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| i for one welcome primitive robot recycling overlords |
1. Creativity
2. Suspicion of Predictors
3. Comfort with Uncertainty
4. Openness to Experimentation
5. Functional Humility
Some of these come more naturally to me than others. But the article helps explain our success with Fair Trade Recycling [FTR].
Making connections is how I bind my Creativity to the rudder of reality. Seeing people (Geeks of Color) for what they can do rather than for what they cannot do is the Key to numbers #2,- 3, -4. Number 5 is the most challenging. For humility... how long will this FTR opportunity last before there's more "new escrap" coming out of China than we can supply from here... and how long will personal computers even be "a thing??
The "Essential Characteristics" is a good paradigm. This is about creatively solving an "e-waste" problem through more and better trade, seeing a market opportunity, connecting solutions (quality, accountability) with the "ewaste" events in developing world, and having fun. The other suggested viewing for this post is the Mad Men Series episode "The Fog". The opportunities, predictors, uncertainty, and experimentation were all around fifty years ago... except the "emerging market" wasn't overseas. It was women and minorities, markets ignored and impugned right here in our own country, back in 1962.
Suspicion of Predictors: Look at how self-assigned Watchdogs have characterized the six billion people in converging markets. They have successfully gotten the Mainstream Press to buy into their Predictor - sell a device to an African or Chinese and beware the "toxic consequences".
Look at how the non-OECD "Geeks" are depicted. Now remember past marketing campaigns, which tried to marginalize other groups, like women (50% of the world). Imagine running a "femine trade" marketing campaign in the 1950s. As an entrepreneur, you might get beat up. But when previously excluded women become accepted decision makers in the market - as Africans and Chinese are bound to be - money which competitors spent on denigrating campaigns will become a liability. By being open to partnerships with "excluded class" members, you may get an inside track.
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| Ratio of OECD to non-OECD |
Comfort with Uncertainty, Openness to Experimentation: You must experiment with these markets - sell to them - in order to get admitted into their factories where you can know them, and then you reduce Uncertainty load by load, trade by trade. How can an entrepreneur stay comfortable going against the "E-Steward" current, ignoring dire predictors of primitive, wire burning, incapable buyers?
The "excluded market" of non-OECD is huge. Big, like "women" in the 1960s. The better-off half of non-OECD, about 3 billion people, is getting online at 10 times the rate of growth of OECD nations... but they earn $3,500 per year, one tenth of OECD per capita income. Like women who were getting increasing purchasing influence in the 1950s, but were yet to be treated as equals, its a market opportunity in the rough. It seems crazy and rebellious (to your clients, lenders and sponors) to treat Geeks of Color as equals. But FTR won't have these sneering Madison Avenue Mad Men Ads to be ashamed of as this market opens up with blistering, lightning speed. Douala Cameroun became high speed bandwidth this month. Open the bottle, the genie is knocking...
