New Markets, New Mindsets: Creating wealth with South Africa’s low-income communities through partnership and innovation

Dr Tashmia Ismail is a fellow at UNU Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, and a senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria's Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) where she teaches innovation and BoP strategy. Ismail heads the GIBS BoP Hub, which offers a collaborative multistakeholder platform for firms interested in developing and executing BoP strategies. She is interested in how innovative and sustainable business models can be shaped for firms in developing markets. Currently, her research is directed at understanding internal innovation management and the external networks firms must engage with to ensure success in low income contexts. Dr Nicola Kleyn is a senior lecturer at the Gordon Institute of Business Science where she lectures and researches in the fields of marketing, branding and reputation management. She is both passionate and curious about how organisations can best manage the dynamic tensions that arise when individuals and companies seek to create winwin-win solutions that concurrently enable people, profit and planet. She was instrumental in initiating a stream of BoP focused research and teaching at GIBS and plays an active role in the BoP Hub at GIBS. Gwen Ansell is a veteran writer, editor and writing trainer. She has written several textbooks, including Introduction to Journalism, which is a set text for the national curriculum and trains scholars, journalists and other communicators in writing skills. As a researcher, Ansell is the author of the South African cultural history Soweto Blues, and has done extensive value-chain and innovation research on the South African music industry.