This report - The Next Billions: Unleashing Business Potential in Untapped Markets -, published by the World Economic Forum explores innovative approaches through which companies across a broad range of industries can tap the economic potential of the “base of the pyramid” (BOP), generating sustainable economic growth while improving the livelihoods of the poor.

In 2008, the Forum initiated a new project to assess commercially viable business models that can improve livelihoods and strengthen food value chains in poor regions - and to define the actions needed to scale up such approaches. This project was conducted in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Boston Consulting Group, and championed by the Consumer Industries community of the World Economic Forum. It combined insights from three cross-industry, multi-stakeholder regional roundtables (in Africa, Asia and Latin America) with a broad research survey and collection of over 200 case studies, synthesizing the results into two reports.