[3] Inclusive business models can be developed and implemented by a wide range of entities, from private corporations (large and small), to state-owned companies, co-operatives, or even not-for-profit organizations, as long as the following criteria are met: Businesses can improve the lives of poor people, contributing broadly to what the United Nations terms ‘human development’—expanding people's opportunities to lead lives they value.
Where poverty prevails, the foundations for functional markets are often lacking, excluding the poor from meaningful participation and deterring companies from doing business with them.
But bringing mobile telephone service to poor people has depended partly on a change in the business process—the move to selling air time on prepaid cards.
With ‘smart’ payment and pricing methods, an inclusive business model can accommodate the cash flow of its customers and suppliers, who are constrained by low and unreliable incomes and a lack of access to financial services.
And if they are doing business in ways that contribute to economic opportunity and human development, organizations outside the private sector may have complementary policy interests.