Changeism

E-readers in Africa: Continued

Scott Smith — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 12:46:27 +0000

It seems that our idea of using e-readers to aid literacy efforts in underdeveloped markets is a viable concept. Such an effort has been taken on as a mission by Worldreader, a non-profit that is testing programs to use Kindles, donated by Amazon.com, in schools in Ghana. Having run limited trials outside Accra, Worldreader now has permission to broaden its efforts in a larger number of Ghanian schools. We wish them good luck and look forward to seeing the outcomes. You can keep track of this initiative at Worldreader.org's blog.

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Observing America: After Decay, Reorder?

Scott Smith — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:26:00 +0000

So far this year I've tallied up around 10 weeks on the road, away from home, family and office—though in some sense everywhere I go is "office". Unlike previous years, the bulk of this travel has been inside the US—Dopplr helpfully tells me that's 22 trips (undercounting) and about 8,100 kgs of carbon. I've been to LA, New York, Charlotte, Chicago, Tampa, Philadelphia, Boston, Houston, Washington, Raleigh, Minneapolis, most of these multiple times. Double that in number of airports, getting to and from.

This amount of roadwear isn't very different from a lot of other working people, but the point of view is. The majority of this travel was driven by qualitative research, mostly ethnographic in nature, to dig for trends and indicators of future consumer lifestyles. My colleagues and I have been in homes, shopping centers, restaurants, the aforementioned airports, gas stations, coffee shops, hotel lobbies, and just about everywhere else, looking and listening for clues that will help clients pick up that crucial thread that leads to new opportunity. Even when not on the clock, people who know me will tell you I'm always watching. I'd like to think we've found plenty along the way.

What's been most striking, though, has been the opportunity to go deeper into the social fabric of a country experiencing something rare (for America): a slow freefall into a new world where many things the last few generations have taken for granted are slipping from view. Work as a sure thing, education as qualification, even the fallback of family and community have all decayed. 2008's Massively Parallel Correction and 2009's weak recovery have faded and a strange stagnation has set in.

Many of the people we interviewed put on a good face—positive outlooks, aspirations, motivations. Kids were fed and clothed, lights were on and homes were emotionally warm, even in the most modest surroundings. All good. What was different than past field tours, though, was what lay just behind these fronts. Many folks seemed to sense that we've broken through into new territory, where "what comes next", for the first time for many, is completely unforeseeable. Cyclical economic downturns of the past eventually promised a return to some level of prosperity, work, and stability. At levels above them in government, religion, and professional work, somebody was still in control, and systems still functioned in these past eras. That sense is missing now. Obama vs Tea Party, the BP oil spill, the rise of new global forces, and a permanently smaller workforce constitution the dreaded "New Normal". System breakdown is setting in.

In his analysis of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russian writer Dmitri Orlov describes five stages of collapse, in order of occurrence: financial, commercial, political, social, and cultural. We've been through versions of financial and commercial collapse already, if you take that as major institutions and frameworks failing to operate as needed (yes, we've managed fairy-dust workarounds of both for now), and political paralysis is certainly here. Now human, social connections are becoming frayed. Families are losing direction as the foundations of employment and education weaken. Real-world social connections are being pulled apart as the macro-social and macro-economic scripts are rewritten. Many people are quietly losing direction.

What's next then? Is it all doom and gloom? Do we end up a collapsed culture? I'm not sure about that yet. Right now, as Orlov points out, or amygdales, the part of the brain responsible where fear is generated, are a bit messed up. We don't quite know where we are. And experts pitching a top-down imposition of resilience aren't helping, as well-intentioned as they may be. I wonder if, as should happen when we are in actual freefall, if our collective nervous systems will light up, kick in, and start to reassert a semblance of social cohesion from the bottom up. We may be post-modern, even post-normal, but we aren't so far removed from our origins as social animals that we have totally lost the programming.

I remember clearly standing in the waiting area for the first flight back East after being stuck in the Bay Area after 9/11. After that week of deep, deep shock and disconnection, I can't remember a time when my fellow humans were more kind, social-minded, and collectively cooperative. That struck me at the time as a deep bio-social reaction. That's resilience.

Last week while co-teaching a group of students in a futures course at Duke University with Frank Spencer and Venessa Miemis, during a discussion of the future of money and value systems, we began to talk about why new value systems, particularly focused on around social value, are emerging. Alan Rosenblith, director of a new documentary on money, voiced the opinion that these new social value systems being increasingly driven by the scarcity of capital at a time when people need, even want, to work, to rebuild their communities. These new value systems provide a way to satisfy this urge. Maybe that is what is behind the success of social gaming and the artificial economic ecosystems they have created. We farm FarmVille because we can't do the real thing.

So, what's next? We are used to fast action, big upheavals, red vs. blue, zero-sum. We are also awash with people who will give us the recipe for the next big Reboot. One hopeful sign has been the way so-called "underdeveloped" regions have used technology to bootstrap as top-down solutions fail. Maybe we can do that here. I'll be watching to see if it self-develops, slowly but collectively, on a long cycle, looking for weak signals and subtle indicators. Right now, many are just sketching, not yet building. Let's hope we see those signals. If not, then we've truly been re-programmed.

Innovation Scouting: Announcing a New Report and Focus Area

Scott Smith — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 20:26:50 +0000

Alongside our global insights work, Changeist has recently launched what we call Innovation Scouting. This mixture of expert panels and science and technology-focused horizon scanning helps identify emerging hotspots for disruptive innovation—opportunity spaces between emerging consumer behaviors and new technologies.

With our Innovation Scouting toolset, we get into the early-stage development thinking of organizations who themselves are reading the landscape, uncovering major trends and weak signals that entrepreneurs, designers, R&D groups, academic institutions, and strategic insights teams are sensing and prototyping around. We call out the drivers behind innovation, important hotspots created by these drivers, and potentially disruptive innovations that could alter the development and competitive landscapes.

Our first Innovation Scouting report results from research conducted around the convergence of consumer electronics and healthcare (to download, see link below). As the report says, our objectives were twofold: to better understand what factors are influencing how this market evolves, and to help our clients focus and sharpen their foresight, strategic planning and innovation approaches as they look to this increasingly important market. We also performed this work to identify which trends to continue exploring with deeper research dives as we follow the evolution of consumer health in the near future.

If you are interested in finding out more about Changeist's Innovation Scouting capabilities or want to request a custom Innovation Scouting study in the market of interest to your organization, contact us here or via the contact channels listed in the brief.

Download Understanding Trends in Consumer Health Device Design: Innovation Hotspots (412k PDF).

China Slowly Turns from Influenced to Influencer

Scott Smith — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:58:09 +0000

A few years ago I created a complex forecast for a client centered on China and how its emerging consumer segments might evolve, particularly regarding technology usage. One of the key themes for the country as a whole looking out 10 years was a gradual shift from a culture and consumer soceity ravenously downloading Western brands, ideas, memes, values and so on to a China that would stand up on its own two feet to project its own version of these to the world—from consumer to confident creator.

Image: Jakob Montrasio/FlickrChinese brands have led the way out, with now well-known names like Haier and Huawei standing alongside Western leaders like Cisco and GE. Behind that has followed the soft influence of Chinese consumers' needs as expressed to the world through exported design—in technology, consumer products, cars etc. The opening of the Beijing auto show led the head of GM Asia in an FT article on the event to say: "The only true global car shows these days are in China." The head of a company co-producing iconic black cabs in China with Geely summed it up, saying ""The Chinese get accused of just copying other people's designs, but this demonstrates their creativity and flair."

The next phase, communication, has now begun. As the Washington Post points out, while Western media contract, Chinese media is expanding to the world at large. While early steps are being made, such as beefing up foreign bureaus of domestic media—or even setting up radio stations in countries such as the US—this strategy is backed by typically deep Chinese pockets and the accompanying long strategic view. Chinese government and companies say they feel mischaracterized and want their country to be better understood by both Western governments and consumers.

This won't happen overnight, but we can expect to see not one but many Chinese "voices" emerge and expand into the media sphere with increasing breadth and depth. The voice of the government will be a strong influencer, but just as Western media moguls such as Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch have pushed their lenses on the world into its far corners, and Gulf oil has funded groups like Al Jazeera to represent and project the "Arab" world view, we can expect to see a Chinese Turner or Murdoch on the horizon soon.

Looking To a Post-Prahalad Future

Scott Smith — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 22:03:08 +0000

This morning many awoke to read the sad news that renowned management professor and development theorist CK Prahalad passed away after a brief illness. Even though his most well known work, "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid", was released in 2004, it seemed that in some ways, Prahalad's vision of a world where the poor, to paraphrase his obituary in the Times of India, are not seen as victims but as consumers in their own right, was reaching its largest audience today. In an era where so many companies in the developed world are seeking new opportunities to replace the weakening consumer markets of the West, Prahalad's enticement to create demand from, and deliver value to, people in emerging and underdeveloped markets looks very attractive. And not a few of these companies are staying in business at this stage due to the relative strength of these emerging market economies.

And now, many top global players followed Prahalad's advice and have poured resources into India, China, parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America in hopes of selling cars, soap, PCs, appliances and many of the trappings of "mainstream" consumer society to new buyers. Banks, NGOs and technology companies are hard at work finding ways to speed the arrival and movement of money and credit to these sectors. And local companies in these regions are rapidly developing inside tracks to serve their own markets. Ironic that the week of Prahalad's passing the Economist carries a special feature on bottom-up innovation and the success stories of companies and brands many in the West have only just become aware of.

So, what comes next? What is the post-Prahalad world? As a futurist, my job is to think about these things—to observe, think, sketch and describe possible futures that may emerge, and look at possible models that aren't just extrapolations of the past, or fulfillment of management fantasies about the successful transplantation of Western strategies to other regions. To me, we are already starting to see some of the signals that outline this future: not just rising incomes and new consumers, but a fundamental shift in global power dynamics in economics, social values, technology models, and more. We are seeing a swing from acquisition to utility, from consumption to production. And the producers, creators and builders are the ones that will call the shots for some time to come. We aren't just seeing our own ideas and values with an Indian or Chinese or Brazilian name on the label. We've spent five centuries in the West creating models of commerce that reflect our deeper cultural values. Why will the next phase be any different for those people, countries and cultures that have the momentum in the next five centuries?

If one believes that Prahalad's ideas have helped bring us to the edge of an era where "the other 90 percent" are the leading innovators, we need to be prepared for how those innovations differ from what's come before, with what values they will teach and shape us, and how we might find new economic and social pathways forward as our current ones increasingly falter. Prahalad's ideas have been interesting, stimulating and to some extent catalytic. It's what comes next, however, that will be really powerful.

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The Last Scooter: Upgrading the Indian Middle Class Dream

Scott Smith — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 18:48:00 +0000

(Image: Premii/Flickr)

India's fabled Bajaj will issue the last of its classic scooter from its production line in a few weeks, signalling a shift in Indian consumers' transportation choices and, more importantly the benchmark for middle class aspirations. Like the Volkswagen Beetle and Italy's postwar classic Vespa, designed to be affordable, accessible, simple-to-maintain means of getting to a job, shop or visit another town, the Bajaj scooter put a similar tool of middle class aspiration within reach.

Those aspirations are higher now. The reason Bajaj gives for the shutdown of the scooter lines is shifting consumer demand: India's rising consumers want a little more. They see the noisy, boxy Chetak scooter as a symbol of the country's past, not its future. They see the motorcycle or a small, simple car like the Nano as something better, less focused on utility and more on image.

This shift is telling. We've seen it with mobile phones, for example, in India and other countries. Basic is fine, but a little style, brand and power to go with the utility is not just welcome but demanded, and consumers want to be the ones to make the choice. Understanding this evolution, and how to strike the balance, will be key to succeeding in this booming economy, and may provide lessons that can be used elsewhere in emerging markets.

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Smaller Futures and People Power

Scott Smith — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:57:04 +0000

I recently had an opportunity to give a talk to the Filosofic Club of Kiev, Ukraine on a swing through the region. The club is a gathering of intellectual, business and media leaders in the city, and was a great experience. Unlike most standup presentations followed by a Q&A, this event allowed attendees to actiively debate the concepts I presented, and discuss their own models and worldviews. I found it a refreshing learning experience, particularly understanding different views of time and the future in a country where change is often not very far away.

This particular event was held between the presidential primary and a hotly contested run-off between Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yukanovich. Touring the encampments set up to shelter protestors from each party on a cold Sunday night showed that in many places, it isn't just technology that determines the pace of change—in this case, forces in politics, economics and domestic society were a much stronger trigger, and Ukrainians could see two distinct paths before them.

The overall talk focused on recent forecasts of global economic drivers and outcomes, and how these forecasts have not come to pass. Countries like Ukraine are caught between these forecasted futures—one driven by developed countries, and one powered by the BRICs. Increasingly, it looks like Ukraine and other "middle tier" countries will have to build their own, from the bottom up, with innovation at the local level.

I look forward to going back for a longer visit to the country and region. In the meantime, below are slides from the talk.

New Tools for Understanding Lifestyles in Emerging Economies

Scott Smith — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:43:27 +0000

As more organizations try to address potential opportunity in the BOP and tiers just above, many are running up against a major obstacle: understanding the lives, needs and evolution of the people who live within these economic tiers and cultures in a way that isn't just a two-dimensional set of base assumptions. Some take the easy but faulty route of just making up some cardboard cut-out descriptions of the poor, applying some basic insights taken from Prahalad or elsewhere, and rush off to reset pricing and packaging to address an income level, not a person, and then consider their work done.

Others take a more traditional approach, creating standard segmentation models based on income, other demographic data and possibly some current consumption habits. Given the targets of this segmentation—consumers whose behaviors and needs are changing as their economic, social and technological worlds evolve quickly in the modern era—are living in more connected, dynamic and globalized contexts, basic segmentation models may tell you something about where they are, but not where they are headed in the near future. They also ignore or give very sparse attention to the myriad external trends that shape these wants, needs and capabilities—the very factors driving change.

Given new tools we've developed, we may be able to do is develop a more detailed picture of their context, consider the external factors shaping them and this context, gain insight into internal drivers, and better understand these new lifestyle archetypes our work and observations tells us are taking shape now. We've used such a tool in the past to map emerging lifestyles both at the high end (what we used to call early adopters, but who now show up all along the "use" spectrum), and among different kinds of innovators at the lower end of the economic spectrum. What it uncovered was eye-opening, showing us where new and quite unpredictable lifestyle areas are emerging, pointing us toward new product and service concepts that presume certain levels of change will take place, allowing us to do more future-forward new product ideation.

We are interested in pointing these tools toward emerging economies to develop maps of emerging lifestyles that take us beyond the cardboard BoP personas or snapshot segmentations. Our observations, research and insights gathered to date tells us we are looking at w whole new set of technology-influenced lifestyles and contexts—across Asia to Africa and Latin America, and in particular in the "grey area" markets between the BoP and developed markets where change is happening fastest now. We can see it already from the street and media, but bigger steps need to be taken to put flesh on the frame of hypothesis.

If you are interested in joining us to launch this exploration, drop us a line, let us know and we can tell you more about it. Ultimately, we'd love to build a world map of these future lifestyles to see the global patterns and local differences more clearly. We are open to pilot markets where we can deploy and tune the toolset—using both primary and secondary insights—while looking to a larger exercise down the road.

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The World is Flat, but in a Different Way

Scott Smith — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:49:00 +0000

New Scientist today carries a report on how scientific research is surging in areas such as the Middle East (notably Turkey and Iran), as well as in Asia, which passed North America last year in total scientific papers published. Judging by total published papers is at best a simple metric, but it indicates an important shift in knowledge production—itself an indicator of innovation overall.

As I wrote about with regard to Chinese IT and the long-term implications of its growth, these weak signals point to a future where the roles of innovators and copiers may well shift and swap. Science and technology driven by these emerging regions will change the cultural mix of global S&T and will certainly over time take away the West's perceived birthright as the engine of global technology. Flat worlds run both ways.

(Thanks for the link goes to @mgorbis)

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Ecosystems and Emerging Nets

Scott Smith — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:50:00 +0000

In my talk last week at Aalto I discussed the concept of ecosystems, of which the BoPNet is an emerging one, and described how we often have to make choices of which ecosystem we belong to: Win or Mac, Android or Symbian, Western tech or now Eastern tech. The BoPNet is itself an emerging system on mini-ecosystems, each devised around the local needs, capabilities and tools available. Where we used to make choices about ideologies, religions or other social systems, increasingly we have to choose around technical platforms that will shape our social behaviors.

One of the pleasant surprises of the later stage of the workshop was how many of our teams created solutions that were ecosystem-based, leveraging many local assets in their target area, be it Lagos, Cairo, Indonesia or Afghanistan, to create a semi-contained "platform" to improve local lives which could be scaled and connected to other similar platforms nearby into a larger system of systems. One group even created a library or set of modules around needs that could be ported to other networks—seeds that could be spread to other fertile ground.

This question of ecosystems will become increasingly important as these local nets emerge and connect. Force them to make long-term ecosystem choices too soon, and the lock-in may stifle or kill bottom-up innovation. In developed markets, there is always demand, and that provides a cushion to absorb this blow. In emerging markets and fragile local economies, this demand is not strong enough to do so. Letting local needs and local desires call the tune for ecosystem development is important, and our "co-creators" in the workshop got that. Whether larger practices of top-down ecosystem lock-in are forced in the BoP's emerging networks of communication, transport, health, education etc. will determine how well the smaller cells of the net emerge, grow and link. I hope the thinking we saw in our workshop is the new logic that pervades going forward so the green shoots of network development can open and grow.

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