@Prepaid Africa Connecting Dots – October 2015
October was a busy month for us – The African Development Bank hosted their first Innovation Weekend in Abidjan from the 9th to the 11th of October. Our contribution was thinking about the problems we face as the starting point for new venture design. Savvy young people from across Francophone West Africa gathered to conceptualize […]
Tsunami of change – design, brands, marketing and the mobile phone
In the 10 short months since I wrote on the market forces influencing the global mobile phone market, and the implications of the democratization of innovation whose early, weak signals I could already foresee, matters have come to a head. I had written: The locus of innovation in handset design, product planning and market strategy […]
Business and Design in Stasis?
I came across this post from the archives of a now deleted blog, originally hosted on the Design Factory’s website, and realized that more than 4 years have passed yet most of these words could still hold true today, given the recent conversations on design’s future. So I’m reproducing it as food for thought and […]
Perspective: Pondering cultures of design and design’s cultural fit
LukeW’s post on design left me in a thoughtful mood after I read it. He’d linked to an article about Samsung’s design culture and the clashes between Bay Area rockstar designers and the inhouse product development teams. It wasn’t the content of the article that struck me, as it was rather balanced, quoting former Samsung […]
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 It may feel a tad outdated and/or may need refinement, but the gist of it still holds true, imho, we still need to collectively address the challenges of our emerging future and no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 […]
Design’s future is a global perspective and an inclusive mindset
Matthew Milan’s thoughtful piece reflecting on the turmoil engulfing the design industry is definitely worth reading. There’s been a lot published on the topic ever since Adaptive Path was bought out by Capital One, a bank. Most of it has been either hand wringing over the death knell of the independent design industry, or rebuttals […]
Strategy and Operational Excellence: Trade-Offs Made in Design and Thinking
“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 […]
Prepaid Economy Newsletter: Curated Snippets on Informal, Rural and Prepaid
Welcome! This is the first prototype experimenting with a newsletter format on topics dear to the heart of The Prepaid Economy’s research interests and reader community. Its a special edition looking back at the year. Leave a comment or tweet @prepaid_africa if you’d like to see this become a regular feature. All feedback welcome! Click […]
While you were outsourced: Last 10 years of mobile design, business and emerging markets
There’s a lot to be said here and I’ve been trying to sort it all out into some kind of logical flow. The global landscape of mobile phones is undergoing a huge shift, and like the iceberg that sank the Titanic, much of it is still under the radar. If I hadn’t gone down the […]
New Market Analysis: It all boils down to Interpretation
This isn’t a new diagram for anyone familiar with my writing. Its a diagram I’ve been using to explain where my work fits into the innovation development process since I first saw it on Luke Wroblewski’s blog back in 2006. However, I’ve just been struck forcibly by the realization that there’s a very important piece […]
