G. Pascal Zachary's latest Ping column in the Sunday NYTimes is a good illustration of how companies are beginning to engage in sub-Saharan Africa, so much so that it can be said that at least for some sectors and technologies, it's truly an "emerging emerging market." What's interesting is that experiments and focus in one market, in this case Kenya, can help them develop models that are extensible into other markets, or even "ported" back into developed markets, where they can learn from the leaner or lighter solutions that are often required, or where the underdevelopment of infrastructure can actually inform the corporate learning since it also means experiments that are free from the baggage of the old infrastructure or the change-resistance of the "installed base."
The work that Zachary is pointing to with Google involves engagement with Kenyans in country and at HQ. He highlights both the promise and the possibility of failure in his piece.
What I find hopeful about this piece is that it's evidence of a next step--a step beyond the merely anthropological, which is what I see more often. When I was an anthropology major, I had never heard of the term "corporate anthropologist" but it's become more common in the last 10 years. (I've seen the term used in the developed world too, and I like it in some ways--it communicates that a company is curious, open, willing to move out of their corporate environment and really watch, listen and observe. So for instance, Microsoft uses the "anthropological approach" to watch some of its customers fully in context, so they can learn what is truly useful to them.) There's nothing wrong with the anthropological phase as long as it is just that -- a phase--what Tom Guarriello describes as "ferret mode" in his interesting blog (This Blog Sits at The: Intersection of Anthropology and Economics.) So as applied to the developing world, two issues: One, we all know the associations with western-style anthropologists in remove places--curious, but disengaged; not really able to think outside of academic models, which again, are--Western. Plenty of gotchas there. Two, if a company is in ferret mode for too long, it's still wearing rubber gloves--it's not fully "in it" yet. Watching, listening and observing is necessary for formulating a first take, but putting skin in the game, starting to formulate objectives and beginning to act--is the where the action is. This is where it gets interesting and where innovations--and failures on the path to innovation--begin to happen.