The most recent issue of the Journal of Product Innovation Management is a BoP special and a key article is this posthumous one from the late CK Prahalad, father of the so called Bottom of the Pyramid. The BoP is a source of breakthrough innovation the dear departed gentleman proclaims and design thinking will help us crack the challenge, but as I browse through the PDF my suspicions increase that this may not have been written by him in 2009, only to be published years later so much as some half written article that was eventually completed by his faithful acolytes.
On one hand, I'm ever grateful to the nominal citation in the second paragraph but on the other, it never ceases to amaze that a learned gentleman from the traditional management school of strategy for corporate business has embraced the user centered design process together with deep dive immersion into the lower income demographic to conduct exploratory design research so whole heartedly and so completely in such a short amount of time. May his soul remain immortal, as we say, but his assistants should consider remaining focused on their own core competencies.
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