well designed. And if a market doesn't exist then traditional market entry approaches - the kind that most companies use and most managers are taught - are largely ineffective. Instead, companies need to learn to create markets.

Since the first BoP Protocol pilot in 2005, our work has focused more and more on the challenges of creating new markets and building the enterprises that enable them. Over the years, we have learned a number of hard, but handy, lessons. Three of those lessons are described below.

BoP Interview at WDI

Posted Sat, 11/18/2006 - 00:36 by Patrick@BRINQ

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.

Belated Postcards from India and Brazil

Posted Thu, 11/09/2006 - 17:56 by Patrick@BRINQ

Everyone knows what it's like… you've got stack of postcards, a head full of great experiences and even with all your best intentions, you just get too caught up in what you're doing to write it all down and pop them in the mail.

Well writing posts can be the same way, so here's a belated summary of the last six months in India and Brazil.

Kibera Nights

Posted Tue, 08/15/2006 - 16:33 by Patrick@BRINQ

Patrick in KiberaBy Patrick Donohue, August 2005

"In Nairobi, stay away from the shanty towns, especially at night."

The door closes, Kibera opens, and East Africa's largest shantytown swallows us into the night. It's dark near Edwin's place, a sight sapping blackness that is darker with the knowledge of the trenches and trips that lie ahead, a misstep can send you rolling down make shift steps to soak in the flowing runoff, Kibera's sewage system. Edwin can see well enough in the dark and navigates the pitfalls without hesitation; I make a joke about mzungu eyes and then switch on my torch. I notice as we walk that the only other people using torches are the mzee, the old men or women. We walk through small alleys and walkways, passing row after row of mud houses with radios blaring, stray light seeping through cracks around the doors and below the roofs. I can't shake the feeling that I'm walking across somebody's front porch but I soon realize that's exactly what we're doing.

Patrick off to play again - BoP Protocol in India

Posted Mon, 04/10/2006 - 22:34 by Patrick@BRINQ

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!

Inspirations: BoP-Protocol.org and e4sw.org

Posted Mon, 04/10/2006 - 21:48 by Patrick@BRINQ

Things have been pretty quiet around the BRINQ Workshop, only a few posts in the last six months, so what have we been up to?

Well, besides trying to get things started in Brazil again, I've been doing a lot of work for other folks, most particularly Enterprise for a Sustainable World (ESW), a new organization started up by Cornell University professor and Sustainability guru Stuart Hart, whose book "Capitalism at the Crossroads" we covered here before.

Clearing things up - Who wrote the BoP Protocol?

Posted Mon, 04/03/2006 - 07:41 by Patrick@BRINQ

Yes, things have been quiet around here for a while, and expect a few more updates in the near future about what's been going on. But for the moment we need to clear a few things up. Please take a look at the updated FAQ on the About BRINQ page. The most important question is answered in more detail below:

Q: Who wrote the BoP Protocol?
A: Not BRINQ.Yes, things have been quiet around here for a while, and expect a few more updates in the near future about what's been going on. But for the moment we need to clear a few things up. Please take a look at the updated FAQ on the About BRINQ page. The most important question is answered in more detail below:

Q: "Who wrote the BoP Protocol?"
A: "Not BRINQ."

The BoP Protocol is the work of the BoP Protocol Working Group, which is directed out of Cornell University. So although you see a lot of stories about the Base of the Pyramid Protocol here on BRINQ.com, BRINQ is not in any way institutionally involved in the Protocol. We didn't write it, we don't run it, we don't decide how it's being developed. As the only web site that had been actively writing about the Protocol for some time, there was a lot of confusion over the question of authorship in the past. We have to apologize for not having made that more clear.

Global Heroes - Carolina for Kibera

Posted Thu, 11/03/2005 - 21:45 by Patrick@BRINQ

Another story about one of the BoP Protocol Pilot's most important partners: Carolina for Kibera (CFK) last week was honored as one of Time Magazine's "Heroes of Global Health" and Acting President Kim Chapman was featured at the Global Health Conference in New York.

CFK is an incredible community-based organization in Kibera: one of the world's largest slums on the outskirts of Nairobi Kenya. The organization's programs target issues of ethnic violence, health care, safe spaces for girls, and environmental sanitation and income generation. All their work follows a common theme of participatory development and the organization's operations in Kenya are run by Kiberans.

A Bigga Boda - XAccess' Cycle in Kenya

Posted Tue, 10/04/2005 - 21:54 by Patrick@BRINQ

After five months of intense work in communities in Kenya and Brazil we've got a long backlog of stories to share. Now that we've got a short breather we thought we'd post a few. This one from Kenya came up recently when we were asked via our colleague & mentor Stuart Hart, "Have you heard of these XAccess guys?"

Actually, yes we have!

In June the BoP Protocol team headed out to the shores of Lake Victoria in Kisumu, Kenya to visit with the XAccess and KickStart folks who were modifying an innovative bicycle for the local market. XAccess is the non-profit sister of XtraCycle, maker of the world's first Sport Utility Bicycle, and KickStart, the NGO formerly known as ApproTEC, is a long time provider of enterprise enabling technologies to low-income communities. KickStart is helping XAccess to commercialize its bicycle in Kenya as the "Bigga Boda", an upgrade to the existing "Boda Boda" bicycle taxis, so named from their early days on the border of Kenya and Uganda where the taxi riders cries of "Border! Border!" eventually morphed into the "Boda Boda" of today.

More from Kenya - Justin's Stories

Posted Mon, 09/26/2005 - 22:06 by Patrick@BRINQ

For those of you looking for more tales from Patrick's time working on the Base of the Pyramid Protocol Pilot in Kenya, we'd be remiss in not pointing you to the writings of our colleague Justin De Koszmovszky. Justin is a 2nd Year MBA student at Cornell's Johnson School of Management, President of the Cornell's Net Impact chapter, a Park Leadership Fellow, and an all around brilliant & great guy. Justin is part of the BoP Protocol Pilot team in Kenya and spent most of his time in country actually in the country, out on the fields and farms of Nyota and Molo. As you can see from the sample below, Justin's writings and insights are beautiful, touching, and really make his experience in Kenya come alive. Highly recommended.

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