Sadly, this pessimism was as common among elites in emerging markets as it was in the West.
There was a persistent belief that needs such as shelter and nutrition had to be addressed before the poor could understand - and pay for - aspirational products and technology. Most businesses lacked the insight and cost structures to reach poor consumers. Much of the hesitation to engage with their ideas stemmed from a belief that uplifting the poor was the domain of government and nonprofits, or was simply too risky. At the time, their thinking (which had been rejected for four years by scholarly journals) invited polite skepticism at best. This challenged many long-held assumptions about the role of both government and business in addressing poverty.
They argued that the 4 billion poor people around the world represented a vibrant consumer market, that this market could best be tapped with for-profit models, and that the poor themselves had to be partners in the process. A version of this article appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of strategy+business.Īlmost 20 years ago in a strategy+ business article, my father, C.K.
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