Pyramid 2009 - International Conference: Impact of Base of the Pyramid Ventures

International Conference: Impact of Base of the Pyramid Ventures November 16-18, 2009, Delft, the Netherlands

Today, there is little dispute that poverty is one of the most pressing global problems calling for innovative solutions and market-based approaches. The so-called Base of the Pyramid strategy (BoP) ï¿?CRef. 1ï¿?C is a novel approach involving the private sector to help alleviate poverty by serving these markets in ways responsive to their needs by providing access to knowledge and technology in an economically profitable way. In this process a balance between social-, ecological-, and economic sustainability needs to be strived for (People-Planet-Profit). A number of BoP initiatives have been undertaken during the past years, often with impact claimed on the lives of those at BoP ï¿?C local producers, sellers and buyers as well as the community ï¿?CRef. 2ï¿?C. But have these ventures really achieved the sustainability impact initially envisioned and reach the poor ï¿?CRef. 3ï¿?C on a large scale effectively? The main question this Conference is addressing is:

How to define, measure, and optimize towards enduring value creation of BoP ventures?

The purpose of this conference is to increase BoP knowledge on value creation and impact assessments by bringing together keynote speakers and delegates from business, academia, NGOs and the public sector. The conference will provide a platform to share conceptual and empirical evidences that address ways to better understand and increase the sustainability impacts of BoP ventures in terms of changes in economic, capacity, environmental and relational well-being.

We invite you to share your theoretical and empirical knowledge on the conference topics, being:

1. Impact assessment

* In what way are the characteristics of impact assessment of BoP ventures different from other impact assessment of economic development processes?
* How can methodologies of impact assessment frameworks and tools contribute to comprehensive understanding of impacts and also to stimulate ï¿?ï¿?improvingï¿?ï¿? interventions.
* In what way does the Triple Bottom Line concept contribute to impact assessment of BoP ventures?
* Provide a more systematic and informed judgment about the overall design of impact assessments in relation to their costs, specific objectives and contexts.
* Increase our understanding of the ways in which the results of impact assessment studies influence policymakers and managers

2. Optimization of value creation

* In what way are the challenges for value creation similar or different for BoP ventures in comparison to conventional business development strategies?
* What are the different strategies to optimize value creation for BoP ventures?
* What are the tradeoffs that BoP ventures face when optimizing value creation?
* Case studies of successful (and unsuccessful) optimization of value creation of BoP ventures

IMPORTANT DATES
Articles from practitioners as well as scientific articles and posters on the conference theme, with theoretical as well as empirical contributions are welcome. Contributors are encouraged to submit an initial expression of interest in the form of an abstract of approximately 300 words or a brief poster proposal. Email this to BoP-IO-AT-tudelft.nl. The deadline for submission of abstracts is May 15, 2009. Submitters will receive the confirmation of selection of abstracts before June 01, 2009

Abstracts and poster proposals will be reviewed and selected authors will then be requested to send in a full paper or a poster. Theoretical papers should be between 5000 and 8000 words and case studies between 5000 and 6000 words in length. The poster format is. A1 (594 mm ï¿?ï¿? 841mm, which is approximately 23.4 ï¿?ï¿? 33.1 inches). Email this to BoP-IO-AT-tudelft.nl. The deadline for submission of full papers is July 15th, 2009. The submitters will receive information about the selection of full papers and posters before September 15, 2009.

The abstracts as well as the full papers and posters will be reviewed by an advisory board of experts, which selects papers and posters for the conference. This board will also select the 6 best papers. The selected best papers will be published in a special issue of Sustainable Development, Publisher: Wiley InterScience. This is planned to be published in 2010.

ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITTEE
Myrtille Danse (Conference Co-ordinator), Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands.
Prabhu Kandachar, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Ilona de Jongh, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Gil Nachmany, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Nicolas Chevrollier, TNO, the Netherlands.
Minna Halme, Helsinki School of Economics, Finland
Burcu Tuncer, Center for Sustainable Consumption and production (CSCP) Wuppertal, Germany
Ben Garside, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), United Kingdom.

CONTACT INFORMATION
E-mail: BoP-io-AT-tudelft.nl
Phone: +31.15. 2783034

1. C.K. Prahalad and Stuart Hart, ï¿?ï¿?The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramidï¿?ï¿?, Strategy+Business 26 (2002): 1-15.
2. Ted London, Making Better Investments at the Base of the Pyramid, Harvard Business Review, to be published in May 2009.
3. Erik Simanis, Stuart Hart and colleagues, The Base of the Pyramid Protocol: Toward Next Generation BoP Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise, 2008).