Electricity Flow and Overflow: Competing Technologies for Responsible Innovation in BoP Markets

International audienceOf recent origin, the concept of 'Bottom of the Pyramid markets' like the similar terms 'social business', 'inclusive innovation' or 'frugal innovation', describes a set of initiatives taken by private investors, and in particular by multinational companies, linking the development of innovative products/services to the fight against poverty (Dalsace & Ménascé, 2010). According to the proponents of this notion, the BOP markets carry the ambition of promoting a dynamic of market expansion to include the poorest in society (through a logic of economic and financial "inclusion") as a bearer of economic and social progress for this vast social category (Budinich, Reott, & Schmidt, 2007). Our analysis is based on in-depth empirical research undertaken in partnership with Schneider Electric, a multinational company engaged in a BoP project. The thesis that we defend here is that the weight of institutional devices and 'macro-actors' in the political engineering of these new markets, and with them the way of framing and defining the BOP consumer, constitutes the critical point around which the essential arbitration between the alternative solutions takes place