CONCEPT
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Prahalad's 2004 reframing of the four billion people at the base of the global economic pyramid — not as objects of charity but as entrepreneurs, consumers, and innovators blocked by failures of access, not deficiencies of capability.
The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid is Prahalad's most consequential late-career reframing. The argument was characteristically direct: four billion people at the base of the global economic pyramid are not objects of charity. They are entrepreneurs, value-conscious consumers, and innovative problem-solvers whose participation in the global economy is blocked not by deficiencies of intelligence or ambition but by deficiencies of access. The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid is not a fortune to be extracted from the poor. It is a fortune to be created with the poor, through business models that convert barriers to access into sources of innovation.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The argument was controversial. Development economists accused Prahalad of romanticizing poverty. Business executives accused him of naivety about the costs of serving low-income markets. Both critiques missed his central point, which was neither romantic nor naive