ABSTRACT
There is neither fortune nor mirage at the bottom of the pyramid: the poor are helped, both through nutritional, social, and/or employment profits, but this doesn’t turn into a fortune for the multination corporation (MNC) involved. Building a social business model whose main purpose it to address issues of poverty (or other sustainable development issues) requires corporate social innovation (CSI). MNCs engaged in such initiatives benefit from yet another type of return on investment. By setting self-sustainability as a constraint, CSI fosters a culture of challenge to conventional wisdom. CSIs can be seen as learning labs in which MNCs experiment new business models and learn how to develop radical innovations. To make our argument, we draw from several examples of partnerships in Bangladesh between MNCs and the Grameen Group.
