Hasta La Ideas

We just got back from doing a two week immersion into the hindi speaking heartland of India, Kanpur, home of the Indian Institute of Technology who boasts Infosys founder Narayanan Moorthy as alumnus. And boy were Finns worthy of national media attention! This was very unexpected since most of the time, when attempting to explain the research and why we needed to interview you on mass communication, primary education and packaging or take photographs in your shop, school or neighbourhood, we had to start by explaining what Finland was. Yes, Virginia, its an honest to god real country right up north where Santa Claus lives, somewhere near Lake Inari I believe.

My colleague, pictured in the Lucknow edition of The Times of India, September 14th 2009 shown up above, found himself agreeing that this center of the informal ragpicking industry in North India would make a great tourist spot. Poor chap, he’s not fully Finndian yet, already able manage the national media which has simply exploded and evolved middle India over the past decade.

One of the easiest ways to introduce and give context to Finland, I found, was to start by saying, You know Nokia? And people would nod. Now why did I need to do it this way and not simply describe it as part of the Nordic countries in Europe, bordering Russia? Well, primarily because we coudn’t assume education, particularly geography, among our target user groups, so we had to start with what they knew, in this case, in India, Nokia with over 70% penetration in a market that size. You do the math, except interestingly enough, not a single member of the BoP told us they thought it was Japanese but two members of the very ToP certainly did. I wonder if that has something positive to say to us?

Anyway, then I’d say, okay, where we are from is where Nokia is from, but we’re not working for Nokia. We’re, um, actually on an academic project, rented by the Helsinki School of Economics on a project they’re conducting for the forest industry. Finland’s very own Detroit, at a similar place and with similar challenges to what the US automotive industry was facing back before it imploded so quietyly and so graciously. Now maybe we’ll get sustianable transportation solutions.

But I digress. Anyway, other than the challenges of contextualizing Finland, the trip was an eye opener in many many ways albeit it did manage to inform me that my early thoughts and insights on the BoP consumer and their design preferences were right on the button. Good to get that validation from two different continents, it helps with comparative context and knowledge.

Since it seems this letter didn’t really have a big point to make, I’ll wrap it up now and write again later.

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