In economics, the bottom of the pyramid is the largest, but poorest socio-economic group. In global terms, this is the 4 billion people who live on less than US$2.50 per day. The phrase “bottom of the pyramid” is used in particular by people developing new models of doing business that deliberately target that demographic, often using new technology. This field is also often referred to as the "Base of the Pyramid" or just the "BoP".
Several books and journal articles have been written on the potential market by members of business schools offering consultancy on the burgeoning market. They include The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by C.K. Prahalad of the University of Michigan, Capitalism at the Crossroads by Stuart L. Hart of Cornell University and the first empirical article, Reinventing strategies for emerging markets: Beyond the transnational model, by Ted London of the University of Michigan and Hart. London has also developed a working paper, commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme, that explores the contributions of the BoP literature to the poverty alleviation domain.
Read more about Bottom Of The Pyramid: History
Famous quotes containing the words bottom of the, bottom of, bottom and/or pyramid:
“The bottom of the sea is cruel.”
—Hart Crane (1899–1932)
“The forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and the higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“So universal and widely related is any transcendent moral greatness, and so nearly identical with greatness everywhere and in every age,—as a pyramid contracts the nearer you approach its apex,—that, when I look over my commonplace-book of poetry, I find that the best of it is oftenest applicable, in part or wholly, to the case of Captain Brown.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)