Perspective 2.0

India: Emerging Leader

Recently, Niti Bhan pointed me in the direction of a blog post by Grant McCracken in which he argues that China is to India as Wal-Mart is to Target.  So I got to thinking about this old debate.

Of all the emerging economies, China and India seem to be compared most frequently, primarily because of their rapid rate of growth and potential for future leadership on the world stage. China has established herself as a formidable power in the manufacturing of mass market consumer goods, hence the comparison to America's Wal-Mart. While this has brought immediate economic success, I and plenty of others question how sustainable this model of fast cheap production really is and what it is that India brings to the table that China does not.

I have always felt that India has greater potential for meaningful success and leadership of world change than China, but the barriers to realising that potential are held systemically within Indian culture. India has a long history of sensitive questioning,  re-intepreting the tangible and the intangible to find new ways of looking at the world and surviving in it. This adaptability, in my opinion, is the key ingredient for successful innovation and leadership. The ability to respond to challenges and seize opportunities with intellectual sensitivity lends itself to thoughtful solutions in design and business to meet the needs of a wide range of audiences at home and, perhaps, abroad.

But, after living in India for some time, I struggle to reconcile the corruption there and the cultural forces in India that keep some advancing in life and others down. This is as great a barrier to successful leadership as innovative thinking is to enabling success. More importantly, it prevents a lot of good work from being completed or even seeing the light of day. I have asked myself why I care so much and if I am imposing my Western view of 'fairness' on a situation where it is neither relevant nor appropriate. Perhaps India's unwritten system works just fine as an ecosystem of its own. And who am I to say it should be otherwise and impose my own solution when there is plenty wrong with my own country?

Part of what's wrong with my own country is that it is a shell of a society that is no longer able to produce necessities to sustain itself. England always relied in the Empire, fair enough. But America once could take care of itself. Now it is a nation of foreign consumers and most of them don't think twice about where their stuff comes from. So, are Target consumers any more concerned with where or what their purchases come from than Wal-Mart consumers?

Form>Function>Understanding = Designer's perspective

Hm, feels like I finally figured it all out. Let's take a moment to back in time to what LukeW drew on his wall: (sorry for grabbing it whole but you did frame it so well :)

Designing with Vision

March 8, 2007by Luke Wroblewski

This week I caught a talk by Philip Haine from Obvious Design about Designing with Vision. Philip outlined how some products that seem to ignore the "best practices" of design turn out to be breakthroughs, while others that are designed by the book suffer from mediocrity. He also addressed why product design processes often suffer from have radically shifting requirements. According to Philip the answers lie in understanding product vision:

• Product vision is the missing discipline (marketing, design, development, etc.) in the product creation process. It has a profound effect on the outcome, is a source of innovation, and can override design quality.
• A solid product vision makes requirement gathering easy and gives clear guidance to design decisions.

Defining Vision

• Vision is a loose term but its outcomes are quite tangible: better designs, smoother process, and break through products
• Vision is a high-level requirement
• Vision is the selection of which problem to solve. It means making a choice
• Vision is a way to define a problem as a set of needs you are trying to address
• Creating a vision is a design process
• Every product has a vision whether implicitly or explicitly stated

The Design Pyramid

• Design: the only piece of pyramid that is visible to users
• Requirements: the specifications of what a product must accomplish
• Vision: the definition of a problem by which needs you are trying to solve
• Understanding: research or intuition about those needs
• It’s a pyramid because all layers above depend on what is below them
• Design is hard because there is so much invisible stuff that feeds into it (requirements, vision, understanding)
• For good design to happen you need the groundwork to be done
• If you have a clear idea of vision & requirements, the design just kind of pops out or reveals itself
• The design pyramid applies to functional design problems (not aesthetic issues)
• Requirements shift so frequently because new insights come in at the understanding layer
• The pyramid is recursive: it is set for a product but also applies to each feature within the product
• Disruptive innovation happens at Vision & Understanding levels

Bad Design

• The right product vision can override the design layer, but it rarely happens the other way around
• Products that use the right best practices may turn out mediocre while those that break the rules may become runaway hits
• If they are missing the discipline of vision, even the best design processes can’t help.
• Product vision & research is the driver (golf metaphor). Usability testing is the putter. [This was eloquently stated by Jim Leftwich on Functioning Form]

USN Scenarios:

• Used to understand the needs that build a vision
• User: customer/stakeholder
• Situation: or context or characteristic
• Need: that results from user+ situation
• Situation answers why something is needed and by whom
• USN scenarios separate the problem from the solution
• Need to be concise: necessary and sufficient

Applied Design Thinking

DF conversation with Lassi A Liikanen, circa 3rd February 2010

This post will continue but lets start the conversation on practice of design thinking instead of definition. Great, we wanna do it. Now what? Comments? Thoughts? Your perspective, experiences and/or point of view? Lets cocreate this conversation/observation.

Ok, I can program in Basic

In fact it just struck me that I sometimes write using Basic syntax - giggles like an idiot *rolls eyes* - so I don't know if my weird trend of posts of late, nothing even remotely BoP like would lose me a bunch of followers/subscribers? Oh well, who knows, there will be the usual shrinkage when I switch back to www.nitibhan.co on my 44th birthday. Four years too late, but I'm kinda semi retired from fieldwork now.

Otoh, I have an excellent team of user researchers in the emerging growth markets of the future, mainly women (who rock) so don't let the above make you hesitate to contact me.

On Silence,

Harvester of Open Minds by Ariel Brierly

Dancing in between - cultures, identities, roles, languages - and living in liminality have been core themes in my explorations of creation and innovation, uncertainty and future. As one more culture seeps through, it shows me the role of silence, the inbetween, you could say, of the dancing motes of conversation that I once found to be the heart of the Eureka moment or "aha".

From September 2005,

From the Greek limnos, meaning "threshold," liminality describes an in-between time when what was, is no longer, and what will be, is not yet. It is a time rich with ambiguity, uncertainty, and the possibility of creative fomentation.

And from October 2005,

I further posit that, then, if the above is true, the indefinable "magic", the unknowable "eureka", are the actual moments when the brainstorming session begins, and the collaborative voices of the design team, talking back and forth to each other, shaping and tweaking each other's verbalized prototype thoughts and concepts, brings to life innovation. So while design, alone, may not be the whole answer, design, however is a significant part of the answer. As in chemistry, the catalyst, design in this case, or designers to be factual, trigger the eureka process. Hence, it works when designers alone are working together on a problem, and it works even better when design teams collaborate with their client's teams, hybrids, if you will, to act as the catalyzer in the mix of ingredients for the chemical reaction to begin. And that is why, many directors of design (that we'd interviewed for a forthcoming article on core77) at client firms emphasized the need for "the right chemistry" and building relationships. It is as simple as having faith in the vendor to deliver the promised goods. With the word "promise" being key.

The thinking seems outdated, in some respects I've evolved beyond the need to look at business profitability alone and now consider aspects in a holistic manner, in terms of systems of things but there seems to be a hint that I need to go back and reread and rethink and rewrite, to bring uptodate the seeds that seem to still echo value.

So, to punctuate the silence,

Design, is inherently a philosophy or a system of values first, and it's implementation, in whatever form, second.

Reflecting on the workshop and Aalto's Design Factory

Fairytales of winterland and frost aside, the experience of pulling together the day long workshop at the Aalto Design Factory (although the event actually took place next door at the Venture Park due to space constraints) was a lesson in co-creation, cooperation and collaboration and most of all, enthusiastic open sharing of ideas and knowledge.

In my previous incarnation as Director, Graduate Recruiting & Admissions at the Institute of Design, IIT Chicago, I had had enough opportunities to herd the cats required to pull everything from Open Houses to Registration Day or even RecruitID together, at the infrastructural level. We had systems and processes in place to enable outcomes. Every one had clear roles, duties and responsibilities.

Nothing of that sort exists at the DF. Is this a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know, but here's what I saw. It is true that its chaotic here and few systems or checks and balances exist but everyone knows how to pitch in and make something happen. Its the planning that's important. And communication.

I learnt that instead of creating unmanageable chaos on a deadline, the fuzziness allowed for smoother workflow. I found that everyone and anyone will do what is needed to be done at that moment, if they happen to be standing around ;p and the needs have been clearly defined, thereby ensuring energy flows are uninterrupted. Little effort was wasted in finding the person "whose job that was" at any given moment. Will this stay this way or will it change and evolve as the DF grows up? Should it?

This same quality of "lets make this happen" infused the venture cocreation exercises - I was very pleasantly surprised by the sensitivity and nuance of the output, it seemed as though the 40 odd people there had already been thinking deep thoughts about those at the bottom of the pyramid and their needs. The emphasis was on making sure that the ideas and concepts were relevant and appropriate to the needs of the people, with the attitude that we'd figure out how to make it a sustainable business after we got the systems designed. If indeed we can provide a "passion based co-creation platform" to enable innovation, then one can surely say this prototype works.

On Design's responsibility to our collective future

Reading Chris Blow's recent thoughts on the responsibility involved in the work he and all the codemeisters and hackers worldwide are doing in the name of Haiti, made me think about the importance of taking a moment to reflect before moving into action.

I think that what we have witnessed in terms of global cooperation and coordination among those with their heads in the cloud, so to speak, is no different than Google's attempt to extend their brand into the real world. Oh help, the Internet has run amok :p

Now, back to design and why did I think about the responsibility that Design has globally to start thinking seriously about their own as well as the world's collective future.

Its not enough to be cutting edge if the world is flat. You'll fall off without noticing. Allan Chochinov captures this essential blind spot in his short pointed essay on Adobe's Inspire site where he says that this year's design trends and focus have already come down predigested.

But is that what we want, or we see ourselves taking steps towards what Allan has said so well,

Indeed, the definitions of "best" (and, appropriately in this case, "good" design) have changed over the decade, embracing sustainability, accessibility, systems thinking, labor practices, and energy flows into the criteria that flesh things out beyond mere form and function. I'm all for that. But a whole decade's worth of the best examples?

Does this mean that a year after embracing all of this or talking about it for the past ten, we have nothing to show for the talk, the products are still based on dominant logics of consumption and individual ownership, underwritten by waste?

The BoP and technology - what next? Cocreation workshop, Helsinki January 26th 2010

Scott Smith of Changeist LLC and progenitor of the Some Observers blog will be in Helsinki next week to facilitate a workshop on emerging technologies and emerging customers, with a focus on the next 5 billion. Yours truly gets to interject, chime in and interrupt, albeit not that frequently, over the course of the day. Here's our invite to you,

Exploring the BoPNet: Developing Future Technology Solutions for the Next 5 Billion

Emerging consumer markets in developing countries, many whom fall into the so-called Bottom of the
Pyramid (BoP) category, represent much of the future of communications technologies and services we have come to rely on today as a driver of modern societies. Likewise, many observers say the future of
transportation is in inexpensive city cars for the growing megacities that house the BoP, and future health, environmental and education services we all use will be significantly defined by their needs.

The list goes on: more and more technologies will in future be used by, and shaped by, consumers who
today earn between 2 to 5 euros a day — but who are rapidly emerging as tomorrow’s primary consumer cultures.

To explore more deeply the interaction of trends driving the growth of the BoP, its convergence or
divergence from the developed world, and the shape of its future users’ needs, we have designed a unique one-day workshop that allows participants to interact with and shape possible future solutions for the BoP—products and services that suit its unique dynamics.

Content and structure
We will mix exploration with interactive team based exercises to probe deeper into the emerging BoP
technology ecosystem, which we are calling the BoPNet for now. We will focus on defining future users'
needs, system dynamics of the ecosystem, how technologies might evolve differently, and what new
strategies and partnerships might be appropriate in this world.

Benefits
• Learn more about the dynamics of the BoP, focusing on both the human side and its technology
behaviours.
• Opportunity to interact with visuals, trends and artifacts
• Use unique rapid ideation techniques to create future scenarios and user-centered solutions.
• Explore the implications and interactions of these scenarios.
• Help further define the dynamics of the BoPNet as they see it.
• Takeaway information and knowledge shared and co-created during the workshop that could be
applied to existing developed world technologies or solutions.

Who Should Attend
All those with an interest in innovative strategy, product development and design can test their own
assumptions, uncover new insights, and more deeply explore the needs and requirements of the fastest growing and most demanding consumer segment of the next 25 years: the next 5 billion customers.

Venue and Date
January 26th 2010 (Tuesday) at the Aalto Venture Park, Otaniemi (Betonimiehenkuja 3), Espoo.

Registration
Contact kalevi(dot)ekman(at) tkk.fi to register, free admission, first come first served, RSVP by 22.1.2010 – (only 13 spaces available)

The trickle-up influence of design for the bottom of the pyramid

The most common question posed by designers (at the Design Factory, in Finland) has been "What is different about designing for the BoP from the way I already design for mainstream consumers?"

Its a good question to ask, because it takes a systemic view of the user centered design process and methods being taught to them rather than focusing only on differences in features and attributes of tangible artifacts. This post is an attempt to grapple with developing a possible answer to their question and  starts with CK Prahalad's framing of the traditional MNC approach vs his suggestions for the BoP approach.

The quality, efficacy, potency, and usability of solutions developed for the BOP markets are very attractive for the top of the pyramid. The traditional MNC approach and the approach suggested here—top of the pyramid to BOP and from the BOP to the top of the pyramid—are shown (above)

As the (foregoing) examples illustrate, the demands of the BOP markets can lead MNCs to focus on next practices. The BOP can be a source of innovations for not only products and processes, but business models as well. Let us start with the growth opportunities in local, stand-alone BOP markets first. ~ CK Prahalad via

Interpreting this in the context of design:

1. Consider the design of the entire ecosystem in a holistic manner rather than the product alone

The majority of industrial designers in studios and corporate departments around the world are tasked with the design of a specific product or application, isolated contextually, for the most part, from the larger ecosystem of the market primarily due to their experience of and immersion in the existing sophisticated marketing infrastructure. They have the luxury of access to information flows on packaging, distribution, supply chains and retail outlets as well as competing designs and this lets them focus on refining a particular product, package or UI.

This situation is almost reversed when it comes to the BoP consumer and the BoP markets. The paucity of information does not only hamper the BoP themselves but also those who seek to serve them. Furthermore, much of the market infrastructure is non existent or of a vastly different quality than that experienced in richer markets.  Factors such as income streams that are irregular and lack of financial tools such as consumer credit available for outright purchase are issues rarely considered during the design process but can and do influence the final outcome. Products designed in isolation may win awards but may never quite impact the quality of life in the manner they were designed to do so if their business model, pricing or payment plans, much less distribution or usage do not reflect the conditions of the operating environment.

2. Price as a rigorous design constraint, not simply a data point or the sole criteria for reverse engineering

The issue of pricing then, becomes mission critical in the design brief but not as a reason to compromise the design. That is, if the traditional MNC approach is top down, stripping features and degrading quality and lifespan achieve no purpose except risking the brand's reputation. Instead, maximizing the constraints while minimizing utilized resources can be seen as a way to innovate for this demanding consumer segment by providing value through elegant design solutions that appeal yet offer a return on their investment.

3. Being aware of and questioning assumptions made

Whether its as basic as availability of electricity and running water or as subtle as the design interpretation of such underlying value propositions as "convenience", the assumptions made about consumer buying behaviour, purchasing patterns and decision making or choice of brand or product cannot go undebated or unquestioned. A challenging environment, conditions of uncertainty or scarcity and the hardships of daily life managed on irregular incomes all serve to influence the value system and mindset of the target audience in ways we are not always able to immediately discern if we don't flag our implicit assumptions as a potential stumbling point.

4. Nuances of local culture and society matter

These markets are not the already saturated mature ones of the "global village" with a blase attitude towards such throwaway things as the use of religious iconography on lunchboxes and t-shirts, still preferring to stand on their dignity and self respect over the sophisticated acceptance of perceived disrespect. Thus, nuances observed during user research that may be overlooked when considering different regions within the developed world may in fact be far more important in the context of BoP consumer markets and influence the user acceptance and adoption rate of the product or service. Choice of colours, features, tone and style of communication are some of the design elements so affected. Choosing to tread as delicately as a newcomer never hurts.

5. Think of them as your most demanding customer, not the helpless poor in need

Coping with variations in language and literacy

Christmas Eve 2009, Singapore

This cleaning station next to the petrol pump caught my eye last night. With the increasing numbers of migrant labour available affordably in Singapore these days, one can't predict their educational background or language skills - you can see workers from mainland China, Bangladesh, Indonesia etc The use of pictograms is a simple and easy way to ensure communication regardless of whom you choose to employ.

Can big business save the world? It depends...

Jared Diamond's op ed in the NYT struck me with the question he posed, which is whether big business can save the world. Diamond went on to use Walmart, Chevron and Coca Cola as examples. I leave  it to you to decide, but my preferred choice of three in answer to that question would be Tata, Nokia and the brand called you.

You wouldn't be reading this otherwise.

But I'm not a big business you'd say... true, by the metrics used by the behemoths above, but all of you out there (whether you read this or not) working to save the earth add up to the biggest business of all, dont you?

I sure hope so.

*This* is a design revolution

Reading Helen Walter's review of Emily Pilloton's book Design Revolution in Businessweek titled "This is a design revolution?" made me wonder what would happen if we approached doing business with the BoP without the filter of "social impact" or "doing good" or other fuzzy wuzziness etc? What if the design of a product or service was simply considered the same way one would for any other demographic? And metrics of profitability, viability and sustainability of the revenue model applied to the decision to enter a new market, regardless of whether they were "the poor" or simply humans? How does this influence the success of the product or service in the market and, critically, how does it influence design?

It seems to me that this is what Tata is doing when they consider the overlooked and the underserved that comprise the majority of their domestic market. This week, Ratan Tata launched the Tata Swach, a water purifier designed and developed to serve the base of the pyramid market in India. A snippet from the news,

“The whole group has been fired with the view of how can we create products which were earlier not within reach of the vast number of people through innovation and technology, not just stripping down the value of the product,” Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata said.
[...]
The Swach, a pet project of Ratan Tata, is the group's bet that the private sector can offer a better, consumer-based solution to one of the world's most persistent health problems than most governments in the developing world can.

This is interesting because the product is one which is not really in line with any of the TATA Group's current line up, and the water purifier market in India is currently a battleground. Hindustan Unilever, yet another firm with no history of consumer products of this sort has its Pureit - the first mover in the BoP segment, is facing challenges from the incumbent water purifier maker Eureka Forbes, who only recently woke up to the potential of the lower income demographic. One would think that in this situation the timing of the Tata Swach's launch would be a disadvantage but apparently not if this input is anything to go by,

Tata will sell two versions of the 19-litre Swach container, priced at 749 rupees ($16.11) and 999 rupees ($21.48), depending on the material. The filter itself costs 299 rupees ($6.43). It will purify 800 gallons (3,000 liters) of water – enough for a family of five for a year – before it automatically shuts down.

 Hindustan Unilever's Pureit filter, which also does not require access to running water or electricity, costs 2,000 rupees ($43.01), with a replaceable battery kit that costs 365 rupees ($7.85) and can purify 1,500 litreof water.
[...]
The Tata Swach – Hindi for “clean” – meets U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards, and doesn't require running water, electricity, or boiling, executives said. It's cheaper than boiling water, cheaper than bottled water, and 2.5 times less expensive than Hindustan Unilever's low-cost Pureit filter, according to data provided by the companies.

This implies that Tata has applied the lessons learnt from developing the Nano, as  well as approached the whole market entry strategy as carefully and as rigorously as it would in any segment. Their primary criteria - as a business - for the design and development of this product was to take the concept of the Bottom of the Pyramid as a viable demographic to serve, setting the design criteria and constraints for both the product itself as well as their revenue model and pricing structure accordingly. The fact that it will "do good" or "improve life" is as important but this aspect has not been permitted to overshadow the need for the product to be competitively priced and attractive to the consumer, offering value for their hard earned rupee, even as it prevents their children from suffering from diarrhea.

This interview with the product's designer, award winning NID alum, Satish Gokhale, quotes him accordingly,

"Once the technology was finalised and tested, we were mandated to design the container and other features," recounts Satish Gokhale. "The most important part of our brief was the target selling price of Rs 999. The design had to therefore be simple in construction, easy to manufacture and easy to use.''

Most details about the materials and methodology that went into manufacture of Swach is under wraps, but Gokhale said there was the dual need of using right priced material without compromising on the strength of the unit and its usability with the ultimate aim of making it affordable to everyone who drinks water in the country.

This sounds more like design for a demanding client, no aspect of "social impact" or "doing good" being allowed to overshadow business needs. After the three year long project has finally seen the light of day, Gokhale's wife is quoted as saying,

"It was a tiring journey of dozens of sketches, and renderings and e-mails going back and forth," Falguni Gokhale told TOI, adding that Tatas wanted a perfect product and nothing half-baked would do.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Unilever's response to the "water purifier for the BoP market" marketing war, from the previously linked article throws up this interesting nugget,

HUL says it has subsidised the machine as it knows it can bank on making money through the replacement of battery kits that cost Rs 365.

Compare the difference in approach and in framing of the problem (market entry strategy for low income demographic) between Tata and Hindustan Unilever (HUL). No subsidies for Tata, no compromises and from all that one can read and find, greater value for the rupee offered to the discriminating investor that is the BoP consumer. To quote our own marketing ;p "Price is simply a design constraint, not the sole criteria".

Yet one can already see that when the market awareness and education of the poor user has created the demand, this latecomer to the product category will walk away with the lion's share of the sales. Tata is a global brand, poised apparently to become the Nokia of drinking water, since their next goal is entering the African market with the Swach.

Now bringing this whole blather back to the questions posed in the beginning of the post, what if "BoP Design" was approached from the same perspective as  design for business and not design for social impact or doing good or any number of heart warming phrases that seek to imply improving the lives and livelihoods of the poor.

Is there any doubt that better quality water would do all of the above? And is there any doubt that this shows all the signs of being a successful commercial product for Tata?

This is just good design doing its job - making stuff that people want to buy. (For the BoP are people too)

Women at the BoP: what does it mean when your money belongs to you?

Photocredit: WSJ slideshow

I came across the following anecdote from the CGAP blog referencing biometric identification technology as a means for financial services to serve their BoP customers and it gives rise to some food for thought. Here's the snippet from Claudia McKay's post,

I remember encountering an elderly man arguing with a teller.  His son had died, leaving a widow and three children, and he wanted his daughter-in-law’s savings. It is tradition that all of the family’s possessions belong to the husband’s parents, regardless of the wife’s contribution.  The wife had accumulated about $150 in her savings account, but because her account required her fingerprint, the man was denied access. The next day the wife came to the bank, filled with gratitude that she still had the money she needed to support her children. 

This incident repeated itself many times and before long, standard marriage advice to brides included opening an Opportunity Bank account that offered ‘magic’ protection from drunken husbands and desperate in-laws. Others called the ATMs a tool of Satan that scanned your soul through your fingerprints.

Connecting some dots here, such as the future biometric ID cards to be made for all of India, not to mention the rural banking services now being made available, what will be the influence of "owning your own money" be on the women at the BoP? I'll focus for a moment on India, since my own experience makes it easier for me to ponder the consequences.

[Takes a moment to reflect on drunken husbands and desperate in-laws.]

Wow.

Already we're seeing a sense of pride, accomplishment and empowerment among women in India, particularly outside the urban metros. And the ladies I interviewed at Dastkar Ranthambhore for the Prepaid project talked about the sense of power that their income gave them, enabling their evolution from passive daughters in law to decision makers in control of their own lives.

Now, if technology can prevent fraud, misuse or forgeries, and one hopes does NOT give rise to incidences of fingerchopping (akin, I imagine to dowry deaths and bride burning), then truly, its influence will be felt in the patriarchal hierarchies of rural Indian households far beyond what the actual earnings or income may provide to women who work for their livelihoods.

Research and the blog: The medium is not the message

Dear students,

As I see your invisible wanderings page by page with nothing overlooked in the index section - yes, I'm tracking you guys from tu delft particularly of late - I have a small request to make. I understand that academia considers the "blog" an informal medium, with low credibility as a reference or citation, particularly if you are submitting to the most rigourous and obscure journals, not simply writing a conference paper or making a presenation. However, I do hope that somewhere in your acknowledgements section you will find a valid way to mention your sources, all of them. Such as the body of work under the "bottom of the pyramid" category you come back to so diligently every night for hours at  a time, here on this ephemeral website. These are still the result of hard work, deep and considered thought, and based on walking through the villages, making observations. They deserve to be acknowledged, simply blog posts on the anonymous world wide web though they may be, accessible via google right at your desktop.

I'll address again at some point the increasing chasm I'm seeing between what academia considers credit able sources, and the real world where things change from day to day. Never has the ivory tower felt so distant or so closed. Soon, as information technology and McLuhan's visions manifest themselves more and more, it is a divide that we must find a way to bridge, if only so that what we do and say and hear and learn feeds back and informs the processes, methods and cases emerging from your hallowed hallls and vice versa. The rate of speed of information flow, as evidenced by twitter feeds and RSS that keep our conversations ongoing everyday, might make your "not to be published for a year or more" research irrelevant to the real world challenges and situations we observe and deal with every day.

In the meantime, I simply posit some questions to you all out there reading this, whether you are practitioner, theoretician or somewhere in between - what is the role of a concept or idea or finding, if it is simply in a "blog post" or "personal website"? Where does it stand in the continuum of credible sources and is this a rigid definition? Will this state continue or will our perceptions of the value or reference ability of material evolve along with the way our communication tools are changing the way we share and publish our materials?

Sincerely,

just another blogger

Godrej: Setting the bar for BoP innovation in consumer marketing?

Image of Godrej Chotukool from the WSJ

Distracted by the coolness of the product, I overlooked the real story developing in the Indian consumer market. New ways of distributing, new ways of creating and meeting demand, in ways that proffer dignity to members working to solve the last mile connectivity problem are the real innovation in the saga that is the BoP.

Microfinance institutions are getting involved in Indian retailing, using their networks to reach out to end users in villages and small towns across India. The perfect mashup, the win win partnerships provide a reason for the microcredit being offered.

 

Rukmini Adsule (left ) and Anita Mane, from the microfinance fold, sell Godrej & Boyce’s nano refrigerators and Hindustan Unilever’s water purifiers, among other products, in Osmanabad, Maharashtra. Adsule earns Rs 3,000 a month as commission. (outlook india)

Young school educated women are selected from the end user communities to be trained as product cum financial advisors, for sales is not that simple among the BoP. You have to educate them on many things first, before they can begin to appreciate the value of your product or service, thus lowering the barrier to their purchase. Ironically, its perhaps the most transparent sales and marketing channel of all. All the patterns of behaviour of BoP consumers, from their high bullshit meter to their need for proof of performance before they shell out, are covered in these new channels.

Innovation, it seems, means overturning the rules that govern the design of supply chains and distribution networks, sales staff and marketing communications. These are emerging BoP ventures, either as brand extensions of wellknown behemoths or category creators who are baking their own pies.

By what criteria do we now evaluate "design for the 90%" now? 

From this interview of Adi Godrej with Forbes India yesterday,

Bala Balachandran, one of the longest serving members of the Godrej Consumer board and a professor at Northwestern Univerity’s Kellogg School of Management, recalls a strategy meeting that led to this reorientation towards rural markets and low income housing. Asked what they think Godrej Consumer’s main product was, most executives came up with Cinthol or Godrej No 1. But Adi Godrej, who is known around the office for his punctuality, said it was something more, including the brand’s connect with the customer and its distribution system. “All the focus on rural and the segment that he concentrates come from the ‘customer centric culture’ of GCPL [Godrej Consumer Products],” says Balachandran.

Usercenteredness, I don't hesitate to say, is a critical starting point for BoP and rural market development strategy, and an emphasis on the bottomline tradeoff between cost of serving this customer and ensuring that value was being delivered to the bottom of the pyramid market. Zoroastrians aka Parsis, like the Tata clan, the Godrejs are not unknown for their socially responsible businesses and charitable activities.

Photoblogging: Stocking up inventory in BoP retail

All photographs taken by the author on 20th February 2009 in Januiay, Iloilo, The Philippines.

BoP market segmentation: a chicken and egg dilemma?

The idea that has captured my imagination for the past couple of day is the question I've attempted to pose in the title of this post. "Consumers" do not exist, they are not a human archetype like hunter, hero, traveler or savior. This I'm sure is an area better covered already by experts in myth making, advertising, marketing and the field of human communications.

Now, continuing on my thinking from yesterday's post on ethics, I wonder if the need to create demand, thus marketing within the BoP constraints and conditions implies the creation of consumer segments or discovering existing ones, who may or may not resemble far better known consumer persona stereotypes from mainstream global culture.

I know that I've often said the BoP is the great unknown and must first be understood as a market in its own right with a different value system in play due to challenges of both income as well operating environment. Today I wish someone was holding a flashlight for me.

Creating a market among the BoP: my ethical struggles online

Its interesting for me to note that the category "Ethics" has been a part of this blog from its inception although I'll confess to not really knowing why I was adding it to the list. I've the least amount of posts in this category but here is what just might be a longish one.

I've been thinking. So what's new? That's what this blog is all about isn't it?

So anyway, I've been thinking about the ethics of creating the vestiges of consumerism among the BoP and struggling with what seems to be an immutable fact that we may need to do just that if we're to use market forces to alleviate poverty. Which this BoP thing is all about, isn't it? Otherwise we'd just be calling them the "poor" and still donating away?

Feed Africa or give Africa some disposable airtime and see what happens?

The challenge we face is that in order to offer empowering products like the Kickstart waterpump say, we need to create the market for it. People don't just suddenly figure out what's available for sale and what's good or beneficial and how to buy it, you have to show them first. And that means elements of mainsteam consumer culture must transfer across the value gap to the bop mindset too. Oh dear, and here I'd already made the assumption that the bop consumer mindset was based on values that were far more enduring than the mainstream throwaway consumer culture we sometimes notice we are in.

Where do we draw the line? And how deeply?

Lessons from the BoP 10: Life is hard; make it easy to use, easy to choose

Photo credit: Goverdhan Meena, Rawal village, Rajasthan India Jan 2009

When Goverdhan, my local fixer in Sawai Madhopur shared these photos he'd taken in his village back in January when I was doing the prepaid reserach in rural India, I was amused. Note the heavy duty environmental protection due to the heat and the dust of Rajasthan and also note the brand preferance. Endurance? Survival? Simple? Easy? and wholly and completely committed to the BoP customer's challenging needs.

Just yesterday I came across this news article that states, although I do add a caveat that the actual report is a little mangled when it comes to making sense of the data.

Simplicity of handsets and tariff plans are the main drivers for mobile telephony in rural areas, according to a research by consulting firm Accenture. Besides simplicity, a rural subscriber is concerned about the ongoing cost of a connection.

If innovation happens at the edges, does that make the BoP the fringe of the global economy?

Just curious and wondering.

This question emerged from a conversation I'd just had over the phone with a young woman doing her PhD at the Hanken School in the broad space between marketing, the BoP and human rights. She's going into the field next week to do what we'd done earlier in India, except that its in Tanzania. They say mPesa is finally on the uptake there, must ask her to bring back some photos of mPesa advertising from Dar es Salaam.

Lessons from the BoP 8: Assumptions of contextual knowledge questioned to lower barriers to acceptance

Quite a few people, all quite wellknown in their fields, mostly from high tech industries, have said the equivalent regarding the BoP - "just give them the technology and they'll figure everything else out, look how creative they are etc" when it comes to introducing new products and services.

And, with world class researchers and user centered designers, they can create some great works of art, technologically speaking, that you couldn't argue with as being well designed for the BoP. However, there's a step further that's missing, the one after the introduction of the technology. And that is what I call the mysterious fuzzy factor ;p

Basically, we need to start from scratch when considering the basic user profile for whom to design said product or service for - not in terms of features, looks and style - more basic than that, which is what is your target audience's contextual knowledge of that general product category?

Let me give you an example, its a generalized one that attempts to describe the basic gap in contextual, immersive knowledge (kinda like the "dialing phone number by muscle memory home" thing where we couldnt actually tell you the number without counting our fingers) between the great majority at the base of the social and economic pyramid and mainstream consumer culture across the globe. 

Lets start with financial services alone, since that's a topic that's been buzzing around my little corner of the interwebs of late - mobile money in all shapes, forms and brands, all aimed at the underserved (not undeserved ;p). You and I, for the most part, if we're reading and writing on here, know how what is expected of us when a cashier type person hands us a little device with our credit card sticking halfway out of it and the flashing signal seeking answers from us. Or what - more or less - to do at an ATM regardless of whether the two languages offered are suomi and Svenska and we ourselves are stuck with Hindi and English. Imagine if it were kanji?  Or the difference between a credit card and a debit card and just how helpless you are as a traveller without one?

So, anyway, the point is that if there is a vast swathe of people that were hitherto unbanked, it could be said that they were also lacking in many of the subtle nuances of information and knowledge we process everyday. We must not assume that this knowledge exists - true, many in these demographics we consider the "BoP" may have had exposure to many of these things we take for granted, but there is a greater likelihood, once you combine the challenges of isolation rural residents face, that this contextual knowledge is missing.

Now, framing your future design solution in this way, how would you go about designing a new product or service for the BoP?

Banking on the future of mobile financial transactions

Espoo, Finland on 6th November 2009

Bo Harald of Tieto Corporation shared a vision of the future that his company has been working on along with many other stakehholders. They are already in the process of implementating eInvoicing, part of something they call the Real Time Economy of financial transactions around the world. And they're making the basic part of this executable by a basic mobile phone. That means that even Ramu the teawallah, if he has to collect his accounts receivable from the MNC employees every month, they could eventually conceivably simply transfer it to his account. From what I could gather there is a finnish bank involved with the prototype and the Finns have been asked to set the standards for the EU wide system.

That is the now.

But what does it mean for the future if all transactions are eventually to be standardized over the mobile phone, regardless of the location? Would Nokia Money be part of this? And if so, what would it mean in terms of disruptive innovation? Here's another slide.

Mobile money services, contextually designed biz models for the BoP

Dave Tait shared this press release today from FNB South Africa who have just announced a very sensitively designed system for remittance across urban and rural South Africa. On the other hand is the World Money announcement by Vodafone, who are desperately trying to position their "World Money bank account required" mobile money transfer system as something to benefit billions, well maybe, but billions in dollars not people at the base of the pyramid. Here's a snippet, then lets discuss,

“Honestly, it may not be a big business for us in terms of margins because of the small transaction fee. But it will be an incredibly powerful tool for economic development, reducing social divide because it helps the underbanked and non-banked people around the world, as we have seen in Kenya,” Colao said.

Starting with that very first word, something isn't quite right if the above is supported by the below description,

It is not mandatory that the sender and recipient have standard bank accounts.
However, a potential beneficiary has to have a World Money Account with a local bank, which will be independent of one’s standard bank account. There must be sufficient credit in the account concerned to facilitate money transfer on mobile phone.
“We will help them open the World Money Account, which is currently an option for Vodafone customers. Since we have tied up our post-pay and pre-pay segments with bank accounts, it becomes easier to set up a World Money Account,” Maher explained.
Vodafone will set up a Trust to operate the World Money service and manage the accounts in the bank. All World Money customers will be beneficiaries of that trust.

This system will only make sense if the bank account that the beneficiaries are supposed to set up in local banks can be opened without the regulatory paperwork required by the bank itself to  open a standard account. Also, how will it work in villages where there may not be a physical bank, as seems to be implied by this description.

There's a lot of information about banks and money movement and mobile phones online today, @whiteafrican linked to this article on whether MPesa's success can be replicated outside of Kenya which I think seems to tie in nicely with the rest of the data points.

Lessons from the BoP 4: Maximize constraints, minimize resources

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?

A Better World, by design conference wrapup

Ken Banks looking through Nokia Life Tools, October 3rd 2009

I can't remember the conference excepts as snippets of fascinating conversations that I'd been having during the three days in Providence, Rhode Island. The Better World by Design conference just ended on Sunday afternoon with a closing talk given by John Maeda, RISD's president. I must say I've heard some "heads of design school" speak and this must have been the best ever. John Maeda totally rocks, and his sidebursts of "that's my school" during his anedoctal talk couldn't be a better branding strategy even if it had not been genuine and faked. I think that's the difference, Maeda genuinely loves his job and it shines through. He teaches by inspiration.

Kigge Hvid's talk was also inspiring in a different way. She's the CEO of INDEX, the awards for design that improves lives. INDEX is running prototypes of design skills and thinking classes as part of the social science curriculum in Danish high schools after which they will package the program and make it freely available online for implementation in any school any where.

Teddy Cruz's talk on the urban housing, politics adn some great perspective on the informal economy of migrant workers in San Diego was breath taking. Slums in Tijuana, Mexico are built from scrapped housing in San Diego - reculture.

The City of the future, envisioned by Jaime Lerner was quirky enough that made us sit up and think. The city as a turtleshell, organic, holistic and life giving shelter.

Just an observation, btw

Kanpur back streets, September 15th 2009, India

The mobile as a platform for social and economic development at the base of the pyramid around the developing world, as per The Economist, couldn't have happened without Finnish engineering standards and Indian ingenuity working around scarcity. Imagine the bop mobile space without Nokia, and think about it for a moment. Or to quote @changeist, pondering, not pushing. Nokia meri jaan is not a joke in India, but its not enough for a sustainable future. On the other side of the coin, Bharti Airtel is doing so well and the MTN talks are stumbling again, one wonders why Bharti can't merge with Nokia for emerging services markets globally speaking?

Nokia Life Tools analysis: Subscribing to beginner's English education

I'm not happy with Nokia Life Tools, that's the bottomline. For all its promise and potential, NLT has seriously dissapointed me, albeit I must add it might be due to my personal feelings for Nokia and always having high expectations from them. Hence the unexpected dissapointment.

NLT has been designed for the design team's managers to approve and understand, not the actual end user.

Nokia Life Tools analysis: Service availability and confusion

Lets start this analysis from the very beginning. While I was made aware of the fact that right now, in India, Nokia Life Tools is only available via IDEA Cellular (of the education advt fame); this was not made known to a first time user of the handset/application, if by chance they had not purchased the device themselves, since I'm not aware of how much knowledge the phone wallah would impart during hte sales process.

I could imagine the frustration and discomfort of your average intended user of Nokia Life Tools when faced with this scenario. No disclaimers made in a leaflet inserted in the packaging either or even a sticker on the phone itself? Come on guys, this just doesn't feel right imho. Especially in the Indian market where systemic mistrust is endemic.

All photographs taken by the author on 22nd September 2009 in Gurgaon, India. This phone was provided on loan with no monies being exchanged for any activity hereon.

Nokia Life tools initial startup and disclaimer screenshots

This is the fascinating bit no? CYA for any future developments.

All photographs taken by the author on 22nd September 2009 in Gurgaon, India. This phone was provided on loan with no monies being exchanged for any activity hereon.

Opportunity spaces vs ideas - business development for the BoP markets

Inaugural Issue of Entreprenuer magazine, photo taken in Kanpur India, Sept 13, 2009

Ideas or concepts are not the same as opportunity spaces or gaps in a particular market. Exploratory user research can identify opportunities for innovation, that is, either unmet needs or gaps in the existing ecosystem which could be filled by a product or service with the intent to create and provide value. On the other hand, actual ideas for new businesses or concepts for products or services may not be the immediate outcome of such exploration. Insights from the field can act as waymarkers for new revenue generation opportunities, they are not the actual ideas or concepts themselves.

Imho, this conflation of the two - a concept or an idea and an opportunity space or gap in the existing market - gives rise to confusion about the goals or outcomes from fieldwork, particularly in the short term or as the immediate result. It must be noted that even insights derived from observations are usually the result of data analysis and synthesis, best done in a team after the field research has been completed. Only after this can one say with any degree of confidence which gaps or behaviours observed would translate into potential opportunity spaces for innovation or new product development leading to sustainable and sustained revenue generation opportunities.

The potential 'market' at the BoP is vast, complex and chaotic and too many needs go unmet that at first glance it may seem that the opportunities are indeed available  for the picking and the possibility of fortunes immense.

The first critical challenge is to evaluate which of these potential areas offer value; a return on the customer's investment, meagre though it may be.

The next is to evaluate the time and effort any new venture among BoP customers would require before it would start showing returns.

This is not a hit and run market and recent observations have only confirmed initial insights from early 2008 - the core values for doing business successfully at the BoP remain the same: simple, easy, endurance, survival and commitment. Taken together, they add up to trust.

dreaming of the bop mob web again

The last few days have had me dreaming of a mobile web for those at the base of the social and economic pyramid again. Its been some three years now since I first started envisioning the implications of offering communication, connectivity and commerce to those who needed it the most.

The biggest step, imho, is when we are able to detach ourselves from depending on any particular handset or operator. Just like the freedom of these interwebs we surf, regardless of Linux based eeePC or Macbook or PC, unconcerned whether Comcast, Starhub or DNA pave our way, when the mobile services become available to  the owner of any GSM phone anywhere, regardless of its age, the bopmobweb has come of age.

And so we begin, the next interface for bringing people together.

design thinking: blending the best from business and design to deal with unknowns

This is an attempt at articulating the implications of using design thinking as an approach to innovation. It emerged from a conversation this afternoon at the Aalto Design Factory with Mikko Koskinen and Lotta Hassi.

If, indeed we are to take the concept of design thinking as a potential toolkit for innovation, let us step back from it and consider its roots. It emerges from the fields of business and design, broadly speaking, and attempts to blend the best aspects from both of dealing with unknowns (which innovation certainly is, in a way). We won't look at the weaknesses of each, but instead at the strengths - these allow a complementary set of methods or tools which counterbalance the weak spots of each individual approach.

That is, where business tends to forecast future performance based on past metrics and needs excruciatingly detailed plans before implementation, design permits tolerance of ambiquity, thus uncertainty, and tends to prototype and test before implementing. Design also brings the human aspect into consideration but lacks credible metrics of evaluating the returns on an investment. Here, Mikko points out that while business tends to base forecasts on existing or static environmental conditions, the user centered design process requires one to go out there and find weak signals or emerging trends through exploratory and user research.

However, when these elements are blended together and called "design thinking", they do provide a reasonable approach to dealing with the unknown. And we take the "unknown" in this context as "opportunities for innovation yet to be identified" - these unknowns could be new platforms; emerging consumer segments such as the BoP; distribution networks or supply chains etc. In other words, as Lotta has noted in green, these unknowns encompass the broad areas where companies can innovate - product and/or services, business models, new markets, management and organization, supply chains and more.

That is, by approaching the whole process of change using a combination of methods and tools from both the business world, with its processes, systems and vast organizational structures; and the design world, accustomed to dealing with unknown outcomes and identifying unmet needs in a human centered way, we could in fact address the challenges of an uncertain, emerging future.

a roadmap of design thinking for emerging markets

After the last post, I went back to finish reading the article by John Hagel and John Seely Brown, and their four lessons from the innovation that is the Tata Nano made an impact on me. So much so that I want to share them here, while pointing out that they read like a roadmap  of design thinking for emerging markets - open, holistic, inclusive, participatory with workarounds willing to question dominant logic.

Emerging markets are a fertile ground for innovation. The challenge of reaching dispersed, low-income consumers in emerging markets often spurs significant innovation. Western executives should be careful about compartmentalizing the impact of these innovations on the edge of the global economy. As we suggested in Innovation Blowback, these innovations will become the basis for 'attacker' strategies that can be used to challenge incumbents in more developed economies. What's initially on the edge soon comes to the core.

Find ways to help customers and others on the edge to tinker with your products. Modular and open product designs help engage large numbers of motivated users in tailoring and pushing the performance boundaries of your products, leading to significant insight into unmet customer needs and creative approaches to addressing those needs.

Pay attention to institutional innovation. Western executives often become too narrowly focused on product or process innovation. Far higher returns may come from investing in institutional innovation - redefining the roles and relationships that bring together independent entities to deliver more value to the market. Tata is innovating in all three dimensions simultaneously.

Rethink distribution models. In our relentless quest for operating efficiency, we have gone for more standardisation and fewer business partners in our efforts to reach customers. As customers gain more power, they will demand more tailoring and value-added service to meet their needs. Companies that innovate on this dimension are likely to be richly rewarded.

On why perhaps a Tata Nano like device may not emerge in the mobile space

This post is a reply to the queston "Why can't a tata nano like device appear in the mobile space?" posed recently by Ajit Jaokar on his blog. He defines "a tata nano like device" to mean:

A phone which is developed and re-engineered in emerging markets from scratch considering local needs

Lets take a moment to explore the challenge posed by the question. My first thought on reading that definition is well, that's what Nokia already does quite well among others. But then again, it does say "re-engineered" so I went digging to understand what it is exactly that makes the Tata Nano as special as it is. Reading through this analysis of Tata's approach to meeting the cost objective (source of the image above) it seems to me, at first pass, that they went about it using the basic principles of Value analysis viz.,

Tata Nano's efficiency comes from including only those items that are necessary for basic transportation and eliminating the not so relevant ones i.e. having one part/component that can perform a task just as good as two parts/ components can do, thus resulting in cost savings, e.g. one windscreen wiper and one side mirror. Tata also refrains from including items that are not feasible due to monetary reasons. Radio, air conditioner (despite the sizzling heat in India), power steering are not included while the instrument panel consists of only a speedometer, odometer, and fuel gauge similar to that of the two-wheelers- basic, yet functional.

That is, they broke down your average car into its component parts and then sorted them into 'basic function' and 'secondary function' i.e. which do we need for the basic function of a car. Here, it actually gets interesting, it seems as though they defined a car as a four wheeled vehicle with an internal combustion engine, for they could have just come up with a variety of three wheeled or alternatively powered vehicles. This exercise would have stripped out a lot of cost just by asking a few fundamental questions.

I wonder why one simply doesn't  hear about value engineering or value analysis anymore. Back in the day when the dinosaurs ruled the earth, your author had completed Module 1 and was an actual member of SAVE but I digress, although I dimly recall that the Indian VA/VE society had significant representation from Tata. 

Anyway, this approach to mobile phone design could be a potential minefield depending on how 'local needs' are framed - remember the $10 people's phone launched to such fanfare by Spice Telecom a year or so ago? They decided the screen wasn't required for the basic function of the mobile phone (SMS perhaps was not in their definition?). Btw, they certainly fit the definition of a Tata Nano like device in the mobile space, I wonder what happened to them?

Then, I took a look at what John Hagel and John Seely Brown had to say about the invention of the Nano. From their article titled "4 lessons to learn from the Tata Nano" is this snippet:

The Nano is constructed of components that can be built and shipped separately to be assembled in a variety of locations. In effect, the Nano is being sold in kits that are distributed, assembled, and serviced by local entrepreneurs.

As Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata group of companies, observed in an interview with The Times of London: "A bunch of entrepreneurs could establish an assembly operation and Tata Motors would train their people, would oversee their quality assurance and they would become satellite assembly operations for us. So we would create entrepreneurs across the country that would produce the car. We would produce the mass items and ship it to them as kits. That is my idea of dispersing wealth. The service person would be like an insurance agent who would be trained, have a cell phone and scooter and would be assigned to a set of customers."

In fact, Tata envisions going even further, providing the tools for local mechanics to assemble the car in existing auto shops or even in new garages created to cater to remote rural customers.

What can I say here that hasn't already been said under NDA? As to the why such an approach has not  yet seen the light of day, one can only wonder. Perhaps an entreprising emerging markets entreprenuer will see the social benefits of this approach or a mega brand like Airtel, or Tata themselves, might see the potential, but until then we can only wait for the poor man's Nano.

Thinking about business innovation, design and strategy in the here and now

Its probably been a couple of years (my how quickly time flies) since I actually gave more than a cursory glance at the ongoing conversations on design and innovation, design thinking and business strategy and naturally the state of the world, so to speak. But I came online today to find that Dave (Tait) had shared Bruce Nussbaum's post on the latest trends in design and innovation and why the debate on design thinking was moot. Reading through and then taking the trouble to cut and paste the link that Christoper Fahey had left in the comments left me with enough to ponder that now, at almost the end of the day here in Finland, I find that I simply must start writing again.

A few thoughts come immediately to mind, the first triggered by Bruce's use of the 'big' D as in Design and Fahey's apposite view that there's no capital D in design. What's up with that? Has the juggernaut that was the movement towards human centered thinking and understanding and respecting people's needs, seeing them as more than simply consumers or iwalking italking iwallets, just a couple two three years ago diminished itself into a debate on capitalization and grammar? Even Strunck & White provide more food for design thought than this. Reading these apt words from Fahey,

But, more importantly, I don’t think we need to be making this kind of in-your-face overt distinction in the first place. The concept that design has several layers of meaning and scope is quite valid and useful, but the word itself is perfectly capable of encompassing both meanings.

made me wonder whether its time that design/Design stopped to take a look at itself in the mirror and reflected on its roots, its soul and its future.

Yes, Bruce, its true, IDEO rules the world, Smart, Ziba and fuseproject are cool too. But it seems to me that they're losing sight of a larger focus here or perhaps that is just a function of your post. Tim Brown writes thoughtfully about the post consumption economy in his blog Design Thinking, yet none of that nuanced sensitivity of thought seems to come through in the hammering that this capital D implies. Anyway, as I write I realize that there are many entangled thoughts here, better addressed in separate posts, so I'll simply make the point that overwhelmed me enough to want to sit down and post.

Perhaps, what is required of all these big hitters, the influencers and the thought leaders of our global design and innovation industry, is a very big sit down and think. It sounds like design needs to humble itself and serve once more rather than put a capital on it and "lead"? 

Its a powerful tool, a way of problem solving, an empathetic aesthetic view of the world and gives its best practioners the ability to create elegant solutions that are beautiful, to paraphrase Buckminster Fuller.

Perhaps its time for it to use these tools and methods and turn its user centeredness on itself and ask where is it going from here - responsibly, sustainably, ethically - not simply hashing and rehashing the same old same old over and over again to pump the status quo.

Look, the group of designers mentioned in the BusinessWeek post have the combined talent, ability and world changing influence - if they really wanted to innovate their way out of the mess we're all in today, they'd put on their design thinking hats and say "This can't go on..." - we need to change the global industrial ecosytem now if the systemic changes we need for sustainable survival strategies are to come into play in time. Do I need to tell you all that upto 90% of a product's ecological footprint can be influenced in the design studio?

If design were truly all grown up and Design, then it would see the message of this chart that Nussbaum posted a couple of weeks ago from Smart Design. That Design Strategy Cannot Morph Into Anything Relevant Without Understanding The Shift In The Operating Environment That Has Taken Place. Not just the ability to capitalize, so to speak.

Design must apply every single talent, tool and skill it has to evaluate the major changes in the fundamental frameworks between the 1930s and the now, the 2010s. Eighty years ago, what design was and could be, what it needed to do wasn't JUST due to the economic implications as this post and/or chart implies, but also influenced by the materials, resources, populations and global situation. Sweeping changes have occurred in the world in the past 80 years, as anyone will tell you so I won't right now, but without taking the shift in the frame of reference itself into account, how then can Design Strategy or design strategy consider itself relevant to the contextual and situational needs of the world today? Wither the exploratory research or the feasibility, viability and usability of its own future? 

Is it any wonder that it seems more and more that Design itself has become irrelevant and can't find its way so its casting about desperately for new markets? Ironically, if there is any pool of talent that could actually find a way, forecast a trend or plan a scenario, its design. You cannot offer strategy without taking the consequences and the context into account. You cannot continue to focus on consumption, customer experience and innovation without understanding the need for sustainability, service and society. Or can you?

This is a bigger shift than any - will you make the change, which you can and have the ability to do so, with your close networks of clients or will you cannibalize your own future for next month's rent? For today, I leave you with these words written in 2005 by John Emerson in a post titled Its the politics, stupid,

And yet, even among those pursuing “market” oriented solutions, folks seem focused on making new, better, cheaper things rather than intervening in the market to, say, make the polluting more expensive. The former approach ignores the huge subsidies and political weight of industries invested in the old ways of doing things.

Still, if one wanted to pursue a market-based solution, why not require the Federal Government to purchase such products — say, requiring all government printing use a percentage of recycled paper. This would create an enormous demand for ecological goods and ultimately lower the prices of such.

But folks seem to focus on individual choice rather than industrial requirement, ignoring the power of the State altogether. Yeah, cleaner technology is cool and good, but I’m not convinced we we can just invent ourselves out of, say, deforestation without shaping the force of law.

And how to pressure the State? Building a movement is hard. Grassroots organizing is slow. And battling clients every day certainly makes me want to focus on making things instead of dealing with other people. But something’s got to give.

Lessons from the BoP 2: Assume that you can make no assumptions

Across Asian nations, the BoP (Base or Bottom of the Pyramid) is the majority of the market while in the Nordic countries, its quite the opposite. Infrastructure and environmental conditions are very different too, not just the society and culture.  In addition, challenges such as language and literacy as well as means of information access imply that this majority has not been as conditioned by mainstream consumer culture as have markets across the OECD world.

Corporations and institutions seeking to enter this region, whether for profit, as a business offering products, services or applications or as development agencies working on social and economic improvement programs, need to increase their understanding of the local worldview, mindset and value systems if they're to serve these emerging consumer markets effectively (and profitably). Its not enough to simply assume that customer attitudes and insights remain the same, simply challenges of infrastructure and pricing remain to be addressed. There's a larger gap than that and its one that encompasses the entirety of life under conditions of scarcity, adversity and uncertainty. It also influences the success or failure of products, services, communications or even programmes introduced into these markets. Price alone is not the sole criteria when it comes to low income markets.

For example, products for these markets must take variability of infrastructure such as power supply or water into account, harsher environmental conditions, availability of spare parts and maintenance skills; services need to be relevant to local cultures and social norms, such as differing views on interpersonal privacy or space, sharing and cooperative networks; and programs or communications must resonate with the worldview and mindset of the local populace. All of these and more ensure that barriers to adoption are as low as possible, thus improving the potential for sustainable business development.

But this kind of knowledge is rarely measurable nor can it be effectively communicated by standard consumer metrics, when the frame of reference for these consumer markets is so fundamentally different to begin with. The need exists for the study of these emerging consumers as a wholly new and unknown demographic in its own right, starting with the assumption that no assumptions can be made.

Lessons from the BoP - 1

Somewhere in Eastern Cape, South Africa  January 2008

Thinking about yesterday's post on "What can we learn from the BoP?" made me wonder about where would one start, if one were looking for answers. And the best place, I thought, would be attempting to capture here, first, the various different bits and bobs of observations/ insights that I've written about already. Lets see what might possibly emerge from that starting point?

Maximising the value of their investment (post consumption behaviour)
Purchasing patterns on unpredictable incomes (buyer behaviour)
What are the next billion customer's expectations? (core values framing their perspective)
How the next billion (or two) customers will influence industrial design (influenced of core values and purchasing patterns and decision making on design)
Design for the next billion customers (core values related to product design examples from the field)
Banking on airtime, transaction models, informal economies (mainstream assumptions and the informal (yet real) BoP economy)

Should we assume that rural markets = BoP markets? (rural and urban BoP will tend to show differences)

Financial behaviour patterns observed among rural BoP household
What makes "pay as you go" or prepaid plans so successful among the BoP ?(rural)
Insights on the role of observed behaviours for managing cash flow among rural BoP households
What  might be making the mobile phone so effective in improving household finances based on observations of rural BoP households?

Simply the exercise of going back through these thoughts that emerged over the past year and a half has given me much food for thought, but nothing is at the moment striking me enough to say anything right here at this very moment. On the other hand, I do hope we can all start a conversation on this and I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic as this exploration continues.

What can we learn from the Bop?

During the course of our conversation yesterday, WhiteAfrican's Erik Hersman posed a very interesting challenge to me. What could we say would be the lessons we can learn from the BoP, at least as far as the observations and insights gathered from fieldwork up until now?

I had contacted him for his insights on the inventors and creators that populate Afrigadget since my posts last week on RE culture will now form the basis of a much larger research proposal in the near future and I thought it best to start with the source :) It was then that he pointed out just how much value we overlook when we think of the BoP as the "poor" rather than creative, ingenious individuals in their own right - how true that seems - with their worldview and mindset influenced by conditions of adversity and scarcity that most of us sitting at our computer tables can barely imagine.

What then could we in fact learn from those who live at the base of the social and economic pyramid?

RE culture: The BoP innovator/entreprenuer's biggest opportunity space is post consumption

Photocredit: Afrigadget

This photograph from Erik's post on "What do you see?" when he takes us through the wide variety of creative solutions to everyday problems in Africa, exemplifies for me, the whole concept of 'innovating under conditions of scarcity'. Would it ever have struck any of us to repurpose the sole of a rubber slipper into hinges for a door? And how well it solves the problem too!

This and many other such observations got me thinking  about the whole RE culture among the BoP. Stepping back, if you take the broad space of REuse, REpurpose, REpair and REcycle (though I'm still debating whether that last quite applies in the same context as we'd expect it to mean in the developed world) - its the low hanging fruit for the BoP entreprenuer's opportunities for income generation. Dave points out in a chat that REpair is an entire professional service area in its own right, perhaps a subset of the opportunity space in the informal economy with varying degrees of skill and ability required.

But coming back to the other three, it seems at first glance that they look to be more or less the same thing i.e. how different is it to reuse a plastic bottle to contain some liquid from recyling it? particularly if the manufacturer had intended for it to be a disposable container? Yet, from the big picture perspective, one can say (and it has been said before) the whole concept of recycling is a cost in the OECD world whereas its actually a source of income, in a myriad ways, among the BoP. So, for the moment and for the purpose of this particular post, I'm going to put a hold on the thought there and instead explore further the meaning of the broader RE space in context of the BoP mindset and worldview.

One of the key differentiators I've used to demonstrate the "values gap" (so to speak) between the "BoP consumer"'s mindset and worldview and mainstream consumer culture's value propositions is,

Recycle and reuse instead of throwaway and replace

That is, the lower income market tends towards maintenance and extending the lifespan of the products (through repair or repurposing it) they purchase rather than disposing it for convenience or replacing it for a trendier style. All very obvious, you say, but its this very same quality that leads to the wide variety of opportunities for the entreprenuerial or the innovative to make some money (or even a living). From the very basic, in terms of skills and ability such as the button repair guy to the complex, such as the mobile phone hacker, all of these services meet an 'unmet need' in the market, an opportunity gap which they can fill.

However, what's interesting about this, and Erik mentions it in his post linked above, is the fact that these opportunities would very rarely be either a) spotted as one in mainstream consumer culture; b) not be a gap per se due to a difference in mindset/worldview OR even c) not be profitable enough, given the comparitive cost of labour vs the price of the product involved. These conditions for making money, and more so, making money that is deemed a valid ROI seem only to be available among the lower income demographic and in the developing world. For a precondition to their success is also a sufficient customer base seeking such a service and their willingness to pay for it,  and that, imho, emerges from their mindset as BoP consumers, one quality of which is their need to Maximise the return on their investment (purchase). This shows up in this context as a wish to REpair, REuse, REsell (for REpurpose or REcycling or whatever along those lines) - I doubt if they've stopped coming by from door to door among the 'consuming classes' in India to buy old bottles, newspapers and other sundry junk. (A sign of development if it stops? I remember how the chap just stopped coming by in Malaysia over the twenty years of its Asian tiger development )

So, at this point, early stages of exploration though it is, one could say that the whole area of "post consumption" consumer practices - most of which have withered away like the appendix in the 'rich' world - forms one major  basis for both products and services, with value addition to varying degrees, in the 'informal economies' of the developing world. 

Worth reading for a different aspect of this conversation is Tim Brown's post "the post consumption economy"

The BoP as creators, producers, innovators ~ some early thoughts

Old Delhi, January 9th 2009

This is the first of a series of posts where I want to start thrashing out the concept of those at the base of the social and economic pyramid as anything other than 'consumers' and/or 'recipients of aid/charity', that is, the other side of the equation where we tend to consider the 'poor' as simply passive recipients or meagre spenders.

By its nature, this will be a rather rambling exploratory post, since I thought I'd start from the beginning - is there, for example, a difference between "the entreprenuer" and "the producer", "the creator" and "the innovator", if at all? And if none, then perhaps start to fill in some few blanks based on our earlier thinking on the BoP "consumer" and their mindset, worldview or value system.

I've looked at jugaad before, the makeshift solution finding that emerges from conditions of material scarcity and expensive resources and Erik Hersman's Afrigadget covers ingenious local solutions observed in Africa everyday. But for the most part, the emphasis up until now has been on the actual tangible products and/or informal services; the ingenious solutions to everyday problems that are due to the challenging conditions, the limitations of infrastructure and systems or other roadblocks requiring workarounds, in the developing  world. The "gaps" one could say, where user's needs go unfulfilled and so, in effect, the opportunity spaces where indigenous solutions rush in to fill the spaces.

But we've not yet begun scratching at the surface of understanding either the challenges or the worldview that lead to these innovations, or so it seems to me. Who is the BoP producer?

One can't travel through the 'third world' without noticing the immense variety of services that one might never see elsewhere - on the streets of New Delhi's administrative center, a man sits with a bag of assorted buttons and his threaded needle, so bureaucrats can always look 'just so' for their next meeting. Convenience has entirely another meaning here. Still, I find myself digressing ;) so back to the point.

I'm not debating here the "BoP as producers" vs "BoP as consumers" so much as I am attempting to evaluate whether all our previous observations and learnings viz., "Life is hard" (the mindset and values of a customer at the BoP particularly one living on an irregular income) can help us begin to understand the other side of the coin, that is, the "innovator" or "creator/maker" or simply, the "informal business owner or service provider" at the BoP.

At this point at least, it seems to me, that rather than quibble about each individual word choice to describe "who" or "what" they are, perhaps we're better off looking at the "why" and "how" - by this I mean, that the driver of motivation is to generate an income stream (the why) and the gaps observed, as mentioned above, are the opportunity spaces (the how). That is, the BoP seem to display more of a tendency towards 'opportunity spotting' (not quite the same as the word opportunists, though that may also apply in many cases or situations), filling the niche quickly with a service or product. Some of these services have arisen spontaneously around the developing world, mobile phone repair comes to top of mind.

It feels as though its a far more active than passive quality - poverty and hardship can be a powerful motivational driver in itself, though we tend to overlook the ingenuity and creativity involved.

After all, would it ever have struck any of us just how lucrative it can be to sit under a tree in a busy business district during a new Delhi winter with a bag of buttons and a needle?

This conversation has barely started...

McLuhan would be so proud

Hotel Torni courtyard, Helsinki, June 23rd 2009

Imagine 'knowing' people for years, in one way or another, through overlapping circles of communities and then finally meeting them in person - McLuhan was the topic du jour when I met Cordy Swope and Adam Greenfield for drinks yesterday.

Core77 of course was something we all had in common but the individual details are a bit fascinating as well since Adam shared with us that he'd been a fan of Cordy's teenage Buddhist punk rock band in Philadelphia in the early eighties, though they'd never quite met as they were doing now in Helsinki. I've known each through seperate communities - Adam was the first person I linked to on Metafilter over three years ago and I've interviewed Cordy for an article even before that, for Core77.

But those are all details, the point is, that there's an entirely new metaphor emerging - one of openness, give and take, sharing, cooperation, information and 'intimacy' - all enabled by the underpinning internetworked world wide web of humanity.

What do I care about?

Suomenlinna Island, Finland June 20th 2009

There's a couple of things I want to see happen in my life time. One, which I'll toss off right now since its the second one that I want to muse upon, is the tangible manifestation of the "interweb" among those at the BoP across the developing world. As much as the internet has become a part of our daily life and as much as those of us who spend a significant amount of our time online have come to depend on it, I'd like to see something similar happen for those who live, mostly overlooked and outside of this "real world reality". That is all.

The second thing that I'd like to see happening, and perhaps this is one that drives me even in my daily work today is the increase in understanding of "the other". I'm not specifying here whether its the BoP, or the poor or the rural or the whathaveyou, I'm distilling it down to its basic essence. If we can put aside the veils of our own perceptions, the filters and assumptions that our social conditioning, our dominant logic or culture - all that colours the way we see and interpret the world, and simply learn to step back and observe, listen and understand, well, there'd be peace on earth wouldn't there? (rueful smile)

But idealism aside, where I was going with this thought is that the same concept is underlying the foundation of the work that we do here at the Emerging Futures Lab. What's the basic description?

a multidisciplinary research and consulting team focused on understanding the people at the base of the pyramid in order to improve the success rate of new ventures, products and services across the developing world.

I've not put a label on things, I'm neither an ethnographer nor a design researcher, although I do use tools and methods from those fields. I guess I'm a design thinker, in the way I've defined it here,

Design thinking in business takes this problem solving aspect one step further. Now the tools and techniques from the field of design such as ethnographic research, rapid prototyping and conceptual brainstorming integrate with the pragmatic business frameworks of strategy, analysis and metrics to create and provide roadmaps for business innovation and competitive advantage. In this context, design has evolved away from traditional form giving to becoming an integral part of corporate strategy.

for I have done all of the above and continue to do so, all with the goal of bridging the gap of understanding that keeps cultures and peoples apart in their isolated worldviews.

It strikes me as I write this post, an effort to answer the question I posed myself in the title, that what I'm attempting to do with my life (or life's work, as the case may be) sounds idealistic and romantic in a way, but the other side of that coin is the constant battle against cynicism and a culture of detached "coolness". I'd rather be a dork who cares, and cares deeply and emphatically about my own self set mission and vision in life than live up to some undefinable metric of worldly  success. Heh. The point is, if one were to step back and take a big picture view of the whole, a perspective if you will, I am simply trying to manifest my ideals in tangible form.

There's a fundamental peace in that, I find, and I have been sleeping at night. Deep dreamless sleep that leaves me refreshed for the day I spend, alive, in the sun, on this earth.

BoP design research: the difference between "what" & "why"

Photo credit: Lynnette Chan, Shanghai  June 2009

I've written often about the need to understand the values, the mindset or the worldview (call it what you will) of the BoP customer, particularly when wishing to develop products or services for them. Recently, the perfect example of what could happen if this aspect is not taken into account came up in course of a recent conversation. Lynnette Chan, an industrial designer and strategist based in Shanghai has been assisting me with the development of some practical documents for our upcoming fieldwork and used an example of "observation" to demonstrate how to go about it comprehensively. Her articulation of the process was of such clarity that not only did it communicate the "how to" but also demonstrated the "why" it was important to understand the underlying motivation behind a practice.

The example is that of a cardboard box being re-used in the kitchen to sort and store bottles of oil, sauce and spices. It was originally a family pack of yoghurt. Observing this practice alone would lead us to the "face value" interpretation that the user likes the packaging because it can be repurposed in the kitchen versus say another brand. But asking the right questions (whose intent is to discover the user's mindset or value system) would lead us to understand that what the customer values is the overal ability of the packaging to minimize wastage.

So what's the big deal? Its a nuance rather than any major insight, one could say.

The point is that if one takes the first interpretation, the yoghurt manufacturer can assume that since these boxes are prized for their ability to make great kitchen storage, they emphasize this function in a redesign to attract the customer.  Otoh, if the real value was not the storage factor but the minimizing of wastage, the emphasis of the redesign would be irrelevant whereas packaging that clearly minimized wastage might actually increase sales.

Imho, this seemed to show clearly the difference between the assumptions we make when we simply observe some behaviour or practice across the socio-cultural divide and when we seek to understand the values or mindset of the low income customers.

She's a beauty...

Toolontori, Helsinki,  June 2009

Coconut milk for gravy

Gines Patag, The Phillipines, February 2009

If you're not familiar with the concept or the need, this photograph may not initially make any sense. A friend of my Filipino hostess is helping her out by quickly grating a coconut for gravy. The grated meat will be soaked in water and then squeezed for milk - the first round is 'thick' and the second squeezing is 'thin' milk. For most of us coconut milk is something we pick up in a can from the Asian store and its usually just the 'thick' first squeezing.

This was the first time I'd seen one which you sit on to hold it down - my hostess tells me that its customarily used with a shorter stool rather than this chair. As you'll see, the coconut flakes tended to fly around a little  on their way down into the basin. In Calcutta, the same implement is held down with the foot while the user sits on the ground and used both hands - even knives are built the same way, not just the grater.

I can't find a photograph of it but growing up (in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia) we'd go to the grocer's shop, buy a coconut which he'd then grate on a contraption run by an electric motor with a plastic tub around it (a jugaad device) to catch the flakes. Otoh, I did find that variations of such devices are found across Africa as well, not just Asia. I think that's what so cool about it, a very similar device found on different continents, I wonder if anyone has traced the development of traditional kitchen implements across cultures?

Competing and/or collaborating: a look at two value systems

	Either / Or	Both / And
Value System	Competitive	Collaborative
Type of Outcome Expected	Win / Lose	Win / Win
Attitude toward “Winning”	To the victor goes the spoils	Your success is my success
Attitude toward “Losing”	Someone has to lose	If somebody loses everybody loses
Attitude toward minority opinions	Get with the program	Everyone has a piece of the truth
Why explore differences between competing opinions?	To search for bargaining chips, in preparation for horsetrading and compromise.	To build a shared framework of understanding, in preparation for mutual creative thinking.
Essential Mental Activity	Analyse: break wholes into parts	Synthesise: integrate parts into wholes
How long it takes	It’s usually faster in the short run	It’s usually faster in the long run
Underlying philosophy	Survival of the fittest	Interdependence of all things

This table is from Steve Song's post "African women and American academics" referencing two modes of problem solving explored in Sam Kaner’s book Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making. 

While Song uses it to make a point about the need for compassion in the arguments going on today regarding aid and development in Africa, it struck me that this table made the values gap between these two systems very obvious and very clear.

Its for that reason that I've borrowed it to share, since I write so much about the gap in value systems and worldview between customers at the BoP and the value propositions of the multinationals that have sought to serve them. At this point, I do not know if these are the value systems that apply to either party nor do I know what the equivalent comparable systems in that context would be. Its a task that needs to be started, based on existing research and then built upon as our understanding grows in the future. But at the very least this helps us imagine what the inherent conflict looks like, when two value systems are brought side by side for comparison.

Its also helped me realize how firmly I believe in win/win as the outcome of problem solving, and why, perhaps, sometimes, I've faced challenges with close collaborators.

It reminded me that compassion and critical thinking will take you a lot further in the social construction of knowledge than critical thinking alone. ~ Steve Song

Pasteur's Quadrant: A BoP design researcher's dilemma

I was introduced to this diagram by Prof Kaj Sturbacka during the kickoff meeting for a consumer driven research project last week. One look and I knew that I had finally found a way to articulate the dilemma that I'd felt after my very first exploratory research trip among the BoP in southern Africa early last year.

You see, it was after that trip that I came to realize that the values and mindset of the BoP consumer could not simply assumed to be those that would necessarily resonate with the value propositions offered by multinationals seeking to enter the low income markets. That the BoP, was in fact, a great unknown, particularly from the point of view of marketing, consumer insights and sales. And the logic went, if this were so, then we needed to study this emerging consumer market in its own right, from scratch, without the preconceptions and prejudices that had kept them 'below the radar' until now. That we couldn't simply apply the 'conventional wisdoms' of marketing or even design directly when seeking to serve them, effectively and profitably.

This point of view began to pose a dilemma for me, as on one hand, clients would wish to understand these users in order to develop products and services but on the other, these projects were limited in their scope and scale, since the underlying assumption was simply that these customers had shallower pockets but there wasn't any other fundamental difference. Sure, they may face infrastructural challenges or those posed by lack of education, but those were tangible differences that could be addressed by design. It didn't seem as though we were looking beyond the obvious there.

So, how could one pursue the basic research required in order to increase our understanding of the BoP as rightful customers in their own right within the constraints and conditions of corporate work, I pondered, and where did this mash up fit? For pure research on the poor has been done for years and there is an entire body of work on this, it is only of late that they've been referred to as the BoP, that is, a market perspective towards development, thus requiring research results - that is, insights, that business can use immediately in their development of services and products meant to serve the underserved, delivered in a manner they  can afford.

So when I saw the quadrant named Pasteur's taken from a book of the same name by Donald Stokes I truly felt like Archimedes in his bathtub :) Talk about an "Aha!" moment, now, it seemed, there was finally a way to describe what needs to be done for these new markets, bringing together the work that tends to happen in academia (Bohr's) with that more likely to be done by a design ethnographer for a company (Edison). What a great experiment to try this approach instead, a middle path, one could say, that is attempting to balance the often conflicting outcomes of each individual approach.

Product packaging in low income markets - some observations from the Philippines

rural Philippines, February 2009

We're all aware of the ubiquitous sachet, now the default packaging for the BoP market. Shampoo, detergent, softener and orange juice are some of the variety of products available in a single serving for a 'nominal' amount. But what else is out there? Here are some of the products I saw that I don't normally see in my usual supermarkets. 

Tide in the form of a long bar of soap, intended to be cut up into four smaller pieces for resale by an informal retailer.

Single serve diaper, used for travel or special events when the child is actually clothed :) since the two year old living in my hostess' house usually went around naked and squatted wherever she felt like it. And just so we don't think that its all about Proctor & Gamble, although it must be said they had an overwhelming presence in this tiny provincial town, here's an array of canned food.

The big green and black can of 555 brand sardines is a regular size can, the rest are the far more common portions of corned beef, tuna or luncheon meat sold. And no, these aren't single serve, at least that's not how they are used, they're quite expensive relatively and will often be stretched to feed 5 or 6 people. Or even more, one meal my hostess' household had (about 10 people) prior to the abundance of my arrival, was that tiny can of sardines mixed with a lot of water to provide some flavour for the rice.

 

Meanwhile, the informal sector has its own ways and means of packaging, or rather, repackaging - I didn't notice this initially but on the left hand side are red topped plastic canisters which contain different brands of cigarettes. This isn't common, as a smoker, I should know and the shopkeeper has glued the box tops on to each canister to help identify the right brand. What would motivate her to do this when just about everyone else uses the original cigarette packets?

Innovating in times of scarcity: Jugaad goes mainstream

When an obscure indian word reaches the pages of the venerable Economist, you know that it has now become as much a part of the English language as pajama or bungalow. Jugaad, the secret of Indian innovation -  seems suddenly to be the topic du jour. Call it grassroots innovation or BoP design, jugaad is more than simply an elegant solution to an existing problem using whatever materials or resources are available. Its also an attitude, distilled in the crucible of scarcity, poverty and the systemic chaos that is India.

Jugaad was also a blog on this very topic that I ran two years ago before I accepted the fact that my vision is usually 18 to 24 months or so out of sync', today that ability simply serves as an early warning system. But now I really should do a collection on my posts on this broad topic area, who knows, they may be of some use. In fact only yesterday I heard someone say that sometimes information arrives too soon and may then be useless but when the timing is ripe, its becomes critical.

Anyway, a quick google tells me that this sudden spurt of interest in jugaad seems to stem from a workshop held in Pune on May 10th organized  by the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), the Gujarat Innovations Augmentation Network (GIAN) and the Honey Bee Network. It was intended to to promote Grassroots Innovation Design and Sustainability (GRIDS) in Maharashtra by developing a design consortium and network building. Hmms musingly...

Photo credit: Rinku Gajera, taken at NIF, Ahmedabad (full post)

Here's a photograph taken by a friend of mine a couple of years ago of the motorcycle crop sprayer mentioned in these articles. You can see the Louis Kahn designed IIM building hazily in the background.

Anyway, Professor Anil Gupta who heads the NIF also had a column out the same day on Harvard Business.org that was picked up by BusinessWeek. There seem to be two stories here, the one about the actual grassroots innovations emerging from rural India, and the underlying one that the concept has now come to the notice of global mainstream media - there's a blog post on Reuters as well as domestic 'innovation' experts writing timely columns in The Hindu, all from within a day or two of each other. Hmm (muses thoughtfully)

Does it seem to you as though India plans to show the way on how to innovate low cost solutions using minimum resources and maximum constraints? This should be a trend to watch out for, imho. Its time has finally come.

BoP Design: So how do we begin to interpret our findings contextually?

Continuing the train of thought from the previous post on being consciously aware of one's assumption filter, it struck me that the next question that emerges from its concluding statement is "How do we ensure that we interpret our observations of the BoP consumer appropriately?"

Where do we begin?

Lets take a hypothetical scenario for a moment, where a multicultural team is faced with the analysis of observations documented from fieldwork in numerous low income markets. What can they do to ensure:

a) that the data gathered at the outset is as free as possible from the influence of each individual's cultural filter or assumptions.

b) that the interpretation of the observations made - on behaviours or practices seen among the BoP demographic - is based not only on a common frame of reference but also as free as possible (consciously) from the influence of mainstream consumer culture's dominant logic.

Lets start with the first part of the challenge posed here - would it be as simple as ensuring that every researcher is made aware of the fundamental expectation that the BoP's values, mindset and worldview will be very different from that commonly held in mainstream consumer culture?

Or is there a way that initial framing of the research objective can ensure the broadest, most open minded approach to fieldwork?

Its easy enough to say "keep an open mind" - but what does that mean in actual practice (as the Finnish designer who started this conversation blurted out at the beginning). Would saying "Make no assumptions" work as well? Coupled with "Document everything" and "Ask why, why, why constantly" ? Or rather "Why? What? How? Where? When?" ;p but I digress.

And, to be honest, how much of a difference will the observer's point of view and implicit assumptions make on the practice of collecting raw data? I don't know, but it will be interesting to find out.

Now the second part, here one can definitely say that yes, the dominant culture of the team, or the implicit assumptions held regarding consumer behaviour, will certainly influence the quality of the analysis and interpretation of the behaviour's observed. Which in turn will shape the insights deemed important for directing the design or development of a product or service for the BoP. Worst would be the assumption that 'we know best' - often the most insidious yet least conscious assumption we hold, all of us, regardless of where we may be from. So where do we go from here?

A practical research study on this challenge would be a great opportunity to test some hypothesis of how this challenge can be addressed, in a simple, easy to replicate and scalable manner. Ponders, circumspectly.

What are your thoughts on this?