The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits [Hardcover]

Here is a note I sent to the editor after buying the tradepaperback version.

Your editorial staff has done something so dumb I am astounded! (Also really $%^& mad.) The hardcover and trade paperback versions of CK Prahalad - The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, are NOT the same. I assigned readings from this book to my class of 100 students. They went and bought the book and found that the case studies aren't there. On closer investigation I see that you shortened the case studies and renamed the chapters. Unfortunately the editing on the shortening is terrible and I simply can't ask my students to read such badly written material.

You did several things wrong

1) You sell two books with identical titles and covers, which have different content

2) You edited very very badly

3) You did this on an award winning book with high visibility

As far as I can tell there is no way for anyone to figure out that the content is different except in the very rare case that they own both versions.

This is a black mark on the Wharton name. What were you thinking?

-james

"Fortune" is an interesting, inspiring book. The study of poverty eradication gets short shrift in most business schools but this book suggests that a lot of resources and a phalanx of graduate students (since most graduate students claim to be poor, perhaps they empathize better; at least they're cheaper to hire than business faculty) at Wharton and Michigan did a lot of digging for answers. This is a noble cause, well-financed, and maybe these two business schools will support these efforts with a revision to their MBA curricula. While teaching a man to fish is better than giving a man a fish, it is better still to teach a village how to raise fish (or capital, or critical mass, or some other key resource), and that is the fundamental if implicit message and philosophy here. Poor people don't need charity; they need access to and information about the tools of capitalism, and governments and other not-for-profits are not likely to do this as such actions would put them out of business. Read the "Twelve principles of innovation for BOP markets" (pp. 25 - 27) and you'll get the basic Reader's Digest, Harvard Business Review executive summary.

The mendacity of the claim, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you," gets a lot of reinforcement here. Rather than help poor people, an early table (p. 11) shows that the government charges poor people more than rich people for the same water service. And the evidence, much of it discovered by Peru's Hernando De Soto, that governments delight in making entrepreneurship, innovation and capitalism almost a criminal offense, shines right through.

The false conceit exposed here is that governments are not likely to fix poverty, nor are NGOs, the UN, or other alphabetical, "not-for-profit" agencies. Maybe HLL, CEMEX, SMEs or some other, similarly acronymed, profit-seeking organizations will do it. It is not clear that there is a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, even if there are four billion people (depends, really, on how you define poverty) willing to spend a penny a day on shampoo. There certainly is a profit to be made, but this time it is the poor who stand most to profit from free, global markets.

"Fortune" also has little, nagging problems. Like most empiricists, this book wants to use data as a singular noun. The font is small and flourished, making the text physically difficult to read. There is a cryptic table (exactly what is a `nos' anyway"?), a graph with no labels for the x- and y-axes. The book is awash with acronyms and academic jargon. Some of the bold-faced assertions read like doctoral dissertation hypotheses. Maybe because the book is primarily graduate-student written case studies with a lengthy introduction by the author, there is a tendency to repeat information from previous chapters. Decrying excessive packaging and high transaction costs, the authors also commend single-use purchases on a daily basis, filling land fills with sachets and making shopping a daily chore. If we are going to `microfinance' progress, we might want to start with a store credit for a refillable shampoo bottle (I am pretty sure that Coca-Cola mastered this marketing concept in South America years ago). In case the bookstore browser is unsure as to what the book is about, the book has a title ("The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid"), a subtitle ("Eradicating poverty through profits" and a sub-subtitle ("Enabling dignity and choice through markets"). And the dust cover blurbs from Bill Gates, Madeleine Albright, and similar `names' are a bit hyperbolic.

David Landes ("The wealth and poverty of nations") did a better job of explaining the cultural and legal system changes needed to make transactions easier for the customers. TGO (I'll let you look it up) means we have to have a government that assists wealth creation rather than simply tax, block, or prohibit progress out of poverty by people.

...Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime". A famous Biblical quote, one that resonated with me strongly, and profoundly influenced my thinking on international aid, but more broadly, the problem of poverty, and the reticence of Capitalism in addressing it.

I'm a strong believer in capitalism, this wonderful book reinforced my belief in that system. It did so by showing how world poverty and consistently non-functional economies aren't because of capitalism, but for lack of capitalist attention.

Times have changed, technology and it's rapidly increasing efficacy in efficient delivery of products and services, necessitates that we change our attitude about heretofore neglected markets, and the nearly 5 billion people in them. "Inclusive Capitalism" as the author calls it.

Rich with important concepts like "Installment Sales" (which address the needs and constraints of low-income consumers), this book is a virtual blueprint for companies, as well as entreprenuers, who are interested in serving low-income consumers around the world.

The hardcover book also contains a CD. I usually skip viewing those, but I'm glad I didn't in this instance. Prahalad gives the introduction, then roughly a dozen case studies follow. From Appliance sales companies in Brazil, to a Cement company in Mexico; seeing the passion on the faces of their customers, how the companies have changed their lives, it is incredibly touching. You aren't watching customers, you're watching "evangalists" that would make your most devout American iPod fan seem like an unsatisfied customer.

I recommend this book highly.

Enjoy,

Christian Hunter

Santa Barbara, California

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