BoP Protocol Initiative - History

The BoP Protocol Initiative emerged from the BoP Learning Lab, a consortium of companies, NGOs and academics co-founded by Cornell's Stuart Hart and Erik Simanis in 2000. The goal of the Learning Lab was to share knowledge and experiences about the opportunities and challenges that confront companies attempting to serve the BoP. The Lab highlighted the gap between corporations' current capabilities and innovation strategies and those required to serve the Base of the Pyramid.

The Base of the Pyramid Protocol Initiative was launched in 2004 as an action-research program to fill this capability gap. The initiative was launched by Simanis and Hart along with colleagues from Cornell, the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, William Davidson Institute, and World Resources Institute. Corporate sponsors included DuPont, SC Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, and Tetra Pak.