Rob Katz at NextBillion.net is up-in-arms over Business Week's coverage of the increased inclusion of the Base of the Pyramid approach to incorporating the poor into business school curricula. Katz argues that BOP is a way to address market failures, specifically that the "poor pay artificially high prices for basic goods and services, if they have access at all. BOP producers - farmers, merchants, factory workers, etc. - often live in a monopsony environment, where a single buyer or employer pays below-market prices or wages because he knows he's the only option."

He finds the reporter creates a false dichotomy in her coverage of the trend. Basically, she talks to a bunch of people who think this is a good development (starting with an Aspen Institute researcher who worked on the report reflecting the trend, good for you Beyond Grey Pinstripes). Then the reporter talks to a confirmed BOP skeptic and it is this skeptic, Aneel Karnani, who plants the seed of this dichotomy between BOP as strictly positioning the poor as consumers versus producers or both.

I can understand why Katz is irritated, but I think the situation speaks to the curse of knowledge: Katz understands the nuances of BOP, and this reporter doesn't, and therefore she reports the skeptical comments of Karmani without caveat. The reporter clearly wants to qualify and justify the "controversial" moniker she gives BOP theory. Karmani's comments make this point neatly.

What's the problem? The context makes it clear that BOP is going gangbusters and that Karmani is a curmudgeon (in the title of his last paper he calls BOP "a mirage"). That there is a trend largely depicted as sweeping business school campuses makes it clear that this new theory is taking hold. Katz wishes for a future when we've moved beyond the producer versus consumer dichotomy and when "articles will take the time to posit a more nuanced view of base of the pyramid strategy and practice." Fine, but don't hold your breath. I've been wishing for a future when we don't have to question the evidence of climate change ever again, but it never ends.