Category Archives: Emerging Futures

Exploratory User Research to Inform and Inspire Innovation Frontiers: Nokia’s legacy

By Niti Bhan | Published: May 24, 2021

Swedberg (2020) offers a glimpse of the legacy of an exploratory approach to research. The reasons for using such an approach, based on his analysis, are: The empirical situation makes it necessary to use an exploratory approach. Swedberg (2020) gives the example of a study conducted in 1937 by Lazarsfeld & Stouffer on the effects […]

Also posted in Design, Design Methodology, Emerging Markets, Innovation Planning, Literature review, Mobile platform, Perspective, User research, waymarkers, Work in Progress | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Will Africans lead innovation in resilience tech for sustainable lifestyles on a shoestring?

By Niti Bhan | Published: May 14, 2021

A Tanzanian startup offering a smart hydroponics kit for urban farming in limited spaces that costs around $500. Reading about the system yesterday – invented by founders Praygod Japhet and Dickson Mallya – I was moved to create a hashtag #resiliencetech on Twitter. Something about the topic made me feel that I should be keeping […]

Also posted in Africa, African Consumer Market, East African Community, Emerging Markets, Innovation Planning, Mobile platform, Perspective, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, Tanzania, Technology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Design Thinking for the post pandemic era

By Niti Bhan | Published: November 16, 2020

Design must change if we’re to meet the targets for the climate change goals. And, not only must design transform itself to be utilitarian for the needs of the novel ways of making, doing, being, that are emerging as an outcome of the global pandemic shock, but at the same time these new systems must […]

Also posted in Analysis, Articles on Design and Innovation, Design, Ecosystem, Perspective | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Global System’s Fulcrum has Changed in Location and Trajectory

By Niti Bhan | Published: November 15, 2020

Where, the innovation flowed outwards from age old centers of world system changing such as the Bay Area of the US Pacific Coastline or more recently, in the first visible shift this century, from the Pearl River Delta region of mainland China, now has shifted its locus of pivoting the levers of the system into […]

Also posted in Analysis, ASEAN, Ecosystem, Mobile platform, Perspective, Philipines, Strategy, urban, Value | Leave a comment

Coronavirus side-effect: Transformation of China’s business models, logistics, and service delivery

By Niti Bhan | Published: February 29, 2020

Just the way the SARs epidemic kicked off China’s e-commerce revolution back in 2003, the ongoing COVID-19 containment strategies maybe triggering an even larger transformation of the Chinese economic ecosystem. I went looking today for the earliest signals of what might be underway. Rural China is facing the biggest challenge right now as the spring […]

Also posted in Analysis, Business Models, China, Commerce en ligne (e-commerce), Consumer Behaviour, Culture, Distribution, Economy, Ecosystem, Informal & Flexible, Innovation Planning, Marketing, Migrant worker, Mobile platform, perfect storm, Perspective, Platforms, Research, Rural Economy, Scarcity, Technology, urban | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Transition to Student Life

By Niti Bhan | Published: August 19, 2019

I’ve been too busy to blog since August began, transitioning into the spaces where I will be a fulltime student once more, after 30 years. Now that the rush of registration and photography and getting all the keycards sorted is over, my time is my own again and I can write. You can see my […]

Also posted in Education, Perspective | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Perfect Storm: A Continent, A Phone, A Business Model

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 20, 2019

In the mid 1990s, in a small city in northern Finland, engineers and designers began work on the product development of a mobile phone that would eventually become one of the best selling Nokia models ever – the 3310, released in Europe and the Far East in the year 2000. The continent of Africa was […]

Also posted in Africa, African Consumer Market, Afrique francophone, Airtime, Analysis, Articles on Design and Innovation, Base of the Pyramid, Biashara Economics, Business Models, Cashless transactions, Commerce en ligne (e-commerce), Consommateurs, Consumer Behaviour, Design, Economy, Ecosystem, Emerging Markets, Flexibility, global, Informal & Flexible, Innovation Planning, Kenya, Mobile platform, perfect storm, Perspective, Platforms, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Research, Rural Economy, South Africa, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, Technology, User research | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement and the Age of Interoperability

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 15, 2019

I have been writing on cross border mobile financial flows across the African continent since early 2015, when the partnerships and agreements made between African telcos to provide interoperability between their mobile money services first began to hit the headlines. In my last post back in August 2016, I asked if Cross Border Mobile Money […]

Also posted in Africa, Afrique francophone, Airtime, Alternative currency, Analysis, Assumption filter, Banking, Base of the Pyramid, Biashara Economics, Business Models, Cashless transactions, Commerce en ligne (e-commerce), Economy, Ecosystem, Ghana, Income, Informal & Flexible, Kenya, Mobile platform, Perspective, Platforms, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Research, Strategy, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, Technology, UEMOA | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Response

Book Review: Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel

By Niti Bhan | Published: July 5, 2019

Although the book I’ll be reviewing today was first published in the year 2007, I only came upon it this year in a used bookstore. Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved lays bare the innards of the world’s food distribution systems and the market dominance of the megacorps in the business. The Guardian’s original review captures […]

Also posted in Africa, ASEAN, Base of the Pyramid, Biashara Economics, Book Reviews, Economy, Ecosystem, FMCG, Indigenous & Traditional, Informal & Flexible, Migrant worker, Perspective, Retail in Africa, rural, Rural Economy, South Asia, Sub Saharan Africa | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Kenya’s informal economy clambering on to the information highway through their smartphones

By Niti Bhan | Published: March 9, 2019

Sometimes cliches are the only way to communicate the sheer breadth and depth of the transformation now undergoing in the informal sectors, such as trade and light manufacturing, thanks to affordable smartphones and data bundles. I began calling it digital and not online yesterday when we discovered many people didn’t recognize the word “online” in […]

Also posted in Africa, Airtime, Biashara Economics, Commerce en ligne (e-commerce), Consumer Behaviour, Informal & Flexible, Innovation Planning, jua kali, Kenya, Mama Biashara, Marketing, Mobile platform, Perspective, Platforms, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Research, Strategy, Sub Saharan Africa, Technology, User research | Tagged , | Leave a comment


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