The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks) (Paperback)

by C.K. Prahalad (Author) "Turn on your television and you will see calls for money to help the world's 4 billion poor-people who live on far less than $2..." (more)
Key Phrases: transaction governance capacity, reducing corruption, soap story, The Fortune, Bottom of the Pyramid, Casas Bahia (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"C. K. Prahalad argues that companies must revolutionize how they dobusiness in developing countries if both sides of that economic equation areto prosper. Drawing on a wealth of case studies, his compelling new bookoffers an intriguing blueprint for how to fight poverty with profitability."
Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect,Microsoft

"The Bottom of the Pyramid belongs at the top of the reading list forbusiness people, academics, and experts pursuing the elusive goal ofsustainable growth in the developing world. C. K. Prahalad writes withuncommon insight about consumer needs in poor societies andopportunities for the private sector to serve important public purposes whileenhancing its own bottom line. If you are looking for fresh thinking aboutemerging markets, your search is ended. This is the book for you."
Madeleine K. Albright, Former U.S. Secretary of State

"Prahalad challenges readers to re-evaluate their pre-conceived notionsabout the commercial opportunities in serving the relatively poor nations ofthe world. The Bottom of the Pyramid highlights the way to commercialsuccess and societal improvement--but only if the developed worldreconceives the way it delivers products and services to the developingworld."
Christopher Rodrigues, CEO, Visa International

"An important and insightful work showing persuasively how the privatesector can be put at the center of development, not just as a rhetoricalflourish but as a real engine of jobs and services for the poor."
Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description
The world's most exciting, fastest-growing new market is where you least expect it: at the bottom of the pyramid. Collectively, the world's billions of poor people have immense untapped buying power. They represent an enormous opportunity for companies who learn how to serve them. Not only can it be done, it is being done--very profitably. What's more, companies aren't just making money: by serving these markets, they're helping millions of the world's poorest people escape poverty. C.K. Prahalad's global bestseller The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, now available in paperback, shows why you can't afford to ignore "Bottom of the Pyramid" (BOP) markets. Now available in paperback, it offers a blueprint for driving the radical innovation you'll need to profit in emerging markets--and using those innovations to become more competitive everywhere. This new paperback edition includes eleven concise, fast-paced success stories from India, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela--ranging from salt to soap, banking to cellphones, healthcare to housing. These stories are backed by more detailed case studies and 10 hours of digital videos on whartonsp.com. Simply put, this book is about making a revolution: building profitable "bottom of the pyramid" markets, reducing poverty, and creating an inclusive capitalism that works for everyone. Preface xi About the Author xix Part I: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid 1 Chapter 1: The Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid 3 Chapter 2: Products and Services for the BOP 23 Chapter 3: BOP: A Global Opportunity? 47 Chapter 4: The Ecosystem for Wealth Creation 63 Chapter 5: Reducing Corruption: Transaction Governance Capacity 77 Chapter 6: Development as Social Transformation 99 Part II: Business Success Stories from the Bottom of the Pyramid 113 Financing the Poor 115 Aravind Eye Care--The Most Precious Gift 131 Energy for Everyone 137 Agricultural Advances for the Poor--The EID Parry Story 149 Retail for the Poor 159 Information Technology to the Poor 169 The Jaipur Foot Story 187 Health Alerts for All 191 Transparent Government 201 The Annapurna Salt Story 213 Homes for the Poor--The CEMEX Story 221 From Hand to Mouth--The HHL Soap Story 235 Part III: On the Web at Whartonsp.com Video Success Stories Casas Bahia CEMEX Annapurna Salt Hindustan Lever Jaipur Foot Aravind Eye Care ICICI Bank ITC e-Choupal EID Parry Voxiva E+Co/Tecnosol Andhra Pradesh Full Success Case Stories in pdf format The Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid Known Problems and Known Solutions: What Is the Missing Link? Known Problems and Unique Solutions Known Problems and Systemwide Reform Scaling Innovations Creating Enabling Conditions for the Development of the Private Sector The EID Parry Story Biographies of the Researchers/Writers of the Success Case Stories from The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid 247 About the Video Success Stories 255 Index 257

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Wharton School Publishing; 1 edition (February 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131877291
• ISBN-13: 978-0131877290
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,955 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

126 of 131 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ruminating at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP), June 12, 2005

By	Peter Lorenzi (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Hardcover)

"Fortune" is an interesting, inspiring book. The study of poverty eradication gets short shrift in most business schools but this book suggests that a lot of resources and a phalanx of graduate students (since most graduate students claim to be poor, perhaps they empathize better; at least they're cheaper to hire than business faculty) at Wharton and Michigan did a lot of digging for answers. This is a noble cause, well-financed, and maybe these two business schools will support these efforts with a revision to their MBA curricula. While teaching a man to fish is better than giving a man a fish, it is better still to teach a village how to raise fish (or capital, or critical mass, or some other key resource), and that is the fundamental if implicit message and philosophy here. Poor people don't need charity; they need access to and information about the tools of capitalism, and governments and other not-for-profits are not likely to do this as such actions would put them out of business. Read the "Twelve principles of innovation for BOP markets" (pp. 25 - 27) and you'll get the basic Reader's Digest, Harvard Business Review executive summary.

The mendacity of the claim, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you," gets a lot of reinforcement here. Rather than help poor people, an early table (p. 11) shows that the government charges poor people more than rich people for the same water service. And the evidence, much of it discovered by Peru's Hernando De Soto, that governments delight in making entrepreneurship, innovation and capitalism almost a criminal offense, shines right through.

The false conceit exposed here is that governments are not likely to fix poverty, nor are NGOs, the UN, or other alphabetical, "not-for-profit" agencies. Maybe HLL, CEMEX, SMEs or some other, similarly acronymed, profit-seeking organizations will do it. It is not clear that there is a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, even if there are four billion people (depends, really, on how you define poverty) willing to spend a penny a day on shampoo. There certainly is a profit to be made, but this time it is the poor who stand most to profit from free, global markets.

"Fortune" also has little, nagging problems. Like most empiricists, this book wants to use data as a singular noun. The font is small and flourished, making the text physically difficult to read. There is a cryptic table (exactly what is a `nos' anyway"?), a graph with no labels for the x- and y-axes. The book is awash with acronyms and academic jargon. Some of the bold-faced assertions read like doctoral dissertation hypotheses. Maybe because the book is primarily graduate-student written case studies with a lengthy introduction by the author, there is a tendency to repeat information from previous chapters. Decrying excessive packaging and high transaction costs, the authors also commend single-use purchases on a daily basis, filling land fills with sachets and making shopping a daily chore. If we are going to `microfinance' progress, we might want to start with a store credit for a refillable shampoo bottle (I am pretty sure that Coca-Cola mastered this marketing concept in South America years ago). In case the bookstore browser is unsure as to what the book is about, the book has a title ("The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid"), a subtitle ("Eradicating poverty through profits" and a sub-subtitle ("Enabling dignity and choice through markets"). And the dust cover blurbs from Bill Gates, Madeleine Albright, and similar `names' are a bit hyperbolic.

David Landes ("The wealth and poverty of nations") did a better job of explaining the cultural and legal system changes needed to make transactions easier for the customers. TGO (I'll let you look it up) means we have to have a government that assists wealth creation rather than simply tax, block, or prohibit progress out of poverty by people.

101 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hardcover and tradepaperback are different!!!, April 13, 2007

By	J. Davis (Stanford CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Here is a note I sent to the editor after buying the tradepaperback version.

Your editorial staff has done something so dumb I am astounded! (Also really $%^& mad.) The hardcover and trade paperback versions of CK Prahalad - The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, are NOT the same. I assigned readings from this book to my class of 100 students. They went and bought the book and found that the case studies aren't there. On closer investigation I see that you shortened the case studies and renamed the chapters. Unfortunately the editing on the shortening is terrible and I simply can't ask my students to read such badly written material.

You did several things wrong
1) You sell two books with identical titles and covers, which have different content
2) You edited very very badly
3) You did this on an award winning book with high visibility

As far as I can tell there is no way for anyone to figure out that the content is different except in the very rare case that they own both versions.

This is a black mark on the Wharton name. What were you thinking?

-james

109 of 118 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day..., January 31, 2005

By	Christian Hunter "Christian hunter" (Austin, TX and Santa Barbara, CA,) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Hardcover)

...Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime". A famous Biblical quote, one that resonated with me strongly, and profoundly influenced my thinking on international aid, but more broadly, the problem of poverty, and the reticence of Capitalism in addressing it.

I'm a strong believer in capitalism, this wonderful book reinforced my belief in that system. It did so by showing how world poverty and consistently non-functional economies aren't because of capitalism, but for lack of capitalist attention.

Times have changed, technology and it's rapidly increasing efficacy in efficient delivery of products and services, necessitates that we change our attitude about heretofore neglected markets, and the nearly 5 billion people in them. "Inclusive Capitalism" as the author calls it.

Rich with important concepts like "Installment Sales" (which address the needs and constraints of low-income consumers), this book is a virtual blueprint for companies, as well as entreprenuers, who are interested in serving low-income consumers around the world.

The hardcover book also contains a CD. I usually skip viewing those, but I'm glad I didn't in this instance. Prahalad gives the introduction, then roughly a dozen case studies follow. From Appliance sales companies in Brazil, to a Cement company in Mexico; seeing the passion on the faces of their customers, how the companies have changed their lives, it is incredibly touching. You aren't watching customers, you're watching "evangalists" that would make your most devout American iPod fan seem like an unsatisfied customer.

I recommend this book highly.

Enjoy,

Christian Hunter
Santa Barbara, California