Sustainability Innovation at the Base of the Pyramid through Multi‐Sited Rapid Ethnography

Minna Halme · Arno Eerikki Kourula · Sara Lindeman · Galina Kallio · Maria Barbosa Lima-Toivanen · Angelina Korsunova

45 citations0/0 files storedCorporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Innovation and Socioeconomic Development Business Strategies and Innovation Innovation, Technology, and Society

Abstract

Abstract The past decade has seen a proliferation of suggestions for market‐based solutions to global poverty. While research emphasises that sustainability innovation aimed at poverty alleviation must be grounded in user needs, few studies demonstrate how to study the poor for purposes of early phase innovation in business enterprises, especially in multiple locations comparatively. This study suggests that the necessary understanding of low‐income users and their practices can be gained throughmulti‐sited rapid ethnography. We exemplify how the process moves from an understanding of the needs of the poor towards innovation and offer a general framework for evaluating the success of these types of projects. The paper describes the challenges and solutions found in a multi‐sited rapid ethnography research in urban base of the pyramid (BOP) contexts in Brazil, India, Russia, and Tanzania. It suggests businesses can learn about the poor with the help of this method and conduct sustainability innovation on the basis of the needs of the poor, rather than start with existing products. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 45 citations exist upstream.

References

2009Development as Freedom 1999Development as Freedom 2006Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, the: eradicating poverty through profits 2005The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits 2013Reviewing a Decade of Research on the “Base/Bottom of the Pyramid” (BOP) Concept 2007The next 4 billion : market size and business strategy at the base of the pyramid 2011Next generation business strategies for the base of the pyramid: new approaches for building mutual value 2009Marketing to subsistence consumers: Lessons from practice

Cited by

2022Necessity-driven circular economy in low-income contexts: How informal sector practices retain value for circularity 2017Corporate sustainability and inclusive development: highlights from international business and management research 2019Think outside the European box: Identifying sustainability competencies for a base of the pyramid context 2022Rigour vs. Reality: Contextualizing Qualitative Research in the Low‐Income Settings in Emerging Markets 2019Key guidelines for designing integrated solutions to support development of marginalised societies

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.