There is a lot to unpack in the title of this post and not all of it might happen here today. Consider this the amuse bouche of my current thinking and writing, with the unexpected side effect of releasing the first faint sounds of music that’s been long hidden in my keyboard. The phrasing of… Read More »
Regardless of continent, it is now high time we accepted the informal economy (unformal or unrecognised or unorganized sectors) as a commercial operating environment in its own right. The continued oversight is rapidly coalescing into a gaping void of hiccups and failures, by large companies, non profit institutions, and startups, alike. This issue goes far… Read More »
Latiff Cherono has just published an indepth analysis of what exactly it takes for an Uber driver in Nairobi to cover the cost of doing business. Here’s a snippet, In this post, I try to understand the root cause of the disconnect between how the customer (who defines the value), Uber (the service that controls… Read More »
We weren’t beholden to our customers until we starting thinking like a business. We didn’t hold ourselves accountable until we started treating our ‘beneficiaries’ as customers. No investor took us seriously until we dropped the ‘social enterprise’ label. ~ Ben Lyon, Founder, KopoKopo, Nairobi, Kenya When I wrote “Why so much ‘BoP’ marketing fails… Read More »
Frugality and affordability are very much in the news of late, what with the most recent essay on Change Observer and this post on Paul Polak’s new blog both highlighting similar concepts but from the point of view of very different markets. It seems to imply the trend towards frugal design or extremely affordable yet… Read More »
About two years ago I remember making an observation that I couldn’t seem to see any coherent patterns anymore the way I’d been able to by surfing the net for information. Flux I called it. Everything felt like it was in transition and nothing seemed to stay steady enough to grasp, much less describe. This… Read More »