Updated: YP Volunteer Research Opportunity with Acumen Fellows

Sales at the Bottom of the Pyramid – Barriers and Breakthroughs – volunteer researcher needed!

2009 Acumen Fellows Joel Montgomery (MicroDrip, Pakistan), Heidi Krauel (D.Light Design, India) and Mubarik Imam (AMC, Pakistan) have conducted a targeted research project focused on small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) and social enterprises providing quality goods and services to low-income, or marginalized communities.

Specifically, the three Fellows have been working hard to uncover the barriers and breakthroughs companies encounter in building effective sales models for BoP (bottom-of-the-pyramid) products/services. To this end, they have interviewed a select set of organizations through an online survey, generating more than 50 responses. This survey, supplemented by the Fellows’ own experiences helping to build out sales organizations in developing countries over the last year, will be used as the basis for a practical report to be made available in the Fall/Winter of 2009.

At this stage of the project, Heidi, Joel and Mubarik would like to reach out to the Young Professionals Network at Acumen Fund and see if someone would like to pitch in with some research assistance. Specifically, the authors want to ensure that their research is taken in the right context, and to that end want to conduct a literature review. The literature review will uncover academic articles, books and practical guides discussing sales at the BoP. The authors will use the literature review in their final report, allowing them to put their survey results in context.

If you are interested in working with Acumen Fund and specifically with Heidi, Joel and Mubarik on this project, please contact Rob Katz for more information. This is not a long-term project, and the literature review could be anywhere from 3 to 5 pages plus a bibliography. It needs to be completed by Sunday, September 13. The volunteer who works on this project will be credited in the Fellows’ report, which will be published on Acumen Fund’s web site.

Update as of 5:00pm August 24, 2009:

THANK YOU! In just over two hours, we received more than 35 expressions of interest for the research project. We are humbled by the outpouring of responses. If you are interested in working on research and writing related to the Acumen Fund Fellows research projects and Acumen Fund in general, please e-mail Rob and he will add you to a list that he is managing. More research projects are coming down the pike.