Barriers and strategies for innovations entering BoP markets

Companies that bring a new product to the market or enter a new market with an existing product, come across a number of barriers that prevent large?scale diffusion. In order to circumvent or remove these barriers, they can adopt alternative strategies. This paper looks into these barriers and focuses on niche?strategies for innovative technological products aimed at “Base of the Pyramid” (BoP) markets. The paper builds on existing literature describing barriers and strategies for introducing innovative technological products in western markets. The information sources are fourfold: (1) literature study, where literature is combined from the fields of Strategic Niche Management, Innovation Management, Innovation Systems and BoP markets; (2) interviews with experts on BoP markets; (3) secondary case studies on barriers for technological products on BoP markets; (4) interviews with companies that sell technological innovative products on BoP markets. We look at three types of products: cookstoves, solar lanterns and water purification technology in Africa or Asia. Based on these information sources we come to a list of 17 barriers and 11 niche?strategies that are adapted to the specific context of innovative technological products in BoP markets. Some examples of barriers are a lack of after sales service, lack of consumer awareness, and a lack of distribution channels. The barriers are also ranked in terms of their relative importance. Some of these niche strategies, which are further explained in the paper are the lead user niche strategy, the educate niche strategy and the redesign niche strategy. In the conclusion and discussion section we discuss, among other things, the generalizability of the relative importance of the barriers and the selected niche?strategies for introducing innovative technological products in BoP markets and how the insights in this paper can be extended to become more dynamic