Inclusive businesses aspire to engage the poor in the value chain, which comes with various challenges. Therefore, developed a 5-step-to-scale approach, where we help companies overcome these challenges.
Scientific Bases
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About
Businesses’ inclusive efforts do not always turn out to be inclusive. Inclusive businesses aspire to engage the poor in the value chain for the benefit of both. They develop new business models to create opportunities for Base-of-Pyramid (BoP) communities’ social and economic wellbeing while keeping a for-profit nature. To do so, multiple stakeholders – governmental authorities, non-governmental organizations, BoP communities, financial institute, companies, etc. – must be involved. Yet it often turns out to be challenging to align stakeholders’ conflicting interests and balance their unequal relationships. This may increase the coordination costs to a point that a business no longer finds it economically viable. Also, the conflicts that arise between stakeholders may lead to further inequality rather than promote inclusion. Thus, businesses may ultimately fail to deliver opportunities for inclusion despite their aspiration.
Our objective is to make collaborative business model innovation for inclusive business more effective, while simultaneously building up a body of scientific knowledge.
First, we developed a straightforward, practical and versatile tool to support key stakeholders in collaborative business model innovation for inclusive business. Herewith, we aim to alleviate poverty in Base-of-Pyramid (BoP) communities across the globe by integrating them into the value chain as equal business partners. We also encourage inclusive business development in small, medium-sized and large companies’ in multiple industries. Further, we assist inclusive business consortia that build bridges between these companies and BoP communities as well as other stakeholders involved.
Second, we aim to contribute to the project members’ scientific domains. Therefore, we investigate when which elements of the individual stakeholders’ business models must be aligned to promote inclusion. Also, we examine which current theoretical frameworks best explain successful collaboration in an inclusive business context.
We take an action research approach which aims to provide not just solutions to the immediate challenge, but also learnings that contribute to scientific knowledge and theory. Therefore, the approach fits nicely to our objectives. The approach implies that we use scientific methods to study the challenges of inclusive business together with those who experience them directly. Thus, we work closely with inclusive businesses, Base-of-Pyramid (BoP) communities and other stakeholders in the research process.
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