Some Observers - Emerging Futures + Technologies + Consumers

Contributors

Tags


Filed under

India

 
January 5, 2010

Small World

Photo by djoheninde

Two very different events in two very different places this week are worth watching for what they tell us about the future and its emerging design requirements: the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which kicks off this coming weekend, and the New Delhi Auto Show, which opened already this week in India's capital. 

Leaks and previews ahead of CES suggest what we forecasted in private last summer: a plethora of small, light, energy conserving, utilitarian devices to against the usual focus on power, size, reach and volume. Netbooks, smartbooks, tablets, hybrids, mobiles and other devices based on open platforms and/or efficient processors and sufficient storage are the theme this year. While there is still plenty for the early adopter fanbois to get excited about, there is a noticeable shift to more affordable. some might say more democratic, devices.

Meanwhile, accelerating a theme that has emerged in recent global auto shows, but enhancing it for India's unique needs (growing demand, cramped infrastructure, lower per capita incomes), small, simple, efficient and useful have been the watchwords in New Delhi. Tata of course had more to say about its revolutionary Nano, including plans to make an electric version, and Honda, Toyota and VW have led the early announcements with compact vehicles designed for the country's new motoring classes. 

All of this effort in design, innovation, manufacturing and marketing isn't simply to support a short-term fad. While markets such as the US have been ramping "down" to add smaller cars and computers to product line-ups, emerging markets such as India are ramping up into these product lines as a future core offering—they know the way to reach the mass market is to accommodate this need for small, and by gaining scale and the related economies needed to succeed, these "small" innovations will increasingly port to more advanced markets. In the US, we look at small as our second or third option—something for when there is still space left to fill, and money to burn. Not so the rest of the world, where innovating small is the way out—and up. 

Filed under  //   Honda   India   innovation   mobile   netbooks   open source   small   Tata   Toyota   transportation   VW  
Posted by Scott Smith 

Comments [0]

December 17, 2009

Understanding Wayfinding in India

Photo by Anil Jadhav

Google announced on its official blog today an interesting revamp of the textual directions given by Google Maps India. Until now, GMaps has delivered dry, technical, and for some people, unhelpful turn-by-turn directions, simply instructing the travel to turn right or left after a certain distance, and/or at a certain road. This is okay if you are a surveyor armed with technical equipment, or have named roads to go by.

However, Google UX designers took a closer look at the needs and operating environment of Indian users and realized they were dealing with many situations where formal road names weren't available, or where users may have literacy issues or very different wayfinding habits. Landmarks, they discovered, play a critical role in orienting the traveler, and may be a more recognizable marker that indicates a turning point or correct progress--a gas pump , a seed store, a kiosk all may be better known markers of direction and distance than a formal road name (which may not be locally recognized) or distance traveled. The result is that Google has made these subtle but important changes to their text directions. It may also present a future opportunity to build a better database of locally important businesses and information nodes as it complies these marker points. 

This change echoes research carried out by others around mobile and other computing or communications interfaces in markets where different modes of social communication--and levels of literacy--exist. It will be interesting to see if and how Google applies these learnings in analogous environments, and if it is applied at all in more advanced markets. 

Filed under  //   Google   India   literacy   location   maps  
Posted by Scott Smith 

Comments [1]

October 30, 2009

Welcome to the BOPNet

Trying to answer a number of loosely related questions lately, an important idea has become increasingly clear: we are rapidly entering the age of the BOPNet. 

The past decade of ICT has been defined by a combination of Moore's law and the need to drive more and more data across expensively built networks, fueling behavior that wants faster processors, faster networks and richer communications and media experiences, culminating in iconic objects like iPhone, big screen laptops and an armada of bandwidth hungry applications and services. 

Meanwhile, while we obsessed over bigger, faster, more in the developed world, networks were lit in the global south, mobile subscriptions in emerging markets spiked, and better services have crept (slowly, but surely) into the previously dark corners of these markets. Most importantly, thousands of ambitious developers and entrepreneurs have been developing appropriate services, mainly in small islands, tuned to the unique needs, as well as the resource restrictions, of local environments. 

Now, as Niti pointed out recently, we are starting to see not only platforms that span multiple BOP environments grow and solidify, and metaplatforms emerge. We are experiencing the coalescing of the BOPNet. It's emergence can be defined by what you can and can't do with it. You can't reasonably apply most usage and business models from the developed markets—metrics are different, usage patterns are different, and Mbps moved and minutes used don't totally equate to value delivered. Massive infrastructure investments can't just be passed down—cents on the dollar matter. You can manage resources more carefully at the technology level. You can deliver high value utility while not demanding more bytes and bandwidth. You can mine a rich seam of opportunities, because there is now scale.

Thinking about this BOPNet, several implications come to mind:

1. The BOPNet is a separate sphere, but will be integrated with its developed world cousin. As commerce and communication flows between these two spheres increase, opportunities will exist in translating at the border.

2. Its unique characteristics will start to shape macro-level infrastructure. In much the same way developd world ICT models shape and bend physical infrastructure, from transportation to energy to commerce, the unique characteristics of the BOPNet will shape these same markets' design and function in the next few decades.

3. Innovation from the BOPNet will continue to flow uphill. The developed world is fast approaching a point where it cannot devote infinite resources to ICT. We are already learning to take innovations created to better serve the BOPNet and use them to do more with less in the developed world. This will accelerate. 

4. Technologically, over time the pyramid may begin to invert. The simple math will drive momentum in innovation to the point where the BOPNet reaches a kind of utility-parity with the top of the pyramid, particularly if the top of the pyramid continues shifting its media consumption to these networks at the cost of developing more actual utility and value. China is doing this with energy, innovating based on the need to sustain 1.4 billion inhabitants (an innovation inversion we will hereafter call "Friedman's Nightmare"). India may do this with communication networks in the same way, as may (hopefully) parts of Africa eventually. This will also mean not measuring innovation simply on the basis of dollars earnd, shareholder value created, or ads served, but more along the metrics of life improvement. Right now, I'd take FrontlineSMS, and Ushahidi over Foursquare and Spotify in that category.

More to come for sure. Stay tuned.

Filed under  //   BOP   China   India   infrastructure   innovation   media   mobile   networks   utility  
Posted by Scott Smith 

Comments [0]

October 15, 2009

Twitter in Two Cultures

Twitter launched two new initiatives in two very important countries for communications this week: a deal with Bharti Airtel to enable Twitter via SMS in India, and a new mobile version of the service in Japan. Both countries already have active Twitter users, but each brings something different to the global communications picture. 

Japan has been seen as a pioneer in mobile communications for the past decade, but has often been a literal as well as physical island technologically, with most of its innovations home-grown and consumed locally, particularly in the mobile space. India is very much seen as representative of the future of mobile, and maybe communications in general. It will be interesting to see how these two markets use, or don't use, a tool like Twitter differently, based on their potentially very different trajectories.

Filed under  //   culture   India   Japan   mobile   SMS   Twitter  
Posted by Scott Smith 

Comments [0]



Site Meter