Priorities for an internet on the mobile platform for Africa’s prepaid economy
Something that Gustav Praekelt said in the news about access to no-cost information being a basic human right at the Mobile Web Africa caught my attention. There is still a gaping void in services accessible to and customized for the needs of the mass majority of mobile phone owners in the world. The next billion […]
Market Segmentation in the Informal Economy
This table is from “How to profit from Africa’s different consumer groups” and the research is from NKC Independent Economists group. There is something lacking in understanding the patterns of purchasing power when segmentation methodology from the formal economy are applied ad hoc to markets which are primarily informal. As mentioned at the end of […]
Static income vs dynamic income
It was when attempting to clearly distinguish between patterns of cash flow in the formal vs the informal economy, using the concept of the degree of control granted to the end user over the variables of time (duration, frequency, periodicity) and money (amount, cash or kind), that it struck me what kind of difference does […]
Who is Farmer Pedro?
If we were to arrive at a synthesized view of your average subsistence farmer, lets call him Pedro, how would we describe him? What is Farmer Pedro’s story? He grows enough to keep body and soul going, his first priority is always feeding his own family before selling any grain to the market. Perhaps this […]
Sampling uncertainty
This drawing was made by Jeroen Meijer of JAM visual design, Amsterdam, earlier this week during the workshop we held on Monday, November 26th, 2012. Its a visualization of the chart I use to show how participants were sampled for the prepaid economy project. The axes represent the individual’s ability to accurately predict either timing […]
Your margin is my opportunity: entrepreneurship in the informal economy
Each of the persons in the photograph is an entrepreneur whose mission is to increase the amount and sources of income streams for her needs. But this spirit of the informal economy’s engine has been best captured in these words by Bart Doorneweert, my colleague in the ongoing project here in Holland. Your margins are […]
“Leadership is like being in love” ~ Richard Farson
Many years ago my friend, the late designer George Nelson, told me a story I will never forget. Early in his career George worked for a time with Frank Lloyd Wright. One day when George and the great prairie architect were taking a walk and talking, Wright was struggling to find a metaphor that would […]
Takeaways from experiencing the human centered design process
Design adds greater value in the long term by being applied to the HOW of business (practices and process), whereas being applied to the WHAT of business (products) ends up having limited value as those products become commoditized. ~ paraphrasing Clement Mok, March 1st 2005 For an audience who will neither practise the design profession […]
Cashpower: prepaid electricity in Rwanda
Maarja Motus, an Estonian designer and my recent intern spent 3 weeks in Rwanda recently conducting some research on my behalf. Here’s an extract from her report on Cashpower, the Rwandese term for prepaid electricity. An electricity agent (Cashpower agent) next to Kigali market has 300 customers, only 10 of them buy for whole month […]
Brave New World: Revisiting Theodore Levitt’s globalization of markets
Convergence of global markets and equalizing of purchasing power will finally offer the “global consumer” Theodore Levitt was seeking. ~ @nitibhan I found myself summing up a search with these words at the end of a series of articles I found while digging around online. Now I want to explore this potentially emerging future a […]
