In the next 15 years, the number of people in the consuming class will double and, for the first time ever, emerging markets will have more purchasing power than developed economies combined. Dylan Reid of GOOD has summed up this phenomenon and explained why smart entrepreneurs aren’t eyeing the first world anymore. Despite the wide adoption of new consumer products around the globe, the vast majority of innovations are developed with the first world in mind. Only when technologies can be made sufficiently cheap and on a wide enough scale do they make their way into emerging markets, either as backdated or stripped-down versions of what’s available in the west. The difficulty of reaching consumers in these growing markets has kept them on the periphery of corporate agendas, but as billions of new consumers become richer and more connected, this is likely to change.