Pondering a new prepaid research focus
Ever since I completed the first Prepaid Economy study which looked at how those on irregular income streams managed their household finances – focusing on rural Philippines and India – I’ve been curious about rural Kenya. I’ve long wanted to delve into the impact, if any, of the mobile money systems that have rapidly gained […]
M-PESA and the service innovation framework (extract)
A former student of mine just mailed me this article “Extracting Key Lessons in Service Innovation” (pdf) by S.Wooder and S. Baker, recently published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management, January 2012 edition. Here is the abstract of the article: This paper describes how Sagentia—working with Vodafone, Safaricom, and other organizations—played a significant role […]
The ingenuity economy: grassroots social enterprises abound
Since I’d recently completed my review of Robert Neuwirth’s book, Stealth of Nations – The rise of the global informal economy, it struck me that what best characterizes this economic activity is captured by him here: The French have a word that they often use to describe particularly effective and motivated people. They call them […]
Book Review – Stealth of Nations: The global rise of the informal economy
The first best thing that I can say, on Robert Neuwirth’s Stealth of Nations, is that I’m grateful to the author for writing the book. I’ve just finished reading it, after purchasing it at a premium from Kinokuniya in downtown Singapore. At least twice while reading I found myself wanting to bake cookies for the […]
Our two shillings worth on the Kenyan ICT revolution
The World Bank’s Wolfgang Fengler has recently written a blogpost titled “Learning from the Kenyan revolution” referencing the penetration and use of not only ICT devices but also mobile money services. He makes optimistic predictions for the futures, viz., What are the lessons of Kenya’s ICT revolution for the broader economy of Kenya and for […]
In conclusion: Lessons from The Village Telco project in Kenya
We’ve finally reached the point in our work for Village Telco where there’s been enough time for some reflection after the intense weeks of travel and observations across Kenya. I can cluster our learning into three broad areas: our approach, methodology and team work; Kenya’s people and the informal economy; and finally, the role of […]
Social enterprises and the target audience for their value propositions
It struck me while browsing through some ‘design for social impact’ product websites recently that while their focus might be on the poor, their communication and messaging was geared towards the Western or top of the pyramid audience. I’d rather not link to nor name names, select your favourite cookstove/solar lantern/water purifier social enterprise and […]
Questioning the value of the term Base or Bottom of the Pyramid aka the BoP
Siim Esko wrote a short piece on his blog BoP Strategies after a conversation we recently had. Since much of his work focuses on the BoP in India and I’d just returned from the Kenyan tour, it was but natural for us to compare and contrast the challenges and the conditions of the lower income […]
Wrapping up the Village Telco project in Kenya
Since September 2011, I’ve been wholly immersed in the cyber cafe industry in Sub Saharan Africa, specifically peri urban and rural Kenya in East Africa. We were tasked to assess the market and value the opportunity space for our client Village Telco, a social enterprise start up whose mission is to enable affordable access to […]
