Towards Sustainable Base of Pyramid Market: Role of ICTs in Shared Innovation

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to make a systematic review of the literature on role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in sustainability of the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) markets by studying the impact of ICT on innovation development at BOP. BOP markets are those segments of the global markets that have an income of about two to four dollars or less and are untapped fortunes for the business (Prahalad, 2002). BOP is fraught with dearth of infrastructure and resources which makes it hard for business firms to work out viable and sustainable strategies as the separations between the producers and end users are much wider in these markets compared with developed markets. Use of ICT helps reduce these separations by developing shared innovations with the people at BOP. Systematic literature review approach has been adopted to analyze the peer-reviewed journals for the period 2000 to 2019 using Google Scholar and Science Direct. BOP, ICT and Shared Innovations were the key words used in this search. Our findings suggest that ICT has significant role in development of shared innovations at the BOP markets as it bridges the physical market separation with its internet and web-based networks. This research has implications for busines managers, as it will guide them in making viable and sustainable strategies to run their businesses in these huge un-tapped markets.