Sustainability and the Base of the Pyramid: Why it Matters to the U.S.
Most of you reading this are fortunate enough to reside at the top of the income pyramid, living and working in the United States or other highly developed countries. At the base of the pyramid reside people of developing countries, where access to things we take for granted in high income countries -- think clean drinking water or reliable electricity -- remain elusive.
The bottom and the top of the pyramid are worlds away, right? Not exactly. In fact, many businesses are starting to take the view that working to introduce sustainability at the base of the pyramid will be essential to continued success at the top of the pyramid.
At its first Global Forum on Sustainable Enterprise, the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University recently hosted speakers including Cornell professor Stuart Hart, who believes businesses can profit by bringing clean technology to developing countries.
Hart spoke at the conference about introducing sustainable technologies in developing areas:
Oftentimes, these new clean technologies, being disruptive, don't really fit very well into established, served markets at the top of the income pyramid. It's those underserved markets ... in rural areas or in urban slums and shanty towns that are most open and most available for these new technologies.By getting away from a philanthropic approach and instead concentrating on developing sustainability at the bottom of the pyramid, Hart argues that the top of the pyramid will also benefit:
At the base of the pyramid you can incubate green technology, then trickle it up. If you're able to create a growth platform and make it work there ... we can always add cost and features and trickle it up. Eventually it can make its way back to places like the United States to compete.The desire to bring sustainability to developing markets isn't unique to the energy sector. Take, for example, this item from The Economist: "Mars and Cadbury, two confectionery-makers, have separately announced plans to increase the amount of cocoa they source from sustainable sources because both are concerned about future shortages if production practices do not change."
Hence, Cadbury's Cocoa Partnership, a program with a stated goal of securing the "economic, social and environmental" sustainability of one million cocoa farmers in Ghana, India, Indonesia and the Caribbean.
Both of these examples demonstrate the truly global nature of business in the world today. Bottom or top, we're all part of the same pyramid.