A quick roundup of base of the pyramid news and notes, including a few new publications that have made it on my to-read list:

The UN Development Program launched a new website highlighting its Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative [1], which Staff Writer Grace Augustine covered here [1]. (Full disclosure: I sit on the Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative’s advisory board, though I take no responsibility for the site's painfully long Flash intro nor the nonsense background music. Memo to UNDP web developers – simpler is better.)

Once in, you'll find that the site features case studies, some of which will be familiar to long-time BoP watchers (Pesinet returns! [2]); others are completely new to the sector. There are 46 cases to go through, which should keep even the most hardcore case reader occupied for a while. Be sure to bookmark the site as well, since the GIM will be releasing heat maps (basically, country-specific market research on BoP consumer patterns) and a strategy matrix.

Another new web site to check out and bookmark is iBOP-Asia [3]. Run out of the Ateneo School of Government, the site will document a three-year study on Philippine entrepreneurs'efforts to serve the less-than-$2-a-day population. NextBillion.net Staff Writer (and soon to be Ashoka employee) Al Hammond [3] attended the project’s launch earlier this month. Interesting note: the iBOP-Asia research is being stewarded by Tony La Vina [4], an Ashoka Fellow, Dean of the Ateneo School and a former colleague of mine at the World Resources Institute. Small world…

In an effort to keep NextBillion.net readers from developing computer-related vision problems, I'll recommend a new book. Madhu Viswanathan has been studying consumer and entrepreneurial literacy in subsistence markets for years; he and co-authors S. Gajendiran and R. Venkatesan recently published new results in a book entitled Enabling Consumer and Entrepreneurial Literacy in Subsistence Marketplaces [5]. Check it out, as well as the trio's web site [6].

Finally, the WBCSD has a new feature on Reuters Market Light [7], as highlighted by NextBillion.net ally Filippo Veglio in his must-read Sustainable Livelihoods Newsletter. According to the feature, Reuters Market Light

provides farmers with affordable and up-to-date information on crop prices, weather forecasts, and other agriculture-related news via text messages to mobile phones. Making available weather reports over a 50-mile radius and local crop prices within a 5-hour journey in the subscriber’s local language, RML helps farmers achieve better yields and secure better prices in local and regional markets.

Worth a closer look.