One way to get around the ethical debate of BOP is to let the companies involved in BOP markets, whether in the developed countries or developing countries, be open and do what is best for them. If MNCs want to help the poor in BOP markets, they should help the companies from emerging countries by forming alliances and creating the so-called ecosystems.

The pathbreaking book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, by late CK Prahalad, the renowned management guru, brought to focus the world's most exciting and the fastest growing market: the bottom of the pyramid consisting of the world's 4 billion poor who make less than $2 a day. In Prahalad's own words, this poor representing the so-called Bottom of the Pyramid or BOP, cannot be just ignored because of their immense buying power and entrepreneurial capabilities. But, according to him, multinational corporations (MNCs), "have undermined the efforts of the poor to build their livelihoods" and done "greatest harm" by ignoring them altogether.

By putting the blame on MNCs for the misery of the four billion poor, Prahalad made a case and created a worldwide movement that brought the attention of the top executives of world's largest corporations to a pressing humanitarian need. He also had found a mantra to finally grab the private companies' attention to help eradicate world poverty.

While focusing on this 4 billion poor people, Prahalad highlighted the fact that by virtue of their numbers, the poor represented a significant market segment that needs to be unlocked. According to him, the major BOP economies, valued at $12.5 tn as a whole were more formidable "than the combined GDP of Japan, Germany, France, the UK, and Italy" - in other words, the poor were not poor after all!

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