C. K. Prahalad, the University of Michigan strategy guru and author of the best seller "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid," has finally got some hard data to back up his claim that corporates can alleviate poverty and at the same time make money.
According to a report released this morning by the IFC (the private sector arm of the World Bank Group) and the World Resources Institute, 4 billion people who live in "relative poverty" have purchasing power that amounts to a $5 trillion market. The report, The Next 4 Billion, uses income and expenditure data from household surveys to measure the size of the market at the very base of the economic pyramid.
