Leather workshop, ladies NGO, Kanpur India September 14 2009
During a long skype conversation with Scott Smith, who recently wrote about the just launched WikiReader a couple of days ago, we arrived at the conclusion that perhaps the onrushing juggernaut towards ultimate convergence of handheld devices was perhaps not such a good thing.
Scott pointed out that the increasing bifurcation that I'd begun to notice in the development of the mobile web, where the iPhone and its attendent media hype were misrepresenting what was really happening at the point where the social, the mobile and the web intersect. That instead of being obsessed with chasing after the ultimate singularity, the handheld device that even did your windows, we should instead be taking a leaf from the WikiReader and learn from what was happening at the bottom of the pyramid.
This little battery powered handheld device allows anyone to access Wikipedia, a free online resource. The device is affordable at $99, robust and only needs to be connected one in a while for updating the information contained therein. It could stand alone and work in any environment and did not need ICT infrastructure that many smarter devices do. Furthermore, teachers could not object to it in the classroom, unlike mobile phones, as it had no distractions like chatting, games or txt.
Such leaner, lighter products applications and services are being launched everyday in the developing (but highly advanced in their own way) markets of Kenya and India and South Africa, developed for the constraints and conditions of their operating environment. They require the minimum of resources and are changing the way businesses design their operations and address their pricing and cost strategies. They are the result of the influence of the vast underserved and overlooked markets at the BoP, a customer base whose most important characteristic is their high sensitivity to price, followed by variability of environmental conditions and uncertain infrastructure.
Should these lessons of designing products with maximum constraints and minimum resources be solely for these markets or could we, in fact, integrate them into the way products are developed for the top of the pyramid? Is the glamour and glitz of developing for the ultimate smartphone - all of 34 million served - sucking the creative abilities of the best talent in the world into a blackhole of innovation that ultimately ends up focusing on 2% or 5% of an entire planet's population?
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