Let's face it, this BoP movement has picked up speed since the early days of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. We're getting to a point where we can really glimpse a world, a development space, where the term BoP has arrived in the mainstream, in the media and in business plans of entrepreneurs.

A sure tell tale sign is when consultancies like Triple Value emerge that explicitly use the language of the BoP and advise major corporations on tapping into this market.

So as this mainstreaming occurs, it's valuable to draw lessons from similar experiences early on in the environmental movement within the private sector. Greenwashing, the act of promoting a company image of sustainability without creating real change in daily activities and operations, is now a commonplace idea. As the term BoP infiltrates boardrooms and ad agencies, could we also see a trend of "BoPwashing"?

To preemptively answer critics that might worry about the prospect of BoP business models flourishing that are all PR and no social impact, a few initiatives have sprung up that seek to verifiably measure how much a given business or project actually benefits the BoP.

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