Taking up the relational view on Base of the Pyramid partnerships: Assessing collaborations between businesses, CSOs and other actors

In recent years, a considerable amount of research has emerged on business models specifically adapted to the circumstances of the poor population in developing and threshold countries. The concept of “Base of the Pyramid” (BoP) – initiated especially by Prahalad and Hart’s (2002) seminal work – has stirred much attention in both business and academia. It refers to the bottom-tier of the world income pyramid which represents the large share of people living in extreme and moderate poverty. While early research focuses on the BoP as new pool of customers, lately research has begun to embracing the BoP also as integral part of value creation as producers, distributors or service providers (e.g., Mendoza and Thelen, 2008). Such inclusive strategies are often called “BoP 2.0” (Simanis et al., 2008) or “integrative BoP” (Hahn, 2009).