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 […]
Uncertainty and The Prepaid Economy: Time and Money
Uncertainty characterizes the entire global Prepaid Economy and is the underlying driver for decision making. Systems are unreliable Inadequate infrastructure, variability in basic services (will we have electricity this morning?), obsolete or incomplete systems; all of these, and more, are part and parcel of life in the emerging regions of the world. Will we wake […]
Introducing The Global Prepaid Economy
This week, that venerable newspaper The Financial Times, published an original piece of writing on the World Economic Forum’s Agenda blog. Its not a reprint from their own publication. It proposes the end of “Emerging Markets” (EM) as we know them: Now, commentators say, it is the world’s mental map that is in dire need […]
Smartphones and the internet across the developing and emerging world
The Pew Research Center has just released a report on my favourite topic – mobile phones in the emerging economies of the developing world – with some surprising results. And it demonstrates the so called leapfrogging of legacy infrastructure, in this case, the landline. These numbers demonstrate the emergence of globally connected consumers, regardless of […]
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’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 […]
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 […]
Europe could stop fighting it and see if informal economy has lessons to teach
Scanning recent writing on the informal economic activity in the wake of the Great Global Recession brings to light the ongoing struggle to deal with it. Is it good or is it bad? Will it help or is it hindering? Don’t forget the taxes being left unpaid by the economically challenged citizens trying to feed […]
Questioning the value of the term Base or Bottom of the Pyramid aka the BoP
Siim Esko wrote a short piece on his blog BoP Strategies after a conversation we recently had. Since much of his work focuses on the BoP in India and I’d just returned from the Kenyan tour, it was but natural for us to compare and contrast the challenges and the conditions of the lower income […]
Socially networked mystery shopfront
We spotted this closed shopfront just before entering Mtwapa – a midsize town about 10km from Mombasa, when returning from a day trip north to Kilifi today. There was no signage to tell us whether it was a cyber cafe or internet center of some sort. But we’re sure they are extremely networked socially.
