This is the Safari online edition of the printed book.

An idea can change the world...

• How to serve the world’s poorest people and make a profit

• New strategies and tactics for building winning businesses in today’s emerging markets

• New bottom of the pyramid trends in technology, healthcare, consumer goods, finance, and beyond

• Insights from top CEOs succeeding in emerging markets

• New and updated case studies--from Jaipur Rugs’ revolutionary supply chain to Reuters’ data services for farmers

Five years ago, C.K. Prahalad’s The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid showed companies how they could reignite profits and growth by serving the world’s five billion poorest people. Hundreds of firms have successfully taken that path--building large, profitable businesses that are reducing poverty and eliminating human misery at the same time.

Now, Prahalad has updated his extraordinary book to reflect the lessons of the past five years: business-building strategies, techniques, and innovations proven to work in emerging markets. The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid: doing well by doing good or doing good by doing well!

Inspired by C.K. Prahalad’s breakthrough insights in the original edition of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, a wide variety of firms are identifying, building, and profiting from new markets among the world’s poorest people--while at the same time helping eliminate poverty and human misery. Five years after this book’s first publication, Prahalad’s ideas are no longer isolated instances of innovations.  They are proven, widely practiced “reality.”

In this 5th Anniversary Edition, Prahalad updates his book to give readers a picture of how this idea is being implemented in poor regions around the world.

Prahalad also offers an up-to-the-minute assessment of key questions such as: Is there truly a market? Is there scale? Is there profit? Is there innovation? Is this a global opportunity? Five years ago, executives could be hopeful that the answers to these questions would be positive. Now, as Prahalad demonstrates, they can be certain of it.

• Solving the unique problems faced by bottom of pyramid customers
  How to make a profit by helping people escape poverty and misery

• Breakthrough forms of innovation for emerging markets
  From rugs to cellphones, finance to energy, supply chains to state-of-the-art technology

• Building new ecosystems for wealth creation
  You can’t do it alone--but you can do it together

• Scaling up to impact the enterprise--and society
  Beyond “micro-businesses” and prototypes: large presence, large wins

This e-book version includes bonus extended versions of 13 case studies. On the website are companion videos available for download.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 87 Ratings

Limited solution to the world's problems - 2010-02-06
Reviewer Rating:
This book when it was originally published, ushered in a lot of thinking and planning on how to serve the people who are poor and considered to be at the economic bottom of the pyramid. The bottom of the pyramid is defined in this book to be people who earn less than $2 per day on average and therefore are not the typical consumers that most companies tend to target. This edition of the book is a reprise of it, five years later.

It would not do to simply reprint the exact same book as the economy moves fast and what made sense at one time, may not be valid any more five years later. On the other hand, some things would not have changed. So, how do you combine both possibilities into one? The approach taken here is to reprint the original book, but also add to it numerous updates. So, for instance, there is a brand new introduction section that speaks of the evolution and practical results that happened in the interim. Also, the book had case studies when originally published and each of these case studies has been updated via a short additional set of paragraphs. Finally, the original book listed attempts being made by several companies to already serve this segment of the population, so a whole new section was added in which the CEOs or executives in charge of those divisions added their own words to what took place over the five years that have passed. In this way we can read the original thoughts and see how they evolved as practical experience came in over the interim.

For those who are not familiar with the original work, the author, C.K. Prahalad posits that there is an economic pyramid in effect throughout the world. While most of the companies in the world tend to compete for the attention and money of the upper parts of the pyramid because of the relative affluence of that segment, there is actually a lot of money to be made by serving those people who are at the bottom of that same pyramid. While a consumer who subsists on $2 per day cannot be expected to purchase multiple luxury items, there are so many of them, that the economic returns of serving their needs are immense, and in many cases larger than serving the affluent. Looking beyond the self interest of the company, there is also a societal benefit because allowing capitalism to move downwards like this engages the entrepreneurial capacity and drive of that many more people, which tends to improve their lives much more than governments and charities can, and moreover, those improvements tend to be much more sustainable.

One of the weakest aspects of the book is the concentration of examples and stories in India. While this is understandable in a sense - the Indian society is relatively open, accessible, and immensely large - it is somewhat curious why there are limited examples of this approach in other countries. Could it be that the Indian cultures are particularly amenable to these ideas where other societies might not be as successful? This is not to say that there are not some examples from other countries (Casas Bahias in Brazil, Cemex in Mexico) but the vast majority of case studies are Indian - and even these tend to concentrate in one or two states.

I was most interested in reading the various case studies and trying to understand how all of society benefited - the concern being that maybe these are just new ways of "exploiting" the poor. There is not a clear cut picture in that regard. In some cases, it is clear that the implementation of these ideas merely acted to shift the economic benefits from one group to another (see the description of e-choupal where the kinds of middlemen who benefited changed). However, the book does try to make the claim that most consumers that have had access to these ideas have benefited. I could see only one case where that was clearly the case and that was the newest case study - Jaipur Foot. On the other hand, even in that case, the majority of the beneficiaries are essentially receiving charity (most of the patients do not pay for their treatments, and would not have gotten them otherwise. This does tend to make one question the sustainability of this effort.

One irritating aspect unfortunately was that the author decides to use a lot of three letter acronyms that he creates in this book. So, the folks that he looks to server are referred to as BOP (Bottom Of the Pyramid) - which is OK, but then he goes on to talk about MNC, TGC, and more. There are some areas of the book where the quantity of acronyms is so dense that you need a separate sheet expanding them all to try and follow the text. That is an unfortunate practice and habit that the editors should have eliminated.

To summarize, the idea is very interesting and I was interested to read how it was implemented and benefited the people at the bottom of the pyramid. The picture that emerges is mixed at best and the book also misses the opportunity to tie in some other efforts made towards the same population (Grameen Bank is mentioned once or twice but not in depth). Finally, the almost exclusive focus on India makes this a less successful and powerful book and idea than it could have been.

Business needs to work differently in different markets... - 2010-02-05
Reviewer Rating:
I was very impressed with this book. In detail it shows that there are business opportunities even with the lowest earners, and additionally there is opportunity for profit while also doing some good and improving the lives of people in need. The case studies show how companies have done this through various methods including product repackaging, reformulation, financing, and decentralization. Many of these examples are from India, with others from Brazil, Mexico, etc. This version of the book also includes updates for each case study showing how they've progressed since the last version was published.

I feel the book is one of the better and more enlightening management/strategy books; also appropriate and useful as a textbook.

The CD that comes with the hardcover version contains (3-6 minute) videos about the case studies. It is intended for a Windows install, but if you use Quicktime on a Mac it will play the WMV files in the CD's videos directory fine (you may need to install the Flip4Mac Quicktime addon if you don't already have it).

Subject isnt new, but this book is! - 2010-01-28
Reviewer Rating:
It takes a strange perspective...albeit a seemingly left-wing capitalist one (is there a such thing?) to the subject. An interesting read...I dont know if I didnt believe some of the concepts, or just didnt understand how they could work. Wealth cant be created from nothing without resources, and money coming FROM somewhere...but the book was entertaining, and was inspiring.

A need for a market is a necessity for wealth. - 2010-01-24
Reviewer Rating:
C.K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid lays out rather clearly the vast and ever growing bottom of the economic pyramid of the world where billions of people are in need of many things. Any one of those needs is a reason to create a market and grow economies. Be it in energy, or food, or textile, or what haven't you, these needs somehow must be satisfied, thus creating a fortune. There is really one impediment for a healthy economic process to take hold: corruption. Prahalad discusses the topic on numerous occasions. Elimination of corruption and bringing in accountability are paramount to the success of a capitalist system. Only this way, what Prahalad calls Transaction Governance Capacity, can be achieved to enforce rules and achieve adequate transparency in business transactions.

This book also comes with a CD and numerous case studies by Prahalad's students that present businesses' way to satisfy needs and generate surplus for their growth and sustainability.

Brilliant, Compassionate, and Updated - 2010-01-21
Reviewer Rating:
Again, Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid provides practical hope for people in poverty. Highly recommended.

Browse Similar Topics

Top Level Categories:
Business

Sub-Categories:
Business > International Business