Mobile phones as an innovation platform

Numerous commentators have referenced the striking pace of global mobile phone adoption. In our reading, the World Resources Institute identified it as a success story in The Next Four Billion (e.g., fivefold subscriber growth in developing countries between 2000-2005 to ~1.4 billion). The authors forwarded a number of figures on market growth in example countries and referenced the value proposition to people of a wide range of incomes. I would argue that mobile phone adoption is the prime example of the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) business strategies identified by WRI - and perhaps food for thought on ways social ventures can sustain value for the communities in the developing world they serve. 

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/27/mobile-developing-world/

A quick fact: 70 percent of mobile phone shipments today are feature phones. A.k.a. talk and SMS only. A.k.a. there is not an app for that. I highly recommend thinking about this fact when Apple releases its new iPhone next week, no doubt the funnest/most magical/retina-y phone - nay, object - ever conceived by man.

Now consider what people's ingenuity has allowed this other 70 percent of phones to accomplish:

- Banking: differences in (traditional) bank access have led to discrepancies between mobile money adoption in developing markets and the developed.

- Healthcare Access... for cattle, too

- Agricultural Pricing

- Sanitation

Back to 4 Billion, the mobile phone industry (including associated services launched off the mobile platform as above) has met all of the characteristics of BOP-oriented business from the article. I will focus on one: Localizing value creation. I recently came across an article in The Economist discussing the ready-to-launch technology startup scene in Kenya ("Silicon Savannah"). It is a quick, but very interesting read. Suffice it to say that many things brought up in the article flip the "from the west to the rest" model of tech and innovation transfer on its head. Kenyan mobile phone market penetration and government investment in Internet connectivity have allowed organic development of many features commonly associated with traditional centers of innovation (e.g., Silicon Valley) in downtown Nairobi: venture capitalists, technology incubators, venture competitions, etc. All of this happened without the need for continued external input since the latent need blossomed as infrastructure improved.

Perhaps this is one of the small indications of the "Great Rebalancing" referenced by McKinsey in our reading: emerging economies becoming less reactive and more assertive on the global stage. Regardless, this example highlights the strength of market-based enterprise as an agent of social change. Development projects may come and go; funding sources dry up and renew. Yet connecting an enabling technology (mobile phones, data access) with latent needs (communication, information, security, financial structure) allows for innovations to bubble up from the grassroots: sustained (at a macro level) by the markets in which they exist, developed directly by and for local populations.