Nadia's research will focus on established organisations exploring markets at the base of the pyramid (4 billion people worldwide earning an annual purchasing power parity of $1,500 USDs or less). For many of these organisations the world’s poorest represent a heterogeneous, ambiguous target group and a drastic departure from business as usual. As such their success is dependent on the creation of innovative business models that better respond to and leverage the uniqueness of poverty prone markets.
Given the burgeoning interest in this area, there is surprisingly little rigorous research that addresses how established organisations become adept at business model innovation (hereinafter BMI). The academic literature that does exist is immature, inconsistent and demonstrates little cross-fertilisation of ideas from related, more established literature streams. Further the translation of generic BMI literature to the specific idiosyncrasies of the BOP is not seamless and has not been afforded adequate attention.
The objective of Nadia's research is to bridge these gaps by developing a comprehensive framework (process and guidelines) for BMI at the BOP. More specifically her research addresses: How should established organisations develop and integrate (operationlise) innovative business models to leverage opportunities at the BOP for their competitive advantage?
Her investigation will be carried out by a mix of desk research, theory building, hypotheses generation and hypotheses testing using qualitative research methods.
