There are two parts to this article: The first is a revision of the lenses through which we assess the landscape within which your new market strategy will be expected to operate; and the second covers your implicit assumptions at inception, as well as gaps in your  mental model.

1. The lenses for innovation need a universe to ground them.

The development of the first generation prototype lenses for identifying the sweet spot of innovation in the operating environment prevalent south of the Sahara desert on the African continent are described here. The evolutionary path from the original lenses (shown below) is described.

People, Pesa, Place were used to replace the words Users, Marketplace, Technical as a means to provide cues for contextual exploration. However, in practice, this revised Venn Diagram (shown below) was still missing a means to distinguish the very different landscape of an emerging market. That is, it overlooked the need to consider the whole as an ecosystem in its own right.

The formal definition of a Venn Diagram, taken from the Oxford Dictionary is as follows:

A diagram representing mathematical or logical sets pictorially as circles or closed curves within an enclosing rectangle (the universal set), common elements of the sets being represented by intersections of the circles.

Without the universal set being represented in these diagrams, it was difficult to create a cue for identifying and describing the often inaccurate yet implicit assumptions made at the very beginning of a new market strategy formulation. And, this gap often revealed itself in form of cognitive dissonance between the observed marketplace and customers, and the tactics intended to support the strategy.

Here is a revised version of this Venn Diagram, enclosed in the rectangle.

By changing the description of the universal set, as shown below, one is then able to evaluate the entire ecosystem holistically.

There is a chasm that divides the value propositions of the producers (sellers, marketers, MNCs) from mainstream consumer culture and the mindset and worldview of the buyers (erstwhile bottom of the pyramid, or emerging consumers from cash intensive, informal economies), and this chasm is where new market strategies tend to falter, and fail. This is particularly noticeable in the African consumer market, especially when considering the mass majority.

2. Questioning the assumptions underlying your value proposition

By adding the missing universal set to the Venn Diagram, one is then forced to acknowledge the systemic differences between one’s own consumer culture, and the vastly different one in this new market. It may indeed be informal and rural, as shown in the sample above, or, it may be the urban consumer markets in the sprawling cities south of the Sahara. Even then, a significant proportion of the economy falls outside of the formal structured environment prevalent in most of the sophisticated consumer markets of the global economy.

And what tends to happen is that elements or concepts from the formal economic ecosystem are introduced or implemented isolated from the supporting information systems and infrastructure. One or two elements from one ecosystem will not thrive in an entirely different ecosystem if there is not fit or context for them to succeed. A clear example is what happens when financial services and tools are introduced under the guise of inclusion.

By going back to the foundation of one’s assumptions, one can identify where the gaps might lie in the value propositions that make so much sense in one’s own context when considering them for consumer segments who might never have been exposed to the same marketing messages, or conditioned to expect “New” to mean “Improved”.

This exercise also provides a cue to consider the systemic differences between the two operating environments, and to assess whether the value proposition or the solution can be introduced as is without the need for an entire support network surrounding it.

Note: I have used the African context as the working example, but the basic framework is flexible to use for any set of disparate operating environments.