Local Problems
Start with the problem as it is actually lived, not as it is summarized in a report.
Most failed interventions begin with an imported problem statement. A funder, a headline, or a framework decides what the community needs before anyone has sat with the community. The MacGyver Principle inverts that order. The problem is defined by proximity.
A local problem is specific, situated, and seasonal. It has a name, a street, a time of day. It is described in the language of the people who live with it, and the cost of ignoring it is paid by them, not by us. Innovators trained at the Edge learn to interview, observe, and listen long before they prototype.
Prahalad's BoP cases, Aravind, Jaipur Foot, e-Choupal, HUL Shakti, all began with a problem rendered in unmistakable detail: the cataract patient who cannot afford a $300 lens, the farmer whose price information arrives a day late. Detail is the unit of innovation.
Aravind Eye Care
Cataract blindness in rural Tamil Nadu, defined patient-by-patient before any cost model.
M-KOPA
Kerosene expenditure tracked household-by-household to design pay-as-you-go solar.
LifeBank Nigeria
Maternal blood shortages mapped clinic-by-clinic, not nationally.
- ◆Whose day is interrupted by this problem, and at what hour?
- ◆What is the smallest unit of pain, one transaction, one trip, one hour?
- ◆What words do users use that experts don't?