Educational Opportunities
As part of our close affiliation with the Ross School of Business, we offer BoP courses that integrate concepts of strategy, international business, non-profit management, and poverty alleviation to stimulate the leadership skills and competitive imagination needed to design successful ventures.
BA 612: Business Strategies for the Base of the Pyramid is an elective course offered at the Ross School that focuses on the intersection of business and poverty alleviation. To explore the relationship between profits and poverty alleviation in pursuit of mutual value creation, the course integrates concepts of strategy, international business, and non-profit management to stimulate the leadership skills and competitive imagination needed to design BoP ventures. Through a combination of cases, readings, lectures, videos, and outside guests, class sessions will engage students in discussions aimed at: 1) identifying the opportunities associated with a new perspective on serving BoP markets; and 2) developing the strategies, business models, and partnerships required to productively explore those opportunities.
We offer customized BoP-oriented executive education programs for organizations interested in enhancing their understanding of and capability in market-entry strategies, poverty alleviation assessments, business model development, and cross-sector partnerships.
Our
BoP faculty provides custom-designed executive education programs to a wide variety of organizations. Each of our programs is developed in close collaboration with our partners to meet their specific needs. For instance, we offer custom programs that incorporate:
- Understanding what the BoP is, and exploring the issues that organizations must address to successfully serve low-income markets;
- Investigating the organizational change implications associated with supporting BoP ventures, and identifying the set of “best practices” for creating context-appropriate business models;
- Exploring the development implications of these BoP ventures on poverty alleviation, and applying a framework to evaluate the local value created; and
- Brainstorming collaboratively to identify approaches to incorporate the BoP Perspective into an organization’s new and existing initiatives.
We have a growing library of teaching cases on various BoP topics. They are published as part of WDI’s case publishing initiative. For more information on our Educational Outreach program, please visit WDI’s website at
www.globalens.com