Organizing innovation to deliver financial services to the base of the Pyramid

Over the past twenty years, the number of mobile phone subscriptions has risen from 12 million to more than six billion. 75% of the world has access to a mobile phone and the developing world is now more mobile than the developed world. However, the growth of non-voice services on these mobiles for the Base of the Pyramid users is still at the start of its growth curve. Drawing from a study of 50 case studies in financial services, this paper examines how the innovation for financial services was organized using a framework of six elements. It shows the importance of government support (both as regulator and as (launching) customer), the need for trust delivered by expansion of existing strong brands, embeddedness by using local agents and capacity building of these agents and the customers.