The foundation for this course lies with unique synergies between pioneering research, teaching, and social initiatives through the Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative. Unique to this approach is a bottom-up understanding of the intersection of poverty and the marketplace. The goals of this course are to help you develop an understanding of marketplace activity in the radically different context of subsistence where much of humanity resides and survives, and for you to design solutions that can be implemented by individuals, businesses, and social enterprises through economically, ecologically, and socially sustainable products for subsistence marketplaces.
Lesson 5-2.1 Generating Ideas and Designing Solutions
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En provenance du cours de University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Subsistence Marketplaces
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À partir de la leçon
Identifying Needs and Generating Ideas
In this module you will learn about understanding needs in subsistence contexts. You will also learn about a structured approach to generating ideas for addressing the needs in subsistence marketplaces.
Rencontrer les enseignants
Madhu ViswanathanDiane and Steven N. Miller Professor in Business
Department of Business Administration
[MUSIC]
Welcome to lesson ten, which is on generating ideas for solutions.
What I'm going to do in this lesson is to show you
some examples of prototypes that students
at the University of Illinois have developed.
And use it to highlight some aspects of designing solutions.
And then I'm going to take you through
an idea generation exercise, which you can do on
your own to highlight some of the things
that you need to be doing during the exercise.
Here is an example that my students came up with of a spoken English tutorial.
It involves using a cell phone to call
into a number and sign up for this program.
This would be a service for children who do have a problem
in not knowing spoken English even if they learned written English in school.
The problem also is, that their parents don't speak English and in
a sense, the children will learn from each other and teach their
parents as well.
So the way this prototype works is that the cellphone is used
to call into a service, where children are matched with other children of
similar skills, they see programs on
television, with voices, and sometimes a voice
over for the animated characters on
the television program are provided by children.
They learn together and they bgecome part of
a community in order to improve their english skills.
There are number of issues with this particular need and its solution.
First of all, it taps into an aspirational need
because parents aspire to have their children learn spoken English.
It provides them with a way up and a way out of poverty.
This product is for low literate users, and so the
interface has to be designed so that it's easy to operate.
It's easy to call in and become a member.
And it's easy to watch the program on television, interact with others.
And provide voice over and so on.
The solution has to be culturally sensitive as
well, and it has to leverage existing infrastructure.
It is very difficult,
impossible perhaps, to try to design a device for
every need that needs to be served in poverty.
The existing infrastructure has to be leveraged,
like a cellphone or some other available devices.
Here
is another prototype that my students came up with at the University of Illinois.
This is a energy device for mobile entrepreneurs.
It's a solar panel to heat the water on top of a
number of these mobile carts for entrepreneurs who make and sell tea.
It has to be designed for harsh usage conditions.
It has to be designed for multiple purposes.
If I have very limited resources, and I need to buy a
product, it'll be good if it can serve a number of purposes.
For example, it'll be good if it can heat food
as well that I may be selling from that mobile cart.
It has to be a culturally sensitive
design, and it has to be locally sustainable.
And in this case this is achieved
through producing energy in an environmentally sustainable way.
It has the opportunity to leap frog current alternatives.
In this case, solar power is used instead of the usual energy sources.
Finally, it is useful if it can be added
on to an existing product, rather than a standalone.
It will be very expensive, not affordable perhaps
for an entrepreneur to buy the entire cart with the solar panel on it.
So it's important that the solution adds on to what is already there.
Here's an example of a nutritional product.
It is an additive that can be added on to a variety of staples.
And once again it taps into an aspirational need.
Parents, particularly mothers, are very willing to pay a premium if
they can find a healthy alternative for their children.
This product serves multiple purposes.
It can be added on to a variety of differnt foods.
It has a number of different nutrients.
It is locally sustainable by having livelihood
opportunities for local entrepreneurs who can take the
additive and add on it and customize
it for different families that they know well.
For example, certain additives could be used for the elderly,
some for children, and so on, so it creates an entrepreneurship opportunity.
A livelihood opportunity.
It adds on to existing products, and finally, packaging
can be used as a means for education about nutrition.
We started out this course by talking about how we
take a bottom up approach to understanding needs and designing solutions.
Now we are at the point where we have
to keep that bottom-up understanding in mind as we design solutions.
I'm going to take you through a process that
developed from about seven years of teaching a year-long class
at the University of Illinois, which has involved 27
different projects with social enterprises,
large companies, and small startups.
Interdisciplinary groups of students come together and go through the entire
class, and the steps that I am going to describe to you,
in order to develop a prototype and a business plan.
Now along the way, during that year they also immerse themselves in
the context, by taking a field trip and doing interviews and observations.
Now that is during the course of an entire year.
What we're going to do is use some of that learning to create some
steps for you to engage in, in the coming weeks of the course.
What are the steps in the process for
developing solutions for subsistence contexts?
Think back to what you've already done.
The first thing you did was virtual immersion.
By analyzing interviews, doing a poverty simulation,
and going through a number of immersion exercises.
The idea there was to sensitize yourself to the context of
poverty, and learn about a number of issues without actually being there.
That's a very efficient way to learn, but it's also
important to realize that it only takes you so far.
The next step is emersion, which really means that you submerge yourself in a
new context, and as you re-emerge, what is it that you've learned that's new?
It's particularly useful to compare and contrast
what you've learned, with what you already know.
So whatever your background, the concepts that you know and
the understanding you have were largely developed in resource rich settings.
But subsistence context challenged those concepts and challenge your understanding.
So you need to understand what is new about this context and how it affects your
current understanding and the concepts you already know based on your background.
Now, while you're doing this, you have also been engaged
in actual immersion, which is an extremely important aspect.
You've been going out and making images of your marketplace.
You've been engaging in conversations,
you've done observations, and more recently
you've done interviews to identify needs and rivals and so on.
That is an important part of the process, in
order to see for yourself and talk to people and
learn from them.
There is nothing like actually being there and there's
nothing like actually being there when it comes to subsistence.
It hits you hard and you get the actual
big picture and your able to connect the dots.
So your actual immersion is a critical
part of the process of designing solutions.
There is also a phase in this process
where you will be testing out your concepts by
taking it to the field and getting feedback.
These are some of the steps that
we have developed through our experience with projects.
I'm sure you will come up with some new steps
as well based on your experience with your own projects.
Now let us talk about how to design solutions for subsystems context.
Let's talk about four different aspects.
Understanding subsistence marketplaces, identifying critical product needs,
designing products, and developing products.
With understanding subsistence marketplaces, as I just mentioned,
virtual immersion and actual immersion are very important steps.
This is very different from assuming you
already have the answer simply because you are
more literate or you have a higher, income than those you are trying to serve.
It's also important to understand the broader life circumstances.
Not just the need that you are focussing on.
Because these life circumstances impinge on the need and
people living in subsistence are deprived on multiple fronts.
Finally, it's also important to envision needs and usage situations.
This is very difficult to do, particualrly if we are not experiencing poverty.
It's very important to understand what the needs
are and how they are being fulfilled in
a variety of usage situations.
Some of these usage situations cannot be anticipated,
but we do have to understand the life
circumstances and the usage situations in which these
needs are being fulfilled, as we design solutions.
In terms of identifying critical product needs, it's important to
note that there are basic needs and there are aspirational needs.
Sometimes we think that because people are living in subsistence,
all they care about are basic needs. No.
There are a number of aspiration needs
particularly as it relates to the next generation.
It may be about healthy products for children.
It may be about education for children and so on.
People aspire to have a better future for their children.
People aspire for their children to not go through the same hardships that they did.
In terms of designing
products, they need to be culturally sensitive and
they need to be designed for harsh usage circumstances.
In one sense you almost have to user proof the product and assume it will be misused.
It has to be designed assuming that the user is low literate.
It has to be designed to be locally sustainable, which may
mean an entrepreneurial opportunity, a
livelihood opportunity for the local community.
Ideally,
it, it should be designed to serve multiple purposes because of very
scarce resources, and it has to be designed for customization as well.
We talked earlier in the course about how
people constantly ask for a customized product in
a one-on-one world, so there has to be
a way to design the product for customization.
In terms of developing products, the existing infrastructure
has to be leveraged.
Sometimes the infrastructure has to be leapfrogged.
Such as with the, a different form
of energy, or a different form of communication.
Product relevant infrastructure has to be developed as well, and
by this I mean things as simple as education, about the
product, and about the need, and finally, the solution has
to add on to existing products in order to conserve resources.
Now you're going to complete a core solution
generation exercise, which has a number of different parts.
You'll start off with observation, where you'll go through a number of
images and take down notes as you have in your earlier exercises.
Then you're going to generate a number
of different ideas, without censoring any of them.
No matter how silly they may seem.
Then your going to narrow down to an idea and
finally detail out that idea into a concept.
So a concept is a more detailed idea to serve a particular need.
In order for you to do this, we have provided a number of resources
of actual solutions in different categories like
agriculture, energy, health, education, finance and communication.
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