BOP 1.0, 2.0, or 1.5? Selling vs. Co-Creating

In a conversation I had with Stuart Hart recently, he described the difference between BOP 1.0 and BOP 2.0. BOP 1.0 are the classic BOP ventures that involve "selling to the poor" through distribution channels, while BOP 2.0 ventures are the ones that enter the business development process through "co-creation," in partnership with BOP communities.

This got me thinking about a middle ground. Selling products to the BOP is still a valuable enterprise, as long as the products are genuinely helpful and productive for the BOP community. Who could oppose that? And I think there is a place for the co-creation to happen during consumer research and product development, in a form that hires BOP individuals to be the ethnographers and researchers of their own communities, therefore helping themselves, their communities, and the companies involved (See my post on NextBillion.net for more on the BOP as consumer researchers).

I recently came across several articles about "user anthropology," IDEO's "empathy-based design," and "the anthropology of work,"(See Fortune Magazine, Sept. 29th 2008), which I find fascinating and directly relevant to our work with the BOP. BOP ventures call for an unprecedented, intimate approach to getting to know the consumer, but what is the balance between getting overly involved and staying too far at a distance?

The 2nd edition of the BOP Protocol lays out an "embedded" framework, where company representatives fully immerse themselves in the communities they want to engage in business and they even spend nights in their homes. This is an interesting idea, but not entirely realistic for everyone.

Isn't there a place in the BOP framework for companies to deal with the BOP primarily as consumers, like classic businesses do? Having worked in the NGO world and in social work clinics for the homeless, I am concerned that BOP ventures will take on an almost charity-like, social service-type ethic. So much of the inefficiencies among the non-profit world are due to the people who run them, where emotional harmony and a sort of "Cumbiah" feeling reigns. This leads to management problems and colleague quarrels, when things become too personal and involved at work and not professional enough. Crudely speaking, it is the heart factor over a more rational, business approach.

With that said, user anthropology and human-centered design offer the chance to get to know BOP consumers intimately, but still maintain a healthy professional distance, as a business would do with any target consumer, wealthy or not. To avoid the flack associated with mere "selling to the poor" and in order to involve the BOP as producers, I propose the BOP become the consumer ethnographers of their own communities, therefore striking a balance where 1) the BOP are co-creators, 2) they do not become overly enmeshed to the point where they share their homes with company representatives, and 3) the BOP are not kept at a far distance and viewed as consumers through a solely profit-generating lens.

It would be a shame for companies with potential BOP-serving businesses to shy away because of a framework that requires drastically different business practices than previously held. There has to be a middle ground to accommodate the diversity in approaches and to ensure that anyone who wants to, can do business with the BOP in a mutually valuable way.