Last summer, Google introduced its developmental drone
delivery system, "Project Wing," with a video showing a dog food air
drop to a farmer in the Australian outback. This was at the height of
the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and just a few weeks after deadly
mudslides in Afghanistan and India, and a severe earthquake in Ludian,
China. Instead of highlighting the disaster relief potential for drone
delivery, or demonstrating that drones have uses beyond spying and
launching missiles, Google's marketing department promised help for
rural dog owners hoping to avoid a long drive into town. And this
spectacular marketing miss has since been repeated by other leading tech
innovators. The slick videos, launch parties, and press releases for
Tesla's home battery, Apple's HealthKit, and Microsoft's HoloLens all
suggest there is no world beyond North American and Europe.
These innovations would be
a slight convenience or a cool new gadget for developed-country users,
but a valuable necessity in developing countries, where systems of house
numbering, street naming, postal delivery, grid power, data collection,
job training, and healthcare are all lacking. Few will blame tech
giants for focusing mainly on lucrative consumer, gaming, and medical
markets in developed countries; that's where their marketing and
distribution channels exist. And of course there are considerable
challenges to launching and scaling in developing countries. But the
principle of user-centered design begins with the idea that users really
need what you're building. Do doctors in a remote relief center in
Nepal need antibiotics delivered by drone? Yes, they do - much more than
an Aussie farmer needs a bag of kibble. They also need to report and
track cholera outbreaks. And they might also have to walk a scared,
inexperienced health worker in another town through an amputation - both
wearing a HoloLens connected to a Tesla Powerwall.
The use cases for these
innovations in emerging markets are plentiful, and the utility is far
more convincing than it is in most mature-market contexts. Tech
innovators would certainly claim that developing-country consumers are
free to buy and use their new products and services, but they are being
priced too high for most people, and there has been no appreciable
effort to market or distribute them in developing countries. (Elon Musk
claims the Powerwall would be great for "people in remote parts of the
world," but China is the only developing country for which Tesla's
website has been adapted.) Tech companies that ignore emerging markets
are leaving the doors of opportunity open to low-cost imitators and
counterfeiters. Instead, they should be developing tailored, affordable
versions of these solutions for specific geographies and use cases. They
could also pair these new products (through partnership or acquisition)
with enabling innovations in payment and delivery so they can market,
sell, and distribute them anywhere in the world. Apple will make a
quarter of their income - more than $60 billion - in China this year, up
from less than $1 billion in 2009. Are tech companies doing what it
takes to realize this kind of growth in emerging markets when today's
innovations are as common as a second-hand iPhone?
