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)