How Innovative Companies Help Frontier Markets Grow

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Efosa Ojomo, global prosperity lead at the Clayton Christensen Institute, argues that international aid is not the best way to develop poor countries, nor are investments in natural resource extraction, outsourced labor, or incremental improvements to existing offerings for established customer bases. Instead, entrepreneurs, investors, and global companies should focus on market-creating innovations. Just like Henry Ford in the United States a century ago, they should see opportunity in the struggles of frontier markets, target non-consumption, and create not just products and services but whole ecosystems around them, which then promote stability and economic growth. Ojomo is the co-author of the HBR article "Cracking Frontier Markets" and the book The Prosperity Paradox.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Looking for a good book? Pick up your next business read during HBR Cyber Monday sale.
0:06.0	Head to store.HBR.org and use promo code cyber23 to save big on HBR books, tools, curated collections and more. That's store.
0:16.6	HBR.P. Welcome to the HPR Ideacast from Today it's one of the poorest countries in Asia.
0:53.0	Today, it's one of the most successful, with the GDP per capita of $27,500 and has gone from being a foreign aid recipient to a foreign aid donor.
1:03.6	What sparked the transition from frontier economy to developed one in the space of a generation?
1:09.7	According to a new book by Clayton Christensen, Of F Ojimo and Karen Dylan. The catalyst was
1:15.1	not an influx of international aid or government investment and intervention. It
1:20.0	was homegrown entrepreneurialism. It was Korean seeing opportunities where outsiders didn't, creating markets
1:26.6	where none had previously existed, and most importantly investing in the
1:30.7	infrastructure they needed to sustain those businesses.
1:34.0	These innovators didn't wait for South Korea to grow into a stable, predictable, prosperous country
1:38.8	before they jumped in.
1:40.3	They jumped in and prosperity followed.
1:43.0	Efosa Ojimo, who's in the studio with me today,
1:46.0	has studied how this process plays out in markets around the world,
1:50.0	from his native Nigeria to India and China.
1:53.1	He's also looked at countries that seem stuck
1:55.2	in their economic development
1:56.8	and believes that executives, entrepreneurs,
1:59.2	and investors should find opportunities
2:02.0	to both do good and earn a profit in those struggles.
2:05.4	He's the global prosperity lead at the Clayton Christensen Institute and co-author of both
	...

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