3rd BoP Global Network
SUMMIT 2018
NEW STRATEGIES FOR
BUILDING BoP ECOSYSTEMS
BUILDING BoP ECOSYSTEMS
APRIL 18-20, 2018 DELHI, INDIA
APRIL 18-20, 2018 DELHI, INDIA
Enterprise for a Sustainable World (ESW) and Ecociate, in collaboration with the BoP Global Network Labs from around the world, are organizing the third BoP Global Network Summit. The event will be held April 18 – 20, 2018 at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi, India. The Summit will build on the 2nd BoP Global Network Summit: “Sustainable Entrepreneurship From The Bottom Up” held in 2015 in Burlington, VM-USA, which brought together corporate innovators, academics, entrepreneurs, community leaders, students, and BoP Global Lab leaders from more than 16 countries. The 2018 Summit will include a field visit to initiatives to experience first-hand some of the leading edge BoP business initiatives in India. The field visit will serve to stimulate discussion and action during the Summit itself.
Companies and ventures cannot succeed at the BoP in isolation. It is in the strength of a strong and mutually aligned network and partner ecosystem including academia, government, development agencies, local entrepreneurs, and NGOs, that business will find the keys to success.
The 2018 BoP Global Network Summit will be focused around three such emerging strategies to more effectively reach and serve the Base of the Pyramid. All three strategies hinge on creative ways to build more effective ecosystems and networks. The objectives of the Summit are to explore the frontiers of these emerging strategies through plenary sessions featuring state-of-the art practice, followed by working sessions to build and accelerate momentum toward making them a reality.
In 2013, India became the first country in the world to mandate a minimum spend on CSR: With the Indian “CSR Law” requires that companies set up a CSR board committee to ensure that the company spends “at least 2 percent of the average net profits of the company made during the three immediately preceding financial years on “CSR” activities. To comply with this new law, most companies have simply allocated the 2% for philanthropy or a menu of the more traditional CSR projects as described above.
But a growing number of corporations and ventures are no longer satisfied with this approach. Increasingly, forward looking companies are launching new business initiatives that actually solve social and environmental problems through their core strategies-and profit in the process. Seen through the lens of entrepreneurship rather than CSR, the profit motive can accelerate the transformation toward a more inclusive and sustainable economy, with civil society, governments, and multilateral agencies all playing crucial roles as collaborators and watchdogs. By proliferating such business-led initiatives around the world, we can innovate our way into tomorrow’s “clean” technologies, and lift the four and half billion poor at the “base of the pyramid” into the global economy.
With this objective in mind, Enterprise for a Sustainable World (ESW) in partnership with Ecociate and the BoP Global Network Labs, is organizing the third BoP Global Network Summit.
Companies and ventures cannot succeed at the BoP in isolation. It is in the strength of a strong and mutually aligned network and partner ecosystem including academia, government, development agencies, local entrepreneurs, and NGOs, that business will find the keys to success. The 2018 BoP Global Network Summit will be focused around three such emerging strategies to more effectively reach and serve the Base of the Pyramid. All three strategies hinge on creative ways to build more effective ecosystems and networks. The objectives of the Summit are to explore the frontiers of these emerging strategies through plenary sessions featuring state-of-the art practice, followed by working sessions to build and accelerate momentum toward making them a reality.
Most BoP ventures and initiatives have focused on the social aspects of sustainability while ignoring or deemphasizing the deemphasizing the environment. Looking forward, disruptive new “leapfrog” BoP strategies may hold the key to pioneering a truly sustainable, circular economy.
Most BoP ventures and initiatives have focused on building single purpose supply chains and distribution models (pipelines), often with disappointing financial results. Looking forward, platform-based approaches, both cloud enabled and otherwise, may hold a key to building wider and a deeper value.
Most BoP ventures and initiatives have focused on developing low cost, “affordable” products and services, only to have them languish. Looking forward developing diverse and creative strategies for engagement and co creation may hold a key to successfully reaching and serving the BoP.
