Frugal Engineering: The Wave of the Future

Many years ago when President Kennedy went to deliver his famous Berlin speech he said:

Two thousand years ago -- Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum."¹ Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner." Fifty years down the line if President Kennedy were to be contributing to the carbon dioxide built up in the world I think he would have said that: Today, in the world, the proudest boast is Frugal engineering'.

The world is changing hands and history is re-balancing. For those who lived in darkness have seen the light. People whom conventional market isolated them are now finding themselves doing well in the emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These areas now constitutes the chunk of the people in the world whose purchasing power is increasing and are enjoying or tasting gadgets for the first time.

If any firm wants to see going concern for its businesses then it find an economical ways and means to engineer goods which the teeming people in the emerging market can afford without they having to forgo basic or secondary necessity. That is when frugal engineering is come into play.

British Telecom company called Millicom Ghana was the first mobile phone operator in Ghana. Millicom targeted the elite in the society to the extent the use of mobile phone became the exclusive preserve of the rich. After some years of monopoly then came a new entrant called: Scancom. Scancom decided to target the middle and low class. This became part of their frugal engineering to the extent the latter came to control about 60% of the market just after five years of operation.

In conlcusion, those who will hold the large share of the market will be those who engineer frugally.