Bruce Nussbaum on businesses co-creating products and services with consumers in developing countries
Bruce Nussbaum, who writes a column on innovation and design for Business Week, reflects today on the IDSA/HP Design About on BOP–the bottom of the pyramid.
“Gary Elliot, the vice president of brand marketing for HP, talked about “Me-ism” in the US, the idea that form follows me today, that “me” is the center of the universe and companies have to work within that cultural context to success. Companies therefore have to partner with millions of “me-customers” to co-create products and services.
But the conference showed that companies must do the same thing in the “we-cultures” of India and the bottom of the pyramid countries. For political, economic and cultural reasons, they have to partner up with their customers to generate new products and services to sell to and with them. In fact, Patrick Whitney of the Institute of Design discussed how in Indian villages, consumers are invariably producers, that every household is invariably an entrepreneur, how consumer goods are used to produce things for sale. […]
The high tech world of the web and the low-tech world of the village are somehow coming together to offer up a new vision for innovation, design and society in general.”
Update: Bruce Nussbaum had meanwhile some nice words to say about this blog. Thanks, Bruce.
