Bottom Pyramid Teachings for Us
July 29, 2009, posted by Jeff, under New world | | 3 Comments
When the poor are converted into consumers, they get more than access to products and services. They acquire the dignity of attention [my emphasis] and choices from the private sector that were previously reserved for the middle-class and rich. – C.K. Prahalad
Loaded Question
One of the most interesting questions I get asked is “What is the future of the church?” This is a loaded question, especially when asked by pastors who see a future devoid of them, but I think C.K. Prahalad gives us some clues in his seminal book Selling to the Bottom of the Pyramid. In his book he outlines 12 principles that companies must understand in order to effectively sell products/services to the world’s bottom 3 billion customers.
Dignity of Attention = A Shift We Have to Make
But first we have to make the mental shift that he speaks about in the quote above. We have to grant them the dignity of attention. We have to care. We have to acknowledge that they can be players (in the BOP case – economically and in our faith communities – spiritually).
My plan for today’s blog
I will lay out each of Prahalad’s points (from my notes) and then give a short take on how I think it applies to faith communities in the future. All in the hope of answering the loaded question of the future of churches.
- Focus on price-performance of products and services. Serving BOP markets is not just about lower price. It is about creating a price-performance envelope. Quantum jumps in price-performance are required to cater to BOP markets.
- Innovation requires hybrid solutions. (Have to provide uninterruptible power supplies if you’re going to provide computers, for example.)
- Solutions must be scalable and transportable across countries, cultures and language. (What works in India won’t work without modifications in say Burundi.)
- Can’t live in resource-waste environments (like TOP environments) and conservation will be key in future BOP key.
- Product development must start from a deep understanding of functionality, not just form. (BOP infrastructure demands such a functional re-thinking).
- Process innovations are just as critical (in BOP) as product innovations.
- De-skilling is critical. If the BOP customer can’t “use” your product or service with a minimum of skill, you’re cooked.
- Education of customers is crucial. Most BOP consumers can’t read, for example, so complicated instructions are a market killer.
- Products must work in hostile environments. (Inconsistent electrical supplies for example.)
- Research on interfaces is critical. BOP customer bases are heterogeneous NOT homogeneous.
- Innovations must reach the customer.
- Feature and function-evolution in BOP markets can be very rapid. (Must focus on the broad architecture of the system – the platform – so that new features can be easily incorporated.)
If/when we (as leaders) begin to seek answers to the question of
“What inherent value are we, the faith community, adding to peoples’ lives?”
we will begin to get the sort of focus on price-performance that Prahalad is speaking of here. If the BOP markets show us anything about value-consciousness it’s this – that because cash for them is even more erratic (and thus precious) than for the Top of the Pyramid, they place even more emphasis on this price-performance envelope.
The faith communities of my daughters (and their children) will be hybrid (from my perspective). They have to be. This has always been the case. The extent – to which we (as leaders) are willing and intentional about fostering this innovation – is the extent to which we’ll help the next iteration of the kingdom of God instead of resisting it.
What works in one place won’t necessarily work in another. Duh, we know this, but we don’t practice it. In an uber-connected world where lies and inconsistencies will be sunlighted way faster than ever before in history, we have to look to the qualities behind a solution instead of the particulars. This will require more voices, eyes and ears than just one person or an oligarchical leadership group.
Most Sundays (here in the U.S.) are very capital-intensive for faith communities. They spend most of their budget on those 2 hours. We need to have the courage (as leaders) to ask why we think that’s a good use of God-given resources, and we need (as customers) to ask ourselves if we should continue to participate in (and thus fund) those Sundays. These are hard and deep questions, but we must consider them and the resources-waste environments they can (potentially) be.
Most of the people that I know that don’t see church as worth the time (both church-alumni and those who have never gone) say that they don’t see a functional reason for it. Like the students in my math classes, they are asking a very good question – “When am I ever going to use this?” While we never will answer this sufficiently for everyone, as leaders, we had better be answer this functional question for ourselves. If we can’t answer the “what good is it?” critique (if only for our own sanity), that’s scary.
How do we navigate this spiritual journey is as critical as what the spiritual journey is. My experience is that we focus on the what instead of the how. I think the how is messier and tougher to present in a 25-minute teaching gig (especially if that teaching is monological), but people are very interested in the how. Perhaps more interested in fact. Practice is obviously in the how category and only nominally in the what category.
One of the geniuses of apprenticing with and for Jesus is that it’s doable. “Whosoever will, may come.” Through our weakness, he shines. The shift from professional “Jesus-follower” toward doability and ordinary attempts is already on. The more we embody and provide doability structures in our faith communities, the more like Jesus we’ll be (and the more effective in seeing his will here on earth as it already is in heaven).
The people that I know who do go to church want to be better human beings who can practice Jesus in that humanity. They care little for the Greek root of a word. They desperately want access to this ongoing story of creation and regeneration and many often (not always thank God) feel as if the bar is too high. The humility with which we live in this story must be educative and give access to this Jesus-story.
Hostile, in BOP terms, means tough. Computer access for example, must take into account inconsistent electrical supplies. If you want to play in this arena, that’s reality. In faith communities, our practice is often in just such variable and tough environments. Teachers and pastors who want to do justice to this are going to have to let others (native to those hostile environments) give voice to their unique practice in those environments. If I live in Philadelphia in the 1870’s, I can read about Deadwood in the Dakota territories, but I don’t live there. In order to really get a read on Deadwood, I need to listen to someone who settled there.
How does this teaching land in this faith community? This is a crucial question. I tell teachers all the time – it’s not what you say, it’s what the student hears. The customer is in charge, they always have been. If/when we begin to focus on the interface between what we’re teaching and what they are hearing/doing, only then will we be getting close to a common language of practice and doctrine.
If I want to know something, I have to do it. Whatever it is we’re hoping for our faith communities to do, that spiritual innovation/imagination must reach them. If we haven’t done everything for that to happen, then we still have work (sacred and hard work) to do. Jesus traveled through Samaria not around it.
Growth can be measured in many ways. Numerical is almost always our default, but there are many others. To use a sports example, I know of NO current NFL team that runs a ‘classic’ West-Coast offense (that Bill Walsh made famous when I was kid), but every NFL team now uses some variation of Walsh’s West-Coast offense in their scheme. How your faith community’s features and functions evolve in the next year, decade or several decades will probably say more about that faith-community and its relationship to Jesus than anything else.
These are some amazing insights. I especially like your summary of capital-intensive Sunday mornings. I’ll also point out that Christianity grew up at the Bottom of the Pyramid in Rome, so this is rediscovering roots.
I’d like to hear people’s answers to the question “What inherent value are we, the faith community, adding to peoples’ lives?” I don’t think it’s what Christ provides–He can do that on His own–but some mix of belonging/identity and accountability.
Thank you for your comments. Your insight that Christianity was initially a BOP grow-up is spot-on. I think we (as Jesus’ apprentices/followers) have always historically been closer to his message and mission when we’re BOP.
As to your question about inherent value, I think belonging is part of it. I would also add that there is (at least the potential for) a chance to hear other’s practices and what they’re doing with Jesus as an innovator (incubator) for me – a fellow-follower.
thanks again for your comment.
Thank you very much, Jeff!
Not only every believer, but every business-owner should think about those points in regular intervals. They helped me with a project we’re at for some time now.
And it’s not bad to think about them as a teacher, too, now and then…