Journal of Business Venturing 28 (2013) 683–689

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Business Venturing

Entrepreneurship as a solution to poverty

Garry D. Bruton a,b,⁎, David J. Ketchen Jr. c, R. Duane Ireland d
a
Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX 76129, USA
b
Sun Yat Sen Business School, Guangzhou, China
c
Lowder Eminent Scholar, Raymond J. Harbert College of Business, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA
d
Conn Chair in New Ventures Leadership, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4221, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Available online 19 June 2013 Individuals living in poverty remain a critical issue. This special issue focuses on how
entrepreneurship can help to solve such poverty. Rather than viewing those in poverty as a
Field Editor: D. Shepherd market for goods, the solution lies in understanding how to help those living in poverty create
their own businesses. Ultimately, entrepreneurship among those in poverty will create a long
Keywords: lasting solution to their poverty. Herein, we initially examine the extant knowledge about
Poverty entrepreneurship. We then examine where future research on this important topic should move.
Emerging markets Finally, we introduce the five articles that make up this special issue. These five articles came from
Entrepreneurship the initial 71 submissions and enhance our knowledge about entrepreneurship as a pathway to
reducing poverty.
© 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Executive summary

Currently, 2.47 billion people in the world live in poverty with an income of $2 or less a day. Unfortunately, the total
population living in poverty is proving to be relatively stable, as indicated by the fact that the number of these individuals
declined only from 2.59 billion to 2.47 billion between 1981 and 2008. This population has been recognized by scholars and
business organizations as a large potential market for selling a variety of goods and services. Herein, we adopt a different
perspective arguing that entrepreneurship offers a means through which people have an opportunity to break the cycle of
poverty.
This article introduces a special issue focused on impactful scholarship that enhances our understanding about organizations
and managerial practice by the poor as they establish entrepreneurial businesses. With over a third of the world's population
living in poverty, entrepreneurship scholars have the potential to improve the lives of these individuals by building an
understanding of how they can act as entrepreneurs as a foundation for improving their lives.
Although the entrepreneurship literature has historically shied away from issues involving poverty, not all business disciplines
have shown such reluctance. Therefore, this article examines the existing literature in a variety of business disciplines on poverty
as a means to develop our arguments. Entrepreneurship scholars have an opportunity to build on the rich research that exists as
we move forward to explore the critical issues that remain about entrepreneurship and poverty. To build this understanding to
date about entrepreneurship and poverty, we searched the Financial Times list of top business journals from January 2003 through
January 2013. “Poverty” and “base of the pyramid” were our search terms. Eliminating those articles that we judged as
non-relevant or not related to our topic generated 83 articles in the Financial Times list over the 10-year period. While 83
academic articles on poverty sounds impressive, this number is a tiny fraction of the thousands of articles published over the
10-year period. We classified these articles into three main categories of scholarship—entrepreneurship, management, and
economics. Looking at these categories, it is clear that numerous rich topics for entrepreneurship scholars to investigate remain.

⁎ Corresponding author at: Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX 76129, USA. Tel.: +1 817 257 7421.
E-mail addresses: g.bruton@tcu.edu (G.D. Bruton), ketchda@auburn.edu (D.J. Ketchen), direland@mays.tamu.edu (R.D. Ireland).

0883-9026/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2013.05.002
684 G.D. Bruton et al. / Journal of Business Venturing 28 (2013) 683–689

To date, only the basic foundations of the understanding of poverty exist. Entrepreneurship scholars in particular need to ensure
that strong theoretical foundations are drawn from the management literature. Similarly, from economics, entrepreneurship
scholars need to draw on the extensive methods including experimental design that are employed.
This article introduces the special issue in the Journal of Business Venturing on Entrepreneurship as a Solution to Poverty. The
five articles in this special issue are the outcome of the initial 71 papers received in response to this special issue's call. These
articles represent a rich range of topics that we anticipate will stimulate additional work on entrepreneurship as a solution to
poverty.

2. Introduction

Poverty remains a critical issue for a large percentage of the world's population. The World Bank defines the median poverty
level for emerging economies as individuals living on less than $2 a day; currently, 2.47 billion people live in this poverty around
the world. Unfortunately, the total population living in this state of poverty is proving to be relatively stable, as indicated by the
fact that the number of these individuals declined only from 2.59 billion to 2.47 billion between 1981 and 2008 (Chen and
Ravallion, 2013).
From the perspective of entrepreneurs and current businesses, the world's population living in poverty appears to be a large
potential market for selling a variety of goods and services. In this regard, Prahalad's work (2005) was ground breaking in that it
articulated actions firms could take to serve the needs of the poor and generate returns on their investments in the process of
doing so. However, we adopt a different perspective for the purposes of this special issue. Rather than focusing on the poor as a
market for firms from mature economies, we argue that entrepreneurship offers a means through which people can break the
cycle of poverty. Guiding this choice regarding the framing of this special issue is the conviction that impactful scholarship has the
potential to positively affect societies and contribute to our understanding about organizations and managerial practice. Our view
is that with over a third of the world's population living in conditions of poverty, entrepreneurship scholars should seek to
investigate issues that encourage and sustain entrepreneurship among those living in poverty as a path along which to improve
lives. Our hope is that this special issue will lay the foundation for such an investigation.
Historically, entrepreneurship research has paid scant attention to poverty. This inattention may have resulted from widely
used definitions of entrepreneurship that do not appear to include poverty-ridden contexts. From Schumpeter's (1942) creative
destruction through Shane and Venkataraman's (2000) focus on opportunities to create future goods and services to Rindova
et al.'s (2009) notion of “entrepreneuring,” entrepreneurship scholars have focused their work on high-growth, high-
wealth-creation businesses in either established or new startups.
Another factor that has limited the investigation of entrepreneurship among the desperate poor is the lack of entre-
preneurship scholars who live in and hence experience poverty conditions. Being grounded in settings of poverty facilitates
the appreciation, understanding, and accurate interpretation of what occurs within such settings. Most entrepreneurship
scholars come from the mature economies of North America and Europe, where poverty is not a central issue. Even those
scholars who come from severely impoverished nations tend to live relatively affluent lives, making them less connected to
poverty.
Although the entrepreneurship literature has shied away from issues involving poverty, not all business disciplines have
shown such reluctance. Accordingly, we briefly examine the existing literature in a variety of business disciplines on poverty as a
means to develop our arguments. Entrepreneurship scholars should build on the rich research that exists as we move forward to
explore the critical issues concerning entrepreneurship and poverty. We then discuss the potential direction of future research in
this domain. Finally, we situate the articles that appear in this special issue in the proposed streams of research.
Prior to presenting these materials, we are pleased to note that the Journal of Business Venturing received 71 papers in response
to this special issue's call. The review process resulted in five articles being accepted for publication in the special issue. We
present these articles to you partly with the hope that their content will stimulate additional work in this special issue's domain.

3. What do we know about entrepreneurship and poverty?

To establish what we know to date about entrepreneurship and poverty, we searched the Financial Times list of top business
journals from January 2003 through January 2013. “Poverty” and “base of the pyramid” were our search terms. A total of 120
articles used these terms. We dropped 19 of these because they were cases (1 article), book reviews (2 articles), or the
examination of scholarly issues around poverty was very limited (16 articles).1 The result was 101 academic articles that examine
poverty or base of the pyramid over the 10-year period. A deeper look at these articles revealed that many focus on poverty in
North America or Europe; poverty in these areas is generally not at the desperate level of living on $2 per day. We therefore
excluded articles focused on North America and Europe. Doing so reduced the sample to 83 articles. Although this process may
have overlooked an article or two, we believe we identified the vast majority of relevant work.
While 83 academic articles on poverty sounds impressive, this number is a tiny fraction of the thousands of articles published
over the 10-year period. Not all of these journals contained equal coverage of poverty. Approximately half of all published articles

1
American Economic Review also publishes selected AEA conference papers. These conference papers are not included here since they are not full articles but
short proceedings papers.
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on poverty and the base of the pyramid appear in the Journal of Business Ethics. Several highly regarded outlets such as Journal of
Applied Psychology or Journal of Finance have published no articles on the topic.
Next, in order to more clearly frame the analysis, we focus on three specific bodies of research among the 83 articles dealing
with poverty. First, we examine articles that specifically focus on entrepreneurship in settings of poverty. Next, we examine the
broader body of literature on poverty and base of the pyramid in the management literature. We then examine the relatively large
body of research in economics on poverty.2 All three sets of articles offer important implications for entrepreneurship scholars
interested in poverty contexts.

3.1. Entrepreneurship

Looking deeper at the work published on poverty, we discovered that only six articles have appeared in Entrepreneurship
Theory and Practice and Journal of Business Venturing; the five articles published here in this special issue will increase
dramatically the number of scholarly works that examine the issue of entrepreneurship and poverty. Table 1 summarizes the six
articles in entrepreneurship journals prior to this special issue. These articles form the foundation for what we know to date on
entrepreneurial solutions to poverty. In looking at these articles, McMullen (2010) is particularly noteworthy as he sets out to
delineate a market-based approach to inclusive growth for the poor. The author focuses most extensively on the role of
institutions as barriers or facilitators to market-based solutions to poverty as he seeks to delineate the potential role of
developmental economics in entrepreneurship. It is noteworthy that McMullen's (2010) framing is consistent with the other
entrepreneurship articles in that they focus on the role of institutions and their impact on entrepreneurship in settings of
poverty (only one of the articles takes a substantively different route as it uses feminist theory (i.e., Scott et al., 2012). The focus
on institutions in many ways is not surprising. Scholars from mature economies often find the most striking feature of settings of
poverty is that institutions (such as the law) that are taken for granted in mature economies often do not work or are not
present.3
The strategic actions and organizational processes that entrepreneurs use to compete and prosper in poverty domains are
largely missing from the relevant entrepreneurship articles. Strategic actions and organizational processes differ in emerging
economies from those in mature economies (Bruton et al., 2010), and it is reasonable to expect that these actions and processes
will be even more significantly different in settings of poverty. Entrepreneurs in settings of poverty not only confront dramatic
institutional voids but also lack any appreciable resources and face severe penalties for failure including not being able to
appropriately support one's family in terms of the basic needs such as food and adequate shelter. Thus, we expect that
entrepreneurs will make strategic decisions and act in ways that are substantially different even from larger, established firms in
that setting.
It is also useful to note that most existing entrepreneurship research on poverty is qualitative; in fact, only one of the
entrepreneurship articles on poverty is quantitative. We do not view the dominance of qualitative work as a negative. In fact, it is
appropriate for scholars in the early stages of a domain to lay the foundation through qualitative research because there is a need
to build theory and to identify questions that scholars should ask. However, now that scholars have established a solid albeit
nascent foundation of qualitative-based insights, it may be time for them to augment their investigations via the collection of
large data sets and quantitative analysis. Undeniably, it is quite difficult to gather reliable quantitative data within poverty
settings. Nonetheless, scholars need to embrace this challenge in order to expand the scope of entrepreneurship-related work
that is concerned with poverty.

3.2. Management

A shown in Table 2, management research grounded in settings of poverty appears in California Management Review
(6 articles), Academy of Management Perspectives (3 articles), Academy of Management Journal (2 articles), and Strategic
Management Journal (1 article). It is notable that many of these articles are conceptual in nature and not empirical, or with strong
theoretical foundations; in fact, two of these articles are letters from the editors calling for greater research on poverty (Bruton,
2010; Pearce, 2005). We do not intend this observation as a criticism of the articles as they are consistent with the journals in
which they are published. (For example, neither California Management Review nor Academy of Management Perspectives requires
that an article make a theoretical contribution in addition to other contributions.) That said, the article by Mair et al. (2012)
clearly has a strong theoretical foundation to accompany its qualitative methodology.
It is also notable that the management literature most often addresses how firms from mature economies compete in settings
of poverty. These articles are useful for entrepreneurship scholars interested in studying entrepreneurship in settings of poverty
in that they provide some grounding in the setting. However, the overall ability to extract meaningful guidance for actual and
potential entrepreneurs who live in poverty settings is limited in that the focus is on large, mature firms.

2
Even the classification of journals by discipline can be controversial. For example, is JIBS a management or international business journal? Here we classify
these journals according to the disciple that the authors feel is the dominant view of scholars. Accordingly, JIBS is treated as an international business journal not a
management journal.
3
Webb et al. (2010) use network theory in addition to institutional theory as they examine NGOs and MNE alliances.
686 G.D. Bruton et al. / Journal of Business Venturing 28 (2013) 683–689

Table 1
Entrepreneurship research on poverty.

Authors/Year Journal Article summary

Khavul et al., 2013 JBV Examines institutional change and how the change agent in settings of poverty (microfinancers) can ultimately
be replaced by banks
Scott et al., 2012 ETP Through feminist perspective—AVON fosters ownership belief and encourages women to develop clear strategy
to be successful
Kistruck et al., 2011 ETP BOP generates many institutional challenges to traditional franchising—discusses benefits to microfinancing to
address desperate poverty
McMullen, 2010 ETP Develops a theoretical perspective on a market-based solution to poverty through developmental economics
Webb et al., 2010 ETP Uses institutional theory and network theory to examine the relationship between NGOs and MNEs
Mair and Marti, 2009 JBV Examines BRAC in Bangladesh and the role of institutional voids and how they impact the entrepreneurial
venture

3.3. Economics

The economics literature has been far more aggressive in looking at issues of poverty. As shown in Table 3, fourteen articles in
American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Journal of Financial Economics have examined the issue of poverty
or base of the pyramid outside of North America and Europe. Beyond these leading journals, other journals such as the Journal of
Developmental Economics focus on the issue of development economics and include a number of articles that relate specifically to
poverty (i.e., Berg's examination in 2013 of credit and poverty in South Arica).
Almost all of the economics articles are empirical with strong methodological foundations. In contrast to the management
articles described above, the relevant economics articles address problems facing those living within poverty and the actions that
generate the greatest success. Additionally, the economics articles have moved beyond acknowledging that institutional settings
are different and have started examining different actions' effects within various settings.
Several themes emerge from the relevant economics articles. First, identifying practical solutions to aspects of poverty is a
popular approach. Duflo and Pande (2007) examine the impact of dams in India on improving the lives of the impoverished while
Banerjee et al. (2007) examine the positive effects of literacy on the desperately poor. Another theme is the use of experimental
designs to identify the methods that are the most successful in solving issues of poverty. For example, Alatas et al. (2012)
conducted an experiment among 640 Indonesian villages to find which poverty elimination methods work best. Economics
scholars are also willing to pursue controversial findings. For example, Besley and Burgess (2004) find that increasing worker
protections tended to push more firms to be informal businesses, which actually increased poverty. One general shortcoming of
the economics articles is that they seldom have the level of theoretical foundations that leading management and
entrepreneurship journals expect. However, the empirics in these articles set a strong standard for the future research on poverty.

4. Entrepreneurship research—where do we move next?

Entrepreneurship scholars can benefit from literature in both the management and economics domains as we move forward in
an effort to better understand entrepreneurship as a solution to poverty. From the management literature, the ability to address
rich questions concerning what actually generates success is important. The management literature has typically focused those
questions on how large mature firms can be successful in serving those in poverty. Entrepreneurship researchers too could seek to
identify predictors of success with respect to entrepreneurial ventures and individuals' efforts to improve the conditions of those

Table 2
Management Research on Poverty.

Authors/Year Journal Article Summary

McKague and Oliver, 2012 CMR Examines how NGOs can help eliminate poverty for food producers living in desperate
poverty
Mair et al., 2012 AMJ Examines institutional voids in Bangladesh and how refining architecture and legitimizing
new actors can help build inclusive markets
Anderson et al., 2010 CMR Examines how markets can be created in conflict zones
Ahlstrom, 2010 AMP Addresses how innovation leads to economic growth and how this can be a solution to
poverty—calls for market solutions to poverty
Bruton, 2010 AMP Calls for expansion of poverty research by management scholars
Garrette and Karnani, 2010 CMR Examines cases of how to successfully market in the BOP
Olsen and Boxenbaum, 2009 CMR Examines case of Danish firm seeking to serve the BOP
Vachani and Smith, 2008 CMR Examines cases of firms and their distribution strategies for the BOP
Karnani, 2007a CMR Calls for private firms to seek to serve the BOP
Karnani, 2007b SMJ Examines the case of Fair and Lovely on how a mature economy firm can compete in
BOP and do well by society
Seelos and Mair, 2007 AMP Examines 2 cases on how firms can successfully develop BOP strategy
Pearce, 2005 AMJ Calls for greater organizational scholarship around issue of poverty
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Table 3
Economics research on poverty.

Authors/Year Journal Article summary

Dunbar et al., 2013
Alatas et al., 2012
Ravallion, 2012
Faye and Niehaus, 2012
Swami, 2011
Chen and Ravallion, 2010
Deaton, 2010
Shetty, 2008
Jensen and Miller, 2008
Duflo and Pande, 2007
Banerjee et al., 2007
Sala-i-Martin, 2006
Ashraf et al., 2006
Besley and Burgess, 2004
AER Separation of what expenditures actually go to children since some resources can be shared in Malawi
AER Experiment in 640 villages comparing 3 different methods to address poverty
AER Examines that there is not convergence with poverty in emerging economies—that is, nations with
higher poverty should grow faster to address it
AER Examines the effectiveness of foreign aid for settings of poverty
JFE Examines the factors that lead to greater inclusiveness in banks in India
QJE Argues that desperate poverty is actually higher than most statistics show
AER Argues for new measures of poverty
JFE Shows that microfinance leads to positive impact only if other non-financial services are also available
AER Examines the impact of subsidizing food stables in very poor households
QJE Studies the impact of large irrigation projects
QJE Randomized experiment of education changes impact
QJE Argues that there is convergence in poverty rates among nations
QJE Examines the impact of commitment savings product in the Philippines
QJE Examines the impact on poverty of passing more pro-worker legislation

living in poverty. The economics literature highlights significant methodological advancements that scholars examining
entrepreneurship in settings of poverty should adopt. While the qualitative research that has dominated the entrepreneurship
investigations of poverty is unquestionably valuable, the field needs to augment it with quantitative research.
In particular, experimental and quasi-experimental designs offer great potential for entrepreneurship-related scholarship. Scholars
need to study in detail how different actions by entrepreneurs in settings of poverty can generate success. To illustrate such a study,
consider microfinance. Typically, borrowers gather together and make payments on their loans every two weeks. But what is the
impact if microlenders change the format of borrowers' meetings to once a month or every week? Experimental and quasi-
experimental designs could help answer this question. Similarly, what are the effects if lenders change the interest rates charged for
microfinance loans? In a mature economy, people are very sensitive to interest rates. But in settings of poverty that sensitivity may
differ. Entrepreneurship scholars working with microfinance organizations could conduct experiments to see if changes in the
borrowing group's organization or interest rates in fact have an impact and, if so, what it is. The results could be interesting to scholars
as we seek to understand microfinance supported entrepreneurs and could be helpful to microfinance organizations.
The topics open to examination by entrepreneurship concerning poverty are as rich as the domain of entrepreneurship. The six
entrepreneurship papers to date (see Table 1) have barely scratched the surface of how entrepreneurship can help solve issues of
poverty. However, one issue that is clear from reviewing this set of articles is that almost all of the published research to date
takes a macro view of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship scholars would be well served to pioneer the micro aspect of
entrepreneurship as we seek to better understand how entrepreneurship can solve issues of poverty. In this spirit, Benabou and
Tirole (2006) contend that optimism is a key determinant of whether a nation's people move out of poverty. There is similar
evidence in microfinance among the poor that the ability to visualize a longer time horizon in which an investment can lead to
success is critical (Bruton et al., 2011). One would expect, therefore, that people's attitudes may be critical to entrepreneurial
success in settings of poverty.

5. Special issue papers

As noted previously, 71 papers were submitted in response to the call for the special issue. After the review process was
complete, there were five papers accepted for publication in the special issue. We summarize these articles in Table 4.
We believe that these articles have the potential to help substantially expand the domain of entrepreneurship as a solution to
poverty. Collectively, these five articles offer several clear contributions to the literature. First, as noted above, scholars need to
move toward greater empirical analysis of entrepreneurship in settings of poverty. Allison et al. (2013–this issue), Boso et al.
(2013–this issue), and Tobias et al. (2013–this issue) serve this call in that they rely on rigorous empirical methods. Allison et al.
(2013–this issue) examine 6,051 narratives from entrepreneurs to study how these narratives impact entrepreneurs' likelihood of
receiving microfinance funding. The narratives are posted by pass-through microlenders who raise funds and then past them to
others who make the actual loan. Allison et al. (2013–this issue) examine how quickly individuals chose to fund particular
entrepreneurs based on the different narratives. Boso et al. (2013–this issue) examine over 200 Ghanaian entrepreneurs as they
explore the impact of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and marketing orientation (MO) on entrepreneurs' success. Tobias et al.
(2013–this issue) surveyed 239 participants within Rwanda’s coffee industry.
These three articles also demonstrate the value entrepreneurship researchers create when they draw from a rich set of
theoretical foundations. For example, Allison et al. (2013–this issue) draw on the warm-glow theoretical lens used in political
rhetoric to understand the funding provided to impoverished entrepreneurs. Specifically, they examine the rhetorical content of
entrepreneurial narratives to discover how specific aspects of the narrative affect the speed with which individual investors fund
microloans. Warm-glow theory suggests that people help others in order to feel good about themselves (Andreoni, 1990). Thus,
Allison et al. (2013–this issue) bring a unique and interesting theoretical lens to the understanding of an aspect of entrepreneurs
in poverty. Boso et al. (2013–this issue) draw from both institutional theory and social capital theory to expand our
688 G.D. Bruton et al. / Journal of Business Venturing 28 (2013) 683–689

Table 4
Summary of articles in the special issue.

Authors Title Summary

Allison, McKenny, and Short The Effect of Entrepreneurial Rhetoric on Microlending Using theory on political rhetoric, the authors examine characteristics
Investment: An Examination of the Warm-Glow of entrepreneurial narratives and their impact on entrepreneurs
receiving funding. Their sample is 6,051 narratives from entrepreneurs.
Boso, Story, and Cadogan Entrepreneurial Orientation, Market Orientation, Using primary data from Ghana, the authors examine the impact of
Network aligning high levels of EO and MO on firm performance.
Ties, and Performance: Study of Entrepreneurial Firms in
a Developing Economy
Kent and Dacin Bankers at the Gate: Microfinance and the High Cost The authors examine the interaction between commercial banking
of Borrowed Logics and poverty alleviation in microfinance. They focus on how commercial
banking logic increasingly is displacing poverty alleviation logic.
Sutter, Webb, Kistruck, Entrepreneurs' Responses to Semi-formal Illegitimate An exploratory examination of crime's impact on entrepreneurs in
and Bailey Institutional Arrangements Guatemala City and how the entrepreneurs navigate this environment.
Tobias, Mair, and Toward a Theory of Transformative Entrepreneuring: Building on survey data from Rwanda, the authors introduce the
Barbosa-Leiker Poverty Reduction and Conflict Resolution in Rwanda's concept of transformative entrepreneuring, defined as the process of
Entrepreneurial Coffee Sector addressing and ultimately transforming conditions of protracted
socioeconomic constraint through entrepreneurship.

understanding of the role of EO and MO in entrepreneurial success. Tobias et al. (2013–this issue) extend theory about
entrepreneuring to the context of transformation and poverty. Overall, Allison et al. (2013–this issue), Boso et al. (2013–this
issue) and Tobias et al. (2013–this issue) take important steps toward establishing a foundation for greater empirical
investigation of and richer theorizing about poverty entrepreneurs.
Using in-depth qualitative cases, Sutter et al. (2013–this issue) examine the effects of crime and corruption on entrepreneurs
in Guatemala. We commend these authors for their willingness to examine firsthand entrepreneurs in one of the world's 20 most
violent countries. Guatemala is close to the United States, yet is a place where half the children under the age of 5 suffer from
malnutrition. Admirably, Sutter et al. (2013–this issue) have answered the call to use scholarship to try to address serious
problems in a way that can help entrepreneurs in settings of poverty to perform better. In particular, the authors help scholars
and entrepreneurs in their efforts to better understand illegitimate institutions and their effects on entrepreneurial activities.
Finally, Kent and Dacin (2013–this issue) develop a theoretical model for the purpose of extending our understanding of
institutional logics. Specifically, they examine the competing logics between banking and microfinance. The authors provide a
significant theoretical contribution to the understanding of institutional theory and entrepreneurship within conditions of
poverty.

6. Conclusion

Poverty is a critical issue for the world with the numbers of people living at the base of the pyramid declining only slightly over
time. Market-based solutions such as entrepreneurship offer the best opportunity to create substantial and significantly positive
change within poverty settings. We hope this special issue offers a strong foundation for a vibrant stream of research concerning
how entrepreneurs in poverty settings can create positive change—for their families, communities, and the broader society in
which they are situated.

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