I'm in Ann Arbor, Michigan for the "Business With Four Billion" conference - the first major "base of the pyramid" meeting since WRI convened the "Eradicating Poverty Through Profit" conference in December, 2004.  On a macro level, my impressions from day one are three-fold:

1. The energy here is amazing.  I saw a slide put up by Ted London (Director of the William Davidson Institute's BoP Initiative and one of the conference organizers) with the attendance - it's about 1/3 academic, 1/3 NGO or government, and 1/3 business.  This kind of split would have been unthinkable 3-4 years ago.  The sheer momentum that the BoP concept has gathered in the private sector is palpable.

2. The level of thinking is advanced.  That is, it has advanced, especially over the last couple of years.  No longer is it necessary for plenary speakers to walk the audience through the BoP concept.  We get it, and they get right down to it.  I'll have more details on today's plenaries (C.K. Prahalad, Stuart Hart, Ted London, and Al Hammond) below.

3. We still have a long way to go.  If attendees left with anything today from Prahalad and Hart's presentations, it is that the challenge of inclusive, pro-poor, pro-environment growth is a huge one.  We need the private sector to step up - but we also need governments, NGOs, and even private citizens (Kiva, anyone?) to answer the bell.  The BoP proposition is about advancing this generation's greatest challenge: how to bring 4 billion people into the middle class without overwhelming Earth's natural systems.  Not an easy question.

OK - a quick plenary recap (I will have a full recap after I return to DC and can digest everything).

C.K. Prahalad was the first to speak.  His talk centered on the establishment of a new development paradigm, one that will turn the way we've traditionally viewed development on its head.  In typical C.K. style, the guru went through perhaps 40 slides, each one offering a new strategy or perspective that left the audience nodding its collective head in agreement.

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For anyone interested in working with BOP issues, I came across this job posting this morning:

 

Unitus, a social enterprise based in Seattle, WA and Bangalore, India, is a worldwide leader at scaling proven solutions to global poverty. Unitus accelerates access to life-changing financial services for those living at the bottom of the economic pyramid – the three billion people who are living on less than $2 a day.

We seek a dynamic, passionate team player to develop and execute on a number of innovations that are critical to Unitus's long term goals and sustainability in an increasingly dynamic market around the world.

The successful candidate will be an out-of-the-box thinker, but also one that can manage multiple work streams in an organized fashion. He/ she must be comfortable with ambiguity and enjoy the process of cutting through complexity to find practical, highly leveraged and scalable solutions in the microfinance industry and to poverty related issues. He / she will catalyze the process of developing new business initiatives from the research phase through the analytical phase and be comfortable 'letting go' after the initial steps of implementation.

Via Social Edge