This Boston Globe oped (free registration might be required) is astonishing. The author, somebody named Jeremy Kahn, has violated the Sominism-cheat-sheet and Neelakantan’s guide to writing about India left, right, and centre. He appears to have actually understood the nuances of what he’s writing about! And he doesn’t mention caste, growing inequality, pollution, or elephants on the road even once!
OK, that’s the sarcasm out of the way. Seriously, the oped is a very good read. It’s about how Third World conditions are forcing cellphone companies, banks, and Tata Motors to innovate and come up with low-cost technology, and how this means that design and innovation is now splitting up and being driven by two different things: luxury in the First World, and productivity and low costs in the Third World. In the bargain, First World and Third World innovation are both leading to high technology, and the Third World is now actually in a position to export technology to the First World.
This might seem like a classic example of the Third World struggling to catch up with the First. After all, people in the United States and Europe have been using ATM cards and the Internet for years to perform the simple banking tasks Das is only now able to do. But look again: The technology used to bring slum-dwellers like Das their first bank accounts is so advanced that it isn’t available to even the most tech-savvy Americans – at least not yet.
This represents a stunning reversal of the traditional flow of innovation. Until recently, consumers in the Third World also had to tolerate third-rate technology. Africa, India, and Latin America were dumping grounds for antiquated products and services. In a market in which some people still rode camels, a 50-year-old car engine was good enough. Innovation remained the exclusive domain of the developed world. Everyone else got hand-me-downs.
And as they do, companies are confronting the unique challenge of making high-tech products cheaply enough to make a profit. In some cases, this means shifting jobs for talented designers and engineers to the developing world – not just to save labor costs, but in order to better understand the markets they are now trying to reach.
“Developing markets offer the best opportunity for global firms to discover what is likely to be ‘next practice,’ as contrasted with today’s best practice,” Prahalad has written. “The low end is a new source of innovation.”
In a globalized world, people in emerging markets want first-class products – but at prices they can afford. Meeting that demand, particularly in countries where basic infrastructure is weak, requires more creativity than designing a product for a more advanced, affluent market.
Read, read. It’s worth the two-minutes it takes to register.