Inclusive Business Models and RRI: Insights from the ProGReSS Project

Abstract

The Inclusive Business models or commercially viable business models that incorporate poor people into their value chains, open up new growth opportunities for businesses, while simultaneously promote sustainable development. A growing number of large corporations are proactively engaging in such approaches with the aim of achieving core business benefits through improved societal desirability of their innovation products and services. Researches show that in order to create a Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) market, companies should focus on a proposition of mutual value creation: The greater the ability of the enterprise to meet the needs of the poor, the greater the return to the partners involved (Antúnez-de-Mayolo 2012). The main problem in the context of societal desirability within business is that currently there is a lack of agreement about what constitutes social value in a globalized society and economy. To resolve this challenge, value should not created by firms acting autonomously, but by working together with local allies, and ideally by integrating them into the R&D and production chain. The mutual dependency that innovative businesses and Bottom of the Pyramids societies have on each other plays a central role in the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework and is explained in this paper through two concepts: Inclusiveness and Pro-Poor growth reducing inequality.