Design research as a method for discovering & understanding the world around us
Variously known as User Centered Design (UCD) or Human Centered Design (HCD), the fundamental philosophy underlying the designer’s approach to problem solving is that of discovery – “figuring out how to make something that will work in this context”. Innovation, invention and novelty rarely have pre-scripted processes due to the as yet unknown, and often, […]
Roadmap for reverse innovation – how to leverage context for disruption
Vijay Govindarajan and Amos Winter have an interesting article in the July/August issue of Harvard Business Review. They identify the barriers to successfully integrating reverse innovation from emerging markets into the product pipeline for mainstream consumer culture. Their key paragraph echoes the issues of people, pesa and place I’d written about earlier: Our research suggests […]
The values gap in banking the unbanked
Back in 2008, after my first deep dive into the African consumer market, on behalf of Samsung, I’d identified something I called the “values gap” as an intangible barrier between the first world’s consumer brands, and the mindset and worldview of the majority market, then referred to (erroneously) as the “Bottom of the Pyramid.” The […]
The ILO’s ‘historic’ informal to formal guidelines and framework: What does it actually mean?
The big news this weekend is the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) first ever Recommendations and Guidelines on the informal economy. My first take away from all the documentation is that the informal sector is no more the enemy of good and, now, can finally be addressed with the consideration it needs and deserves. Here’s a […]
People, Pesa & Place: A Multidisciplinary lens for innovation in social & economic development
This original Venn diagram visualizing the sweet spot of innovation success is a familiar one, with as many variations as there are practitioners. One of the most common is the one below, where business, people (or, as often, design) and technology replace the human centered qualities of viable, desirable and feasible. I’ve used them both […]
10 years later: Will buying Lunar Design make McKinsey more nimble?
Around 10 years ago, I’d made this rough sketch of the innovation consulting landscape as I saw it at the time. The overlap of business and design was the topic du jour, and IDEO had just begun seeding the media with stories of the Empathy Economy and the magic of “design thinking”. Today*, peterme’s blogpost […]
An Introduction to Human Centered Design for Policy Makers in International Development
I’m making available the article based on our work with the Dutch government a couple of years ago. Download PDF
Design policies for a sustainable future
This is an old piece I wrote for the Torino World Design Capital site. It may feel a tad outdated and/or may need refinement, but the gist of it still holds true, imho, we still need to collectively address the challenges of our emerging future and no single country, company or organization can address it […]
The Value Creator’s Dilemma: Opportunity and Growth in a Dog eat Dog World
There are two mindsets – the ‘competitive’ mindset where the market is believed to be finite in scope and scale, that assumes that resources are scarce, an approach to strategy based on solely on the competitive aspects of fundamental frameworks like Porter’s Five Forces. Or as I see it, a zero sum game. That is, […]
Human centered design for financial inclusion: Lessons from fieldwork in rural India, The Phillipines and Kenya
Introduction Financial inclusion has become mainstream thinking in economic development. The vast majority of the unbanked live in the developing world, and a significant proportion of this population are rural residents. One can easily surmise, without recourse to statistics, that the bulk of the target audience for institutions seeking to offer them affordable and accessible […]
