The Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management is accepting submissions for its 2009 Base of the Pyramid (BoP) Narrative Competition. This short-essay competition seeks to highlight the challenges of implementing business in underserved markets and identify innovative business initiatives or solutions to those challenges.

3rd Annual Base of the Pyramid Narrative Competition - 2009

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The 2009 BoP Narrative Competition has been created to help identify cutting-edge experiences of business innovation in underserved or marginalized communities.

Winning submissions must clearly articulate a business challenge that an organization working in low-income communities is striving to overcome, in addition to the resulting business model or initiative. Experiences and business models may be successful or unsuccessful, provided the challenge and solution-attempt is elaborated upon.

Organizations highlighted may be either non-profit or for-profit enterprises. Initiatives highlighted should illustrate a unique approach to poverty alleviation through an innovative product, service, technology, or business model.

This competition is looking for short essays illustrating BoP enterprises that meet the following three criteria:

1. They are based on private-sector business models that are locally transformational. In other words, the business creates mutual value, such as capacity building and wealth creation, for both the community and the enterprise. Implicit in this is the expectation that the business will be partner-intensive in an effort to achieve the greatest success.
2. A strong element of the Triple Bottom Line must be embedded in the business strategy - consideration of the environmental, societal, and economic impacts of the business. There must be motivation displayed to improve the quality of life for the community while simultaneously being sensitive to normative culture. Simply creating economic activity without regard for the local environment, community, or cultural impact is not in the vein of a BoP Enterprise.
3. There must exist the potential and an aspiration for scale and replication. The inability to grow and expand a business fails to meet the objective of transforming the local society and economy.