Resumo

Businesses targeting the BoP population, a 4 billion mass of poor global consumers, emerged as an option to combine economic opportunities and social concerns. The literature emphasizes the role of innovation and entrepreneurship and claims that these businesses can help eradicate poverty by turning the poor into customers and business partners. But despite their potential, enterprises operating at BoP markets struggle to achieve the dual goals of sustained profitable growth and poverty alleviation. Contextual challenges require innovation, including in the business model.

The latest trend of social enterprises involves designing and implementing innovative business models. This article aims to analyze the literature on business model innovation in BoP markets to understand the approaches applied by enterprises that tackled context-related challenges and to obtain a better understanding of the reasons that explain their success or failure. The examination will focus on answering the following research questions: RQ1. How is innovation contributing to the development of appropriate business models for BoP markets? RQ2. What are the research gaps on the theme?

Conventional business models (BMs) presuppose a well-functioning environment for business development and deployment. But BoP BMs will encounter challenging circumstances, requiring capabilities to create contextualized and non-transferable solutions, and shaping their configuration. These BMs will also be influenced by their purpose to achieve both financial and social results. Scholars claim that conventional approaches for understanding and designing BMs in BoP contexts will not contribute to the creation of thriving BoP enterprises. Therefore, context-related research on BMs is necessary.

Authors apply different levels of analysis in BoP BMs: business phase and business component. The level is combined with different perspectives: business leadership, business aspect and prioritized value. Both level and perspective are influenced by the theoretical lens employed. The available literature is a mix of different levels, perspectives and theories, and it becomes a challenge to evaluate where this field of study is heading. Presenting success factors is a common approach, but the complexity creates difficulties for comparison, and recommendations cannot be applied to any context.

The mechanisms associated with how innovation happens are not discussed in the literature related to BoP Business Models. Authors' concerns are more connected to practical issues: where is innovation taking place, and what is being done by entrepreneurs and companies to address the challenges encountered. Articles are mainly qualitative, using case studies to provide examples of successes and failures that might guide the community toward success. Therefore, we can say that this knowledge field is yet under development.

Danse, M., et al (2020). Unravelling inclusive business models for achieving food and nutrition security in BOP markets Goyal, S., et al (2020). Social entrepreneurship for scalable solutions addressing sustainable development goals (SDGs) at BoP in India Halme, M., et al (2012). Innovation for Inclusive Business: Intrapreneurial Bricolage in Multinational Corporations Lashitew, A. et al. (2021). Creating Social Value for the ‘Base of the Pyramid’ Prahalad, C. K. (2012). Bottom of the Pyramid as a Source of Breakthrough Innovations Rivera-Santos & Rufín (2010). Global village vs. small town