London's BoP Impact Assessment Work Cited
Friday, February 22, 2008
Ted London, WDI Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Institute’s BoP Research Initiative, is mentioned in a blog on the NextBillion.net website hosted by the World Resources Institute.
The
post, by Derek Newberry, is about whether corporations will use a powerful PR machine to claim great work at the base of the pyramid without really achieving any results. Newberry cites London’s pathbreaking work on measuring impact at the BoP.
London has written a paper that addresses this key question in the BoP field. Following field work with partner organizations over two summers, London presented a framework that provided a better understanding of how a venture at the base of the pyramid (BoP) impacts poverty alleviation in terms of measurable changes in economic, capacity, and relational well being.
The framework also:
•Provided guidance in developing future venture strategies to maximize poverty alleviation outcomes and minimize negatives ones
•Allowed for a more complete articulation of these impacts to internal and external stakeholders
•Offered a tool for comparing poverty outcome across different enterprises
•Enabled an in-depth analysis of the BoP hypothesis of mutual value creation.
The framework was tested in India with the Scojo Foundation and in Mexico with CEMEX.
“We need to have a deeper understanding of the impacts of BoP ventures at the local level,” London said. “Before, organizations have relied on anecdotes which are indicative of potential positive outcomes, but are not sufficient to gain a full understanding of the poverty alleviation implications. This framework takes a deep dive to take a look at who is impacted and how they are impacted.”
London said the framework is necessary because BoP is a new approach. And in order to move the discussion forward on how effective the BoP is as a poverty alleviation tool, some sort of measurement is needed.
“We tried to develop a tool or framework that can be used in the field,” London said. “Then we can begin to better address these kinds of questions about impact.”
