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kilkilshah's review against another edition
2.0
Listened to the audio book over a couple long roads trips. Overall this is a very ambitious book with a clear thesis: the current solutions to poverty (government aid, non-profits, micro-finance, etc) are not working. Instead of seeing the poor at helpless we need to see them as potential customers. The authors argue that market solutions are the only way to truly address poverty. This view aligns closely to my belief and because of this I was excited to read the book.
Overall I think this book did a really good job describing the current situation - how poor people live and why they are poor and the progress (or lack thereof of current methods). I found the profiles of people in a village in Orissa, India particularly insightful.
Then the book presents its thesis of how to design products and services that address the needs of poor people. It proposes zero-based design in which you truly understand how the poor live and design products to address their situation. All of this makes sense. However I have three major issues with how it was presented:
1. The authors encourage readers to think big and design products that can be marketed to hundreds of millions of people. But they also warn that solutions need to meet the local needs. I really struggled with this contridiction. In practice I think it is very rare to have a mass market solution that addresses local needs. To me the authors did not really address this contridiction and actually de-emphasized this point.
2. The authors basically tell readers not to pursue any idea that wasn't scalable to 100 million people. That is ridiculous. There are local solutions that can really help people out of poverty and be profitable. To say that these ideas aren't worth pursuing is hard to swallow.
3. The book didn't really discuss the political challenges of doing business in developing countries. At the end of the book they listed a few other things to think about (corruption, regulations, etc) but these were merely an afterthought.
Overall I think this book did a really good job describing the current situation - how poor people live and why they are poor and the progress (or lack thereof of current methods). I found the profiles of people in a village in Orissa, India particularly insightful.
Then the book presents its thesis of how to design products and services that address the needs of poor people. It proposes zero-based design in which you truly understand how the poor live and design products to address their situation. All of this makes sense. However I have three major issues with how it was presented:
1. The authors encourage readers to think big and design products that can be marketed to hundreds of millions of people. But they also warn that solutions need to meet the local needs. I really struggled with this contridiction. In practice I think it is very rare to have a mass market solution that addresses local needs. To me the authors did not really address this contridiction and actually de-emphasized this point.
2. The authors basically tell readers not to pursue any idea that wasn't scalable to 100 million people. That is ridiculous. There are local solutions that can really help people out of poverty and be profitable. To say that these ideas aren't worth pursuing is hard to swallow.
3. The book didn't really discuss the political challenges of doing business in developing countries. At the end of the book they listed a few other things to think about (corruption, regulations, etc) but these were merely an afterthought.
matthew_p's review against another edition
4.0
Now I just need to figure out a business idea that solves a problem in developing-world communities!
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