Philips Design is continuously investigating people’s current needs and future aspirations in new, promising markets around the world. We have been developing and fine-tuning ways of gathering local insights, and effectively translating the findings into scenarios and concrete people focused propositions.
Beyond ‘glocalization’
Unlike in developed economies in which new product/service development processes are geared towards immediately maximizing sales to sophisticated customers in defined market segments, in emerging and developing economies companies need first to develop business propositions that gradually establish solid growth strategies to assure growth revenue beyond the short-term.
This requires going beyond a ‘glocalization’ approach, in which companies take a global offer and distribute it with some adaptations to local conditions. For local business development this includes broader cooperation strategies with multiple local stakeholders who are able to bring various complementary expertise and assets. Sometimes it even implies supporting local socio-economic improvements. By enabling self-development and local empowerment business propositions are created that not only generate financial return on investments and brand equity for the company, but also offer a variety of benefits for stakeholders in the value network and surrounding communities.
Design plays a key role in understanding and innovating within the complexities of developing and emerging markets. By questioning ‘what’ to shape, ‘how’ to do it and with ‘who’, using suitable approaches, tools and competences – design helps to gain an understanding of the most pressing needs, issues and growing aspirations affecting the end users, communities and stakeholders.
Multi-stakeholder approach
Philips Design’s methodology – contextual multi-stakeholder research – helps identify and understand potential users and relevant local players who have valuable knowledge and expertise. This holistic approach, and the related tools required to facilitate the gathering of local insights, have helped us move from a broad understanding of the exploration areas to the identification of key issues and requirements.
Particularly in developing markets, techniques based on deep listening to the targeting individuals to achieve a high level of engagement will form the basis for successfully co-creating the most appropriate solutions. But alongside leveraging on this dialogue, we have learned that design increasingly needs to question the traditional approach to products, based on generating continuous incremental improvements.
It is the beginning of an exciting and inspirational journey for designers in collaboration with its partners.
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