Developing entrepreneurial activity systems at the bottom of the pyramid

Abstract

A relatively new area of discussion within the strategic entrepreneurship domain is a creation of novel strategies by established firms to meet the needs of the poor at the bottom of the world's economic pyramid. Scholars in this area advocate that multinational companies take advantage of profit making opportunities in serving the four billion people who are the world's poorest consumers. To do so effectively, multinationals need to build new activity systems that support the novel strategies required to function in a setting, vastly different from their typical markets. Bottom of the pyramid (BOP) scholars strongly suggest companies involve multiple parties familiar with the BOP environment in this process. In this paper, I describe how companies can go about developing entrepreneurial activity systems that incorporate sources of knowledge and information from the bottoms of various pyramid stakeholders in a way that facilitates the design and execution of opportunistic strategies.