WorldChanging's Nicole Anne Boyer was able to attend the 7th Triple Bottom Line Investment (TBLI) conference in Frankfurt a few weeks back. Her thorough reporting from the event is a must-read for folks interested in socially responsible investment and its associated spin-offs (including "meso-finance" for BOP firms).

Boyer reports that "Scale seems to be the word of the day. Most conventional bankers won't look at anything -- a product idea, an innovation, a service -- unless they can see how it can scale. No mass market, no mulla. This puts at a serious disadvantage innovations which may not have an obvious scaling potential, but still deliver much value at the local level. How do we unlock these industrial age production mindsets? How do we overcome this dilemma?"

That's a good question. We're often asked how to scale up a good BOP business model out of a region, or country, to make it work for underserved populations worldwide. There isn't a quick answer - and perhaps there's even more to the question, as Boyer notes. How important is scaleability when it comes to reducing poverty?