ABSTRACT
The chapter shows business students how to successfully design business models for launching products and services that can contribute to reduce poverty worldwide.
The chapter introduces poverty reduction as a crucial goal for the firm, and it revises the implementation of the enterprise-based approach to the base of the pyramid promoted by Prahalad and Hart. In bringing together the literature on business models with the literature on poverty alleviation, the chapter suggests firms should use a bottom-up approach that is centred on the users and the various community stakeholders. Examining cases of success and reflecting on failures, students will better understand poverty as a polyhedric concept. As such, poverty requires holistic and collaborative approaches rather than solutions designed and imposed at the ‘top of the pyramid’ to truly have the chance to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 1.
