Category Archives: Frameworks

The 5D’s of BoP Marketing: Touchpoints for a holistic, human-centered strategy

By Niti Bhan | Published: June 11, 2021

Original version published January 2009 in Core77 – as you will note, it requires an overhaul of the details to make it more robust against the passage of time Progress in the social mobile field will come only when we think more about best practices in the thinking and design of mobile projects and applications, […]

Also posted in Base of the Pyramid, Marketing, Perspective | Tagged , , | 1 Response

Time to update the 5D’s framework for inclusive business design after 12 years

By Niti Bhan | Published: June 10, 2021

Two things have happened since I first published The 5D’s of BoP Marketing: Touchpoints for a holistic, human-centered strategy in Core77 back in January 2009. One, Core77 overhauled their site design and broke my article rather badly. Its layout and formatting makes it virtually incomprehensible. On the other hand, the 5Ds framework has apparently held […]

Also posted in African Consumer Market, Base of the Pyramid, Consumer Behaviour, Design, Emerging Markets, Informal & Flexible, Innovation Planning, Marketing, Perspective, Retail in Africa, Strategy, Sub Saharan Africa, User research | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Reflecting on Béné’s review of important concepts for local food systems resilience in context of systemic shocks

By Niti Bhan | Published: May 13, 2021

Béné’s (May, 2020) review last year of the most important concepts for thinking about resilience of local food systems, in context of the pandemic and other shocks provides frameworks for situating empirical data on the resilience strategies employed by informal economic actors in the last mile of Nairobi’s urban food system specializing in fresh produce […]

Also posted in Africa, Analysis, Biashara Economics, East African Community, Economy, Informal & Flexible, Kenya, Literature review, Perspective, waymarkers, Work in Progress | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Situating one’s rant within business model typology for rural and low income markets

By Niti Bhan | Published: April 24, 2021

After yesterday’s post on stripping out social considerations to allow for a pragmatic economic assessment of viability prior to investing in infrastructure for service delivery to rural customers, I looked up literature on the general theme. Site selection as a keyword brought a slew of articles focusing on GIS technology, primarily from the lens of […]

Also posted in Biashara Economics, Business Models, Consumer Behaviour, Indigenous & Traditional, Informal & Flexible, Innovation Planning, Literature review, Marketing, Perspective, Retail in Africa, Rural Economy, Strategy, Sub Saharan Africa, Work in Progress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How literature review is changing my own mindset and perspective

By Niti Bhan | Published: April 21, 2021

Diving deep in to the literature of specific topics and on narrowly focused subject matter has been surprisingly pleasurable. And unexpected. The presence of the blog as an accompaniment is like a condiment for food for thought. In the month since I began to take blogging again seriously, even with the struggles to write down […]

Also posted in Africa, Innovation Planning, Literature review, Perspective, Research | Tagged | Leave a comment

Theoretical background for contextualizing User Agency in Participatory Processes

By Niti Bhan | Published: April 12, 2021

Scandinavian participatory design practices are not distinguished by particular methods but rather by political commitments to societal concerns and relationships with participating users and communities. Pelle Ehn writes:`In the interest of emancipation, we deliberately made the choice of siding with workers and their organisations, supporting the development of their resources for a change towards democracy […]

Also posted in Africa, Analysis, Assumption filter, Design, Design Methodology, Innovation Planning, Kenya, Literature review, Mobile platform, Perspective, Research, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, Technology, User research | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Effective Toolmaking: Shifting the Mindset Away from that of “Expert”

By Niti Bhan | Published: April 7, 2021

The beauty of struggling with words and concepts in order to best articulate them in a manner that reflects one’s lived experience in practice is that one remains true to one’s search for songs of magic regardless of the themes of introspection. This realization has freed me from various self imposed constraints on my use […]

Also posted in Africa, Analysis, Assumption filter, Culture, Design, Design Methodology, Perspective | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Half a year, 2020 : The Remote Resilience and Recovery Project

By Niti Bhan | Published: August 8, 2020

I have umpteen drafts saved, of posts I began writing since the last published one on 29th February this year, and never finished. 2020 has outdone itself in its impact on all of human society, across our entire planet. I have been active on Twitter, where my literature reviews, in service of the pivot I […]

Also posted in Africa, Base of the Pyramid, Biashara Economics, Design, Ecosystem, Flexibility, Informal & Flexible, Innovation Planning, Mama Biashara, Marketing, Perspective, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Retail in Africa, rural, Strategy, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, urban, User research, Value | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

From Flat to Fragmented: Observing the Impact of Sudden Jump in Complexity on Startup’s Development Journey

By Niti Bhan | Published: February 24, 2020

With increasing diversity of factors that impact the product development journey comes increasing complexity in managing the product development process. For startups in particular, there is little difference between the startup’s development journey and the product development journey. Consider the phases of the startup development journey as illustrated by StartupCommons below: Validation and Growth phases […]

Also posted in Articles on Design and Innovation, Design, Ecosystem, Education, Emerging Markets, global, Innovation Planning, Kenya, Marketing, Mobile platform, Perspective, Platforms, Prepaid Economy & Informal Sector, Projects and Reports, Research, Strategy, Sub Saharan Africa, Systems, Technology | Tagged | Leave a comment

Value Webs: Structure and Characteristics of the African Market Economy

By Niti Bhan | Published: December 29, 2019

When these markets are analyzed, moreover, they turn out to have a structure very unlike those of the West. ~ The End of Corporate Imperialism by CK Prahalad and Kenneth Lieberthal, HBR “Best of 1998″ When Prahalad and Lieberthal wrote this sentence over twenty years ago, they were referring to the huge consumer markets of […]

Also posted in Africa, African Consumer Market, Analysis, Business Models, East African Community, Economy, Ecosystem, Mobile platform, Perspective, Platforms, Research, Sub Saharan Africa | Tagged , | Leave a comment


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