News/Events

London Blog Post On Inclusive Business Now Online

Thursday, December 11, 2014

WDI Senior Research Fellow Ted London has penned a blog post that calls on BoP leaders to take stock of the inclusive business domain, noting achievements over the past decade, but cautioning that there are warning signs on the horizon.

Posted on The Practitioner Hub for Inclusive Business website, “Inflection Point” (read here) notes that IB can play an important role in alleviating poverty, while being profitable and scalable, but leaders in the IB community must approach their work with humility and learn faster.

“The challenge before us now is to remain humble in our work, take thoughtful action, and collaborate more closely to achieve the vision of developing a robust pool of inclusive business ventures, supported by partnership ecosystems, that are financially sustainable, and that achieve social impact at scale,” London writes. “To do this, we need to learn faster, which means learning not only from our successes, but also from our failures. We need to share these learnings more widely, and create a community that benefits from the collective experiences of others, communicates more broadly and collaborates more readily.”

The article builds on WDI’s action agenda for IBs serving the BoP. “A Roadmap for the Base of the Pyramid Domain: Re-energizing for the Next Decade” calls on IBs to act for today, invest for tomorrow, and build a community of sustainable, scalable BoP enterprises focused poverty alleviation. Moving forward, London asks IBs to identify the best portfolio of partners for scaling businesses as well as answer the question of how a partnership ecosystem should evolve over time.

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