Imagining the future may be more important than analysing the past.

If we stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognizing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity will open up.

The real source of market promise is not the wealthy few in the developing world, or even the3 emerging middle-income consumers. It is the billions of aspiring poor who are joining the market economy for the first time.

Strategy is about stretching limited resources to fit ambitious aspirations.

The future lies with those companies who see the poor as their customers.

There is an important distinction between barriers to entry and barriers to imitation.

If we took the mission statements of 100 large industrial companies, mixed them up while everyone was asleep, and reassigned them at random, would anyone wake up tomorrow and cry, 'My gosh, where has our mission statement gone?'