The Semacraft Blog

Kibera is Kenya’s largest slum: informal settlement if we go by the more established euphemism in use today. The corrugated iron sheet roofs do not stand alone on this vast landscape but are interspersed by TV antennas, so many they seem to stand guard like an army watching over the roofs as far as the eye can see.  Should the residents of Kibera be spending their hard earned money on television sets? Shouldn’t they be fighting their way out of poverty? Saving for their future? Investing in better healthcare?

A section of Kibera. Image source: flickr user kyhm54

I hear these questions frequently enough from visitors from the West. Very valid questions which even middle class Africans ask of their lower-on-the-BoP ‘brethren’. I especially hear these questions asked by many involved in social enterprises with products that have obvious benefits to users rural, poor or both.

There exists a disconnect between these organizations’ aspirations (for instance: eliminate the use of kerosene) and their customer’s aspirations (for instance: be connected to electricity) introducing some interesting challenges for vendors. The focus by the vendor on building a product that eliminates harm and improves well being leads the business into a cul-de-sac where great products go to die. The same cul-de-sac where healthfood for the masses is to be found together with last year’s new year resolutions. The benefits of the product are undeniable and yet uptake remains poor. Sometimes the message behind the marketing communications destroys any chance a product has in the market. Especially when it asks customers to acknowledge, by purchasing the item, that they are financially unable to cope with the rising cost of living. An admission of defeat. The product does not provide a roadmap for advancement and by being an end in itself rather than a milestone on the journey to success catalyzes little hope for the future. No one wants to be hopeless, no matter how affordable it is.

Putting a great deal of thought into the design of a product comes easy for social entrepreneurs (at least it should) because they put impact before financial reward. However, the always very noble motivation of the service or product informs its positioning in the market. A market that also includes purely commercial players playing by a different rule book. This positioning sometimes aludes, through the products marketing message, to the hardship, poverty or level in society the user is most likely to be in. The poor (generally speaking) don’t wear the title with honor and pride. Reminding them that they are poor and disadvantaged at the point of purchase may only work as long as a competing product that tells them they can be superstars doesn’t exist. Here are two thoughts that are stirred in me whenever I travel to rural areas:

The customer social enterprises seek to convert may be in a disadvantaged situation or season in their life. If your messaging speaks to them as such, there will be a problem. Rural customers, especially those towards the bottom of the economic pyramid, don’t necessarily view themselves as poor. They make sophisticated financial planning decisions all the time trading-off performance against running cost and cost of acquisition against status quo. Speak to the job they are trying to get done and the aspirations they carry or your business will be on the wrong end of the trade-off.

Price isn’t everything in Africa. Ask Airtel, they have found out the hard way. Features you think matter to users may be of little consequence when held up against alternatives. Equity Bank grew rapidly as word of mouth spread about their easy-to-access credit and easy-to-open bank accounts resulting in acquisition of customers previously classified as ‘unbankable’; long queues in banking halls and at the ATMs notwithstanding. Spending a little time (at the very least) with customers and listening to their story may provide you with clues on what they need to get done and how pressing the need for a solution is. The intensity of your customer’s pain dictates the value trade-offs they are willing to make.

A customer only experiences pain because they are trying to get something done without the level of success they consider acceptable. Innovations that have succeeded in Africa have empowered customers not disempowered them. Our next posts will delve a little deeper into this.

Participants at our workshop at Strathmore University

This past week the Semacraft team was at Strathmore University holding a workshop for the MSc Telecommunications Innovation (Safaricom Academy) students on designing apps for the mass market in Africa. We are grateful to iLabAfrica for making the event possible.

It’s always great being at Strathmore University, the campus has a great sense of And the students have great energy. Our workshop was based on Semacraft’s basic innovation model called p5 which starts with people and keeps the user at the center of the innovation process throughout the service design lifecycle. A key part of the model requires the innovator to identify personas in their market who they would plan to address. It was impressive the number of personas the participants were able to come up with, some who are well represented throughout the planet’s growth markets. The potential for new disruptive ideas does lie among our young innovators. At Semacraft we look forward to being part of the process that brings to the surface the next generation of ideas that change the way people live and work in Africa.

This workshop was the first in a series designed to equip developers with better skills in business design and improve the quality of ideas launched by young tech innovators in East Africa. The workshop series will culminate in the launch of a handbook later in the year. The next workshop will also be at a Kenyan university later this month. Follow us on Twitter to stay updated.

with the PowerKiss table.

Jussi and Andy with the PowerKiss table in front of ATDF

The team that took off from Helsinki on the evening of the 20th arrived early morning of the 21st of May and went directly to the Aalto Tongji Design Factory premises in Shanghai. Naturally, the first thing to be the built was the sauna on the roof – construction started in earnest that very morning…

Eetu and Jussi building sauna

Meanwhile downstairs, the Design Factory’s shiny floors showcased the look and feel of Finnish wood and Marimekko prints so beautifully.

Aalto Tongji Design Factory, Shanghai

K, that’s the brochure done :p Regular programming will resume tomorrow

Flying out to Shanghai today with the Design Factory. Lots of exciting things happening over there, not the least is the chance to see the World Expo and the city itself.

Fact, Forces, Fog by The Doblin Group

This spread is the centerfold of an interesting little PDF called Fact, Forces, Fog:: Reckless guesses in a time of change by The Doblin Group of Chicago.  I was first introduced to it in the Fall (Autumn) semester of 2003 when I took Larry Keeley‘s class “Design Planning” (or whatever its being called now) at the Institute of Design-IIT. It captured my imagination, and to be honest, hasn’t let go since then.

I bring it up in order to introduce the basic concept of a “post-industrial platform”, from a post written some three years ago, here is my snippet:

What do we see when we look at the PDF centrefold?

Keeley shared that if we look at the way things were – the greyed out section on the left hand side titled Industries gave rise to material goods & services then look at how things are ‘now’ [approximately 2002/2003] Digital systems and connections amplify trends, using Doblin’s methods they were able to forecast the future direction of way things were going to be evolving.

The essence of the evolution if you look at the clusters closely is that business models are evolving away from the capital intensive industrial infrastructure requirements of an Industrial era towards post industrial platforms based on intangible concepts. On the far right hand side is the final section titled Hot fields foster powerful convergence. Doblin’s team identified 11 key areas:

Simplicity – Enlightenment – Talent leverage – Mastery – Travel – Entertainment – Personal Expression – Relationships – Financial health – Health & Environment – Political Freedom

Now, at first glance, comparing these words, with those I’d extracted in yesterday’s post, it seems as though Wisdom itself is a meta-platform, comprised of the following:

Value -  Understanding -  High Standards -  Curiosity -  Love -  Uncompromising vision -  Ennoble – Eternal.

But a closer look at the concepts themselves will show that they are not all capable of becoming platforms in their own right, by virtue of the definition given above.  These are the individual qualities of wisdom, and needs must be taken together in order to embody Wisdom itself.

On the other hand, Love, as a concept, can and does exist outside of wisdom (as any cheesy soap opera will inform us).  And Umair Haque’s articulation from his Wisdom Manifesto (see previous), has it as:

Strategy is the application of force. Wisdom is the application of love. Strategy suppresses, but Wisdom evokes. Its test is the ability to spark new ideas, concepts, and solutions. That is how to be valued by people, communities, and society

Wisdom is the application of love. That is, one discovers, that perhaps wisdom is not a platform per se, but its manifestation, which then can be articulated in the many ways already so discussed.  Therefore, one is left with the point to ponder further, is Love then a post-industrial platform in its own right? And if so, is it repeating any of the concepts that have already been covered by the existing 11 platforms articulated above? The closest seems to be Relationships, so I zoomed in on the clustering of tags shown around it from the PDF.

Interesting. As a platform for business models, the intangible concept of Relationships resembles all the services available online for social networking, matchmaking, dating, sharing media and common interests as well as those which have tried to embody ‘trust’ into their interactions. But there’s no mention of the emotions behind these qualities, the engine or driver of empathy or that indefinable, inexplicable sense of our common humanity.

Perhaps there is, indeed, room for one more post-industrial platform then. But  how would we extrapolate its manifestation, since so much of what we know as “love”  has been commodified into meaninglessness by every pop song or preacher around the world? Although it must be acknowledged that everything we talk about when we look at “doing well by doing good”, or “social impact” or even, the triple bottomline over pure profits, seem to implicitly imply a form of love, perhaps for nothing else but simply that for our own emerging future.

This conversation will undoubtedly continue…

Your thoughts?