“Where was my today?” Exploring the words of time’s horizon
Have I spent the last 15 years like the White Rabbit in Alice’s Wonderland, forever late to the Mad Hatter’s tea party? “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkein This is what it felt like when I reached the end of my previous […]
Fundamental Elements of Informal Sector Commercial Activity
There are two key elements which underpin the dynamics of any business or commercial enterprise in the informal sector. These are Time and Money. A generalized framework can be diagrammed, as shown above, where the dotted line denotes the degree of uncertainty and volatility of an individual’s cash flow patterns – whether from a variety […]
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 […]
Why prepaid business models work so well for the rural and informal economy
We broke down the basic concept of the ‘pay as you go’ or prepaid mobile plan – in general, discounting the details of the various different strategies and pricing/time plans of different countries as a way to begin understanding what is it about this model that makes it work at the BoP. Could we somehow […]
