Rama Bijapurkar of the Times News Network just wrote an interesting piece on what may be the most difficult aspect of successfully engaging the market at the BOP – the creation and maintenance of cross-sector partnerships. He writes:

"One of the key ideas of the book (Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid) is that the last, but most important ‘get to, and get the consumer’ mile can only happen if private sector works in partnership with the development sector organisations.

The latter have access, influence, trust and knowledge, about people at the bottom of the pyramid, as well as the cost-right grass-roots organisation infrastructure; and hence are the best market development and channel partners for any company wanting to find the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. That’s where the theory ends. In practice, wherever I have been a part of such initiatives, even sustaining a constructive dialogue has been tough. What we have is parallel monologues, with different mental models and different processes of 'getting the job done'."