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I’m curious what people think about the term, “Bottom of the Pyramid.” It’s descriptive and understandable, but implies a terrifically OECD-centric worldview. Is “Base of the Pyramid” any better? Is there another phrase out there being used that people find to be as sticky and functional?  We kicked off a discussion about this on the xigi blog.  What do you think?

Last week the Prince of Wales launched an   Accounting for Sustainability Initiative, which calls for the Chartered Accountants of the UK to figure out how to measure the value of the earth and its resources. The ultimate goal I suspect, although it has not been explicitly stated as such thus far, is that generally accepted accounting principals should eventually come to incorporate this information.
The site contains a report documenting the rationale and some early case studies, and one can subscribe to be kept updated. They seem to intend to keep the community of subscribers at large updated.  I wonder if the site will also be used to facilitate some two-way dialog so the business community at large can be involved in defining a practical approach.
HRH has tremendous convening power and it was on full display at the launch event.  In attendance were outgoing PM Tony Blair, BP’s Sir John Browne, the Bishop of London (who mentioned his efforts around an environmental investment strategy for the Church), and a panel with no fewer than a dozen heads of the UK’s most well-known and admired business, media and political entities.  The caliber was the UK equivalent of what we saw at the Initiative for Global Development kickoff in Washington, D.C. last June, of which little has since been heard other than fundraising requests.   I am more optimistic however that the Prince’s initiative will yield substance, knowing who is behind it.

Peter Scholten of Amsterdam’s Scholten & Franssen, Jeremy Nicholls of new economics foundation in the UK, and Brett Galimidi and I from SVT just published a Guide to SROI Analysis that is a sort of workbook with updates that took place over 2004-2005 to the Social Return on Investment methodology. This book is a revision of the original paper Jeremy and I wrote that documented a framework that a group led by Jed Emerson and Sheila Bonini of Hewlett Foundation’s Blended Value Project brought together in 2003. This group included Peter, Jeremy, Jed, Sheila, me, and Stephanie Robertson (then of London Business School and the GSVC, now of SiMPACT Strategy Group in Canada), Robert Tolmach (then of Glasses for Humanity and now Important Gifts and Wellgood LLC in New York) and Betsy Biemann (then of the Rockefeller Foundation, now running the Maine Technology Institute.
The new book has several good current case studies and a step-by-step description of how to perform the quantitative and monetizable calculations of SROI.
We’re distributing it to faculty at business, environmental, social service and other management programs. We’re talking about incorporating it into curriculum and about updating it with the help of a university press.

We’re also looking forward to expanding on this book with a new one that includes advances in how to incorporate qualitative and narrative information, how to lower cost while improving quality, and how reports can be formatted for user-friendliness.