Beyond the pioneer – Getting inclusive industries to scale
Successful innovations that are emerging in developing countries often do not scale up and keep operating at low levels of scale. Harvey Koh, Nidhi Hegde and Ashish Karamchandani, authors of the report “Beyond the Pioneer”, say they are dissatisfied with a situation where small and beautiful new solutions continually excite and inspire us, but fail to lift significant numbers of people out of poverty. Their question is why market based solutions are not scaling up. What are the main challenges and barriers? And where larger scale was achieved, what were the main drivers of success?
The report reasons from the perspective of pioneers and firms. It does not give conclusive answers to all these questions, but arrives at more specific questions that need to be answered in order to establish whether market based solutions can indeed be successfully scaled up under different circumstances.
The final chapter of the report lays out practical next steps for different actors and stakeholders to begin to reshape the mainstream of business towards more inclusive business. This ambition and the theme of scaling up inclusive business models and practice relates well to the agenda of the F&BKP, where sharing and spreading of knowledge are key instruments to improve food security.
