Tag Archives: business

Formalization is no panacea for micro-entrepreneurs, a liminal space is necessary for growth

By | February 6, 2018

Yesterday, my bank sent back a client’s payment though I’d presented the invoice and other paperwork. I’m a registered micro-business in the highly formal economy of Finland, and the bank I’ve been with since 2009 has upped their internal regulations after a spate of bad publicity surrounding the Panama papers. I’ve been caught in the… Read More »

My African Twitter: Social Media and Its Role in the Emergence of African Economies

By | June 30, 2015

Social Media Day 2015 is as good a day as any to finally get around to completing this post I’ve been meaning to write for almost half a year now. It is based on my personal experience and observations, supported by a few relevant links. African Twitter is unlike any social media I’ve experienced. In… Read More »

Assessing the size and value of investment opportunities with an informal economy footprint

By | May 13, 2015

There’s an interesting snippet from the Nigerian news yesterday that led to this framing of a necessary problem statement. KPMG’s head of private equity is quoted as saying: Meeting current needs of the one billion plus population and, the future demands of the rapidly emerging middle class consumers will drive the next wave of Private… Read More »

Strategy and Operational Excellence: Trade-Offs Made in Design and Thinking

By | January 9, 2015

“Managers must clearly distinguish operational effectiveness from strategy. Both are essential, but the two agendas are different. The operational agenda involves continual improvement everywhere there are no trade-offs. Failure to do this creates vulnerability even for companies with a good strategy. The operational agenda is the proper place for constant change, flexibility, and relentless efforts… Read More »

Innovation at the small enterprise level

By | October 17, 2011

I’ve never been left with such a strong sense of enterprise and innovative thinking as I have now after this past week in Coastal Kenya. In fact I asked Muchiri if he’d been specifying some high standards for the introductions made to various cyber cafe owners or was it that we just happened upon the… Read More »

On the challenge of merging Business with Design

By | November 25, 2010

Helen Walters recently published her complete speech from Design Thinkers 2010 online under various titles such as “The 7 Biggest Challenges in Merging Design and Business” as well as “Design: The bottom line” which provides much food for thought as a current day snapshot of the interstitial space where business meets design.  After having sat… Read More »