ingenuity in developing markets

Influx Insights — 2008-04-11T15:37:35Z

I was fortunate enough to attend Jan Chipchase's Street Hacks (avail for download from his site) presentation at Adaptive Path the other night.

He's Nokia's resident field researcher/ethnographer.

His function is to help Nokia better understand how people use mobile phone and identify potential opportunities.

In his presentation he shared some great examples of how people in the developing world are adapting/hacking and playing with limited resources to deliver experiences they want and need.

Here are some of his examples;

1. Not An Official Product: Two SIM cards on the space of a single SIM so users can switch between providers

2. Stealing Electricity, but with a Meter- from Brazil- It costs to add the meter, but having the meter gives you an address and the "rights" from having an address.

3. A system for airtime transfer gets turned by its users into a banking system- Africa- people can send airtime quicker than money and in towns and villages, individuals exchange that airtime for cash.

Posted by Ed Cotton

Influx Insights Tag Feed: developingmarkets

ingenuity in developing markets