According to researchers and educators working locally, big businesses can tap into a wealth of earnings by focusing on the needs of the poorer class of Jamaicans who barely make ends meet.

The thinking is that even though thet segment of the population has the lowest income earners, collectively they hold a vast amount of an economy’s wealth and a tremendous potential for businesses to earn.

Nonetheless, in Jamaica and the rest of the world, most businesses ignore the BOP, because they assume the poor don’t have enough money to spend. But Dr Michael Rosberg, director, Institute of Social Entrepreneurship and Equity, said at the Jamaica Observer’s Monday Exchange held at its headquarters in Kingston that we ignore the BOP in Jamaica at our own peril. He characterised the Jamaican version as ‘Miss Mattie’, one of the four billion of the world’s working poor.

“If we need to see business going we need to have a relationship with Miss Mattie,” Rosberg said. “Social entrepreneurship can allow you to enter that part of the population pyramid that allows you to access Miss Mattie,” he said. Dr Rosberg was among a group of panellists advocating the need for the use of social entrepreneurship to build the new Jamaica.

He said Miss Mattie, can be a ’40-ish’ year old woman or man, a 15 year old with a child, or a poor young man or woman who is engaging mobile technology or social media. According to Dr Rosberg, Miss Mattie is a ‘woman’ who is relentless, who holds the family together despite the recession. She is not a rich woman, but she is a businesswoman, hardworking, God-fearing and hopeful. Miss Mattie fights for survival, buys cheap and sells dear. She will do anything for her children to escape from poverty, including begging favours from politicians.

However, Dr Rosberg cautions that this dependence on the benevolence of the politician “is a short term strategy that might become destructive for Jamaica in the longer term” because people like Miss Mattie represent about 40 per cent of the national economy. He said one of the reasons Jamaica is not operating at its full potential is because people are ignoring Miss Mattie, who is a major part of the solution.

“Include them as wealth creators and preservers of brand Jamaica based on mutual interest and respect,” Rosberg suggested.

Dr Gladstone Hutchinson, director general, Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) also sided with Rosberg who has set up the Institute for Social Entrepreneurship (I-SEE) at the University College of the Caribbean (UCC).

“We do know that there’s substantial wealth between remittances, between their earnings and between the activities that they do that there is tremendous potential there,” Hutchinson said.

He argued that the BOP in Jamaica is the key to turning the economy around, and not just through social programmes. “When the economy recovers, it cannot recover back to this one or two per cent jobless growth. If we are going to try and create an economy that has that kind of higher sustained level of wealth creation and growth we have to start finding new ways of creating value. What I am saying is that it is at the ‘base of the pyramid’ where this value can be found, where this movement can be found to drive our economy into the four or five per cent growth that we believe at the PIOJ it is capable of achieving,” Hutchinson said.

“It cannot be just the return to what we used to do and bypass all this wealth at the base of the pyramid. That cannot be our path going forward and we are committed to making sure that the wealth that exists at the base of the pyramid can become integral in the renewal and growth of the country’s economy.”

He added that opportunities for growth also exist through identifying the skill sets that those like Miss Mattie possess. “Also at PIOJ we are seeing a lot of activities that would with the right nurturing from UCC or UTech (University of Technology) or whoever, could tackle logistics. A lot of people are involved in market logistics and they are able to understand the trucks coming from different parishes and the type of crops, that which one can go to where and so on an so forth. We are imagining that these kinds of people if they are nurtured they could make a business out of this logistics,” Hutchinson said.

He said for businesses to leverage the possibilities at the BOP, they must operate differently because these consumers are not like the rest. “One of the things that I’ve learnt is that businesses can’t do so by staying above Cross Roads and asking questions. They actually have to come into these communities and engage in a process of knowledge making,” Hutchinson said.

He added that as part of the Community Renewal Programme the PIOJ goes into the communities to learn and understand the needs of the residents and use this information to create programmes.

“Businesses need to create a collaborative learning relationship with these communities to understand where the pricing point and the profit points are in the businesses that are created there. You can’t sit up there estimate what you think should be done. You can’t run a regression analysis you need to get down there and engage,” Hutchinson said. “You have to go into the communities, you have to engage you have to hear from the Miss Matties about the products, prices services and how to combine them and create new value and new profit points. I know of no other way. This is the way that has worked globally. Get there, listen and engage, rather than stay outside.”