links for 2009-10-22

An interview with C.K.Prahalad where he talks of the wireless cell phone industry at the bottom of the pyramid. Clip: "I can illustrate it with a simple example of one industry, which has broken many of the myths and cleared the way for profound rethinking about the opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid. What I have in mind is the wireless cellular phone industry.

For the first time in human history, four billion people are connected. Now, of course, when you talk about four billion of the total six billion people, it is a large number. Maybe two and a half billion people are BOP consumers as described in the book. So the first thing that has happened is this dramatic shift in the use of cellular phones and the dramatic build-up of subscribers. It is taking place across the world — sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa, Latin America, India, Southeast Asia, and China."

Clip: “Even simple things like not having enough cash in an ATM get reported in tweets. It is extremely important to react at the earliest to such problems and the tweets give the bank ample opportunity to take quick action, remedy the situation, and preserve their brand image in the bargain,” explains Murthy. The other tweets are ignored but nevertheless stored for future reference by the bank.

The bank is just a case in point. Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained extensive popularity. India, in fact, has an estimated 1.4 million twitters (Facebook would have around 8 million users while Orkut around 16 million users) and is the third-largest “tweeting” country after Germany and the US. It first came into the limelight during the 2008 Mumbai attacks, when eyewitnesses sent an estimated 80 tweets every five seconds. Twitter users on the ground helped compile a list of the dead and injured.

Manu's take on Yahoo's 'static' brand equity, in a real-time world!!! Do read it in full. Here's a clip: "Maybe the concept of brand equity had some merit when the audience didn’t talk to each other, but as WOM keeps getting bigger, push brand communication is bound to become more meaningless. As consumption patterns change, needs change, distribution systems change, as real-time becomes the norm, and exit barriers and costs for consumers come down, relying on a static and uni dimensional concept of brand equity is bound to be harmful. Also, with fragmenting media, fragmenting audiences, and an increasing importance for ‘my experience’, brand equity will be different things to different people at different times, and even the hazy setof objective measurements in vogue today, would be rendered ineffective."

Clip: "For the farmer who wants to save for the future, one Indian entrepreneur has developed what is, in effect, a $200 portable bank branch. For the village housewife, a wood-burning stove has been reinvented to make more heat and less smoke for $23. For the slum family struggling to get clean water, there is a $43 water-purification system. For the villager who wants to give his child a cold glass of milk, there is a tiny $70 refrigerator that can run on batteries. And for rural health clinics, whose patients can't spend more than $5 on a visit, there are heart monitors and baby warmers redesigned to cost 10% of what they do elsewhere. Such inventions represent a fundamental shift in the global order of innovation. Until recently, the West served rich consumers and then let its products and technology filter down to poorer countries. Now, with the developed world mired in a slump and the developing world still growing quickly, companies are focusing on how to innovate…."