Social Entrepreneurship and Scaling Strategies for Poverty Alleviation

Social Entrepreneurship for Poverty Alleviation In the last decades, governments, NGOs, policymakers, academics, and large corporations are increasing the attention on powerful mechanisms to alleviate poverty. In fact, being recognized as one of the leading SDGs by United Nations, poverty still represent a worldwide grand challenge, which comprise almost half the world’s population. A recent research from BoP innovation center (2020) estimated that around 4.5 billion people globally live in the so-called base of the pyramid (BoP). The base of the pyramid include a vast population which face differences in the degree of poverty ranging from extreme poverty conditions (with households’ daily incomes of 1 USD) (Sachs 2006; World Bank 2018) to lessconstrained conditions with 8 USD per day in some more developed countries (Alkire et al. 2014). Notably, worldwide this population represent a huge market for addressing the basic need of the poor, as water, electricity, consumer goods, and health care so that many institutions and profit companies are trying to address this market to help people to eradicate poverty, thereby generating a “fortune” for the organization with a huge untapped market (Prahalad and Hammond 2002; London and Hart 2004; Prahalad 2009). Despite the many approaches from governments and nonprofit institutions, a valuable approach has been recognized in businesses which can represent a powerful force toward poverty alleviation and eradication (Bruton et al. 2013; Dembek et al. 2020; Sutter et al. 2019).