One boundary in two traces: concept vocabulary and cited references in base- of-the-pyramid, social enterprise and social entrepreneurship research, 2000 to 2025
This study analyzes 554 journal articles from 2000 to 2025 to demonstrate that while "social enterprise" and "social entrepreneurship" are indistinguishable in terms of vocabulary and citations, "base-of-the-pyramid" research forms a distinct scholarly boundary from the other two fields based on both concept vocabulary and cited references.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the author. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the global effort to lift people out of poverty, researchers and policymakers often rely on a handful of familiar names to describe their work. They speak of the "base of the pyramid," referring to the vast population of low-income consumers who are often ignored by traditional markets. They talk about "social enterprise" and "social entrepreneurship," which describe businesses designed to solve social problems rather than just generate profit. More recently, the term "inclusive business" has emerged to describe models that integrate poor people as suppliers, employees, or customers. These labels are more than just words; they act as signposts that tell scholars which journals to read, which past studies to trust, and which assumptions to carry into new projects. If these labels point to the same body of knowledge, then a researcher using one term can easily find the work of someone using another. But if they point to different worlds of evidence, then choosing a label might mean missing out on crucial insights from a neighboring field.
A researcher at Metropolitan University in Bangladesh set out to test whether these labels actually point to the same place. They gathered 554 academic articles published between 2000 and 2025 that used at least one of these four terms. Their goal was to see if the groups of papers organized by these labels were truly distinct or if they were just different names for the same conversation. To do this, they looked at two specific things for every paper: the list of concepts attached to it by the database that indexes it, and the list of other papers that the author cited as evidence. By comparing these two lists across the different groups, they could see if the researchers were reading the same sources and thinking about the same ideas, or if they were operating in separate silos.
The study found a clear and consistent divide. The research labeled "base of the pyramid" forms a distinct group that is separated from the research labeled "social enterprise" and "social entrepreneurship." This separation appeared in both the concepts used to describe the papers and the references the author chose to support their arguments. The divide was particularly sharp in the references; the two groups shared less than half as many cited works with each other as they did with papers inside their own group. In contrast, the terms "social enterprise" and "social entrepreneurship" showed no such separation. The papers using these two labels cited the same sources and used similar concepts, suggesting they are part of the same ongoing conversation, though the study could not prove they are exactly the same thing.
The term "inclusive business" was too rare in the journal literature to be placed with certainty. Only ten papers in the entire collection carried this label, which was not enough to draw a firm conclusion about where it fits. However, the main finding remains robust: the world of research on low-income markets is split. One side focuses on market strategies and corporate viability, while the other focuses on organizational forms and social missions. The study also noted that this divide has been present for decades, though the two sides have begun to share slightly more references in recent years.
This discovery matters because it reveals a hidden barrier in how knowledge is assembled. If a program designer chooses to frame a project as "base of the pyramid," they will naturally look for evidence in one set of journals and cite a specific group of past studies. If they frame the same project as "social enterprise," they will look in a different set of journals and cite a different group of past studies. Because these two groups do not read each other's work, valuable evidence established under one label may never reach the researchers working under the other. The study suggests that to build a complete picture of how to help low-income populations, researchers and practitioners must deliberately cross this boundary, searching for evidence beyond the familiar terms they usually use.
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