What can we learn from an informal market?
I took this photo of Rinku taking photographs during our visit to Busia’s bustling cross border market as a means to document our own work documenting the borderland’s informal trade ecosystem. Sometimes we’re so immersed in our work that we forget to look up and recognize we’re participants too. Document everything, I tell people interested […]
IKEA in India: Culture Centered Design Strategy
Its taken more than 10 years for single brand retail stores to enter the Indian market, and this year sees India’s first IKEA opening in Hyderabad. TS Ninan introduced their retail challenge succinctly, though he left me wanting more. And this snippet from an interview with the market opening CEO of IKEA in India (who, […]
Tecno and Nokia: The tale of two brands
Chinese mobile maker’s original brand strategy succeeds in Africa: Transsion’s Tecno This year, Nokia got shoved out of the top 10 most admired brands in Africa list, not bad for a company that had lost its way in emerging markets 7 or 8 years ago. As an old (in all senses of the word) Nokia […]
The comparative global impact of Alibaba vs. Amazon
Alibaba Business School and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) brought 29 young entrepreneurs from 11 countries across Africa to the Alibaba campus in Hangzhou, China for the third eFounders Fellowship cohort. Chinese corporate soft power influence is production driven, not consumption focused. Alibaba, the e-commerce giant with digital payment tentacles, has […]
Ibn Battuta in Timbuktu
An ongoing project has me immersed in the history of West African trade, and of course, contemporary accounts of regional cross border trade. Rather than not blog, here’s a link heavy post on Ibn Battuta‘s travels in the region back in the 14th Century. Click on the image for a larger version of the map. […]
Ecodesign, Ecolabels and the Environment: How Europe is redesigning our footprint on earth
What do chopped fresh green beans have in common with high definition flat screen TV’s? And how does this relate to design? In Europe, they’re both considered consumer products whose journey from raw material to shopwindow requires energy to process—emitting greenhouse gases that can have an adverse impact on the environment—and are considered to possess […]
Primer on African Fintech: Myths, Misconceptions, Opportunities, Hotspots and Roadblocks
As we prepare to start work for our third African fintech client, I thought it was time to quickly and briefly introduce the opportunity space and clear up some misunderstandings around fintech in Africa. The first point is the common confusion between Fintech and financial inclusion. Investopedia’s definition of Fintech says financial inclusion, that is, […]
Implications of Mobile Money Interoperability in Kenya?
Mobile money pioneer Kenya, has finally gone live this month with account to account interoperability between mobile money services. Neighbouring Tanzania pioneered interoperability between the mobile money services offered by local telcos with a soft launch back in 2014. Fears of cannibalization and zero sum scenarios were unfounded, as documented in an early evaluation report […]
Goal Directed Research for Innovation Planning in Emerging Markets
What differentiates the research conducted to inform the design of an innovative product or service, in an untapped market? Michael Kimani asked me this question during a recent Skype conversation and I promised to write out the answer. Goal directed research for innovation planning seeks to discover opportunities for new products and services for a […]
How do we make a business case for an innovative concept given the data scarcity for the African mass market?
Anzetse Were writes some thoughtful points on the challenges facing private sector innovation in Kenya, and Africa. Two of her points caught my attention, in particular: With regards to the private sector, an interesting point raised is that innovation targeting it must have a business case for adoption otherwise the innovation won’t be absorbed. Innovation […]
