Aneel Karnani posted his paper, "Mirage at the Bottom of the Pyramid," to NextBillion.net ten days ago, setting off a bit of a firestorm among commenters on-site. In an effort to hear both sides of the argument, the editors contacted C.K. Prahalad and invited him to submit a response to Professor Karnani. (Full disclosure: Prahalad on the Board of the World Resources Institute, NextBillion.net's parent organization). We received the following reply:

Professor Karnani’s piece, Mirage at the Bottom of the Pyramid, deserves a rebuttal. I provided that in private before Professor Karnani posted his paper on the web. I decided to post my response to him as well, given the likelihood that readers may not get a balanced view of the core arguments about the BOP opportunity – to “do good and do well.”

Here is my original response to Prof. Karnani’s draft.

Read C.K. Prahalad's response to "Mirage at the Bottom of the Pyramid" (PDF download)

Related:

Read Al Hammond's response to "Mirage at the Bottom of the Pyramid" (Link)

What do you get when you mix SimCity with social entrepreneurship? Village, a multiplayer strategy game that puts the BOP hypothesis to work. According to the game’s web site, Village’s mission is

...to let players practice building sustainable villages for developing nations using real-world technologies and real-world business models.

The game is still under development – as far as I can tell, there’s a decent proposal and some ideas for game play and design, but no money or people to put the idea into practice. Despite the obvious hurdles Village must yet overcome, I am really excited to see the idea out there. It’s putting proven BOP products and models – like Kickstart treadle pumps, XAccess bikes, and Village Phones – to the test in a simulation anyone can try. Prospective BOP entrepreneurs might even use the finished game to scope out new business ideas; venture capitalists might identify promising investments by seeing which players are having the most success.