Prahalad is Harvey C. Fruehauf Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Corporate Strategy and International Business at the University of Michigan Business School. He is a globally recognized business consultant who has worked with senior management at many of the world’s leading companies. With Gary Hamel, he co-authored the global business bestseller Competing for the Future. His most recent book, based on an article with the same title, is The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.
As Prahalad explains in his Preface, he wrote this book to suggest and explain a new approach by which to solve the social and economic problems of 80% of humanity. His approach would mobilize the resources, scale, and scope of multinational corporations (MNCs)–their investment capacity–in a co-creative partnership with localized nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in order to formulate and then implement “unique” solutions to the problems of 4 billion people who live on less than $2 a day at the bottom of the “pyramid” to which the book's title refers. “The process must start with respect for Bottom of Pyramid consumers as individuals. The process of co-creation assumes that consumers are equally important joint problem-solvers. New and creative approaches are needed to convert poverty into an opportunity for all concerned. That is a challenge.” First, he provides a framework for the active engagement of the private sector and suggests a basis for a profitable win-win engagement. He identifies all manner of adjustments, accommodations, and (yes) sacrifices each of the “players”–MNCs, NGOs, and the poor themselves–must be willing to make to ensure the success of the process. Next, he carefully and eloquently examines 12 case studies that involve a wide variety of businesses, each an exemplar of innovative practices, “where the BOP is becoming an active market and bringing benefits far beyond just products to consumers.” All of the companies share the same concern: “They want to change the face of poverty by bringing to bear a combination of high-technology solutions, private enterprise, market-based solutions, and involvement of multiple organizations.” As for Part III, it is provided as a CD that consists of 35 minutes of video success stories filmed on location in the BOP in India, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela. Although Prahalad has a compelling vision, he has neither illusions nor delusions about the difficulty of fulfilling that vision when undertaking the “new approach” he recommends in this book. His vision is bold, indeed of global proportions. However, his feet are planted firmly on the ground at the bottom of an enormous pyramid, one whose complexities are exceeded only by the unprecedented entrepreneurial opportunities it offers to help solve the social and economic problems of 80% of humanity. Given the importance and the urgency of the various issues that Prahalad explores so brilliantly in this book, there seem to be no acceptable alternatives to the approach he proposes.
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