There is an important distinction between barriers to entry and barriers to imitation.
Strategy is about stretching limited resources to fit ambitious aspirations.
The future lies with those companies who see the poor as their customers.
Executives are constrained not by resources but by their imagination.
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?'
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.