ABSTRACT

The Base of the Pyramid (BoP) program shift from environmental degradation to entrenched poverty retained the fundamental commitment to a market solution: the poor, it contends, can be lifted from hardship by inclusion in capitalist markets. This chapter outlines the program as it has developed as a sustainability response from the world of business and business scholarship. Before undertaking an assessment of BoP from several perspectives, considering its applicability as a sustainability initiative. The chapter begins by locating the BoP program in the business response to the call for sustainability. A parallel movement developed in the 1990s under the title of "the triple bottom line", a term coined in 1994 by John Elkington, founder of British consultancy SustainAbility. In among the enthusiastic responses that greeted the development by C. K. Prahalad and others of the BoP paradigm there were nevertheless criticisms to be found.