The objective of the “Opening Up” phase is to establish a deep learning process that leads to the co-generation of ideas and opportunities that build off of local capabilities and socio-economic systems in creating mutual value. Based on principles of community empowerment, humility, and “putting the last first”, this learning process can be thought of as a two-way dialogue between the firm and the local community. It is a “learning-with” the community rather than a “learning-about” the community.
Through such a dialogue – one which requires the MNC to “suspend disbelief” and to think from the perspectives of the community – the MNC opens itself to the possibility of competitive imagination: for radically rethinking its own business models and for generating innovations with application in the BoP as well as in its current markets.
The process described below is envisioned as ongoing and iterative. It can be conceptualized as a mutual value chain comprised of four overlapping tasks that are guided by a common vision:
Though the model above suggests a sequential process, the four sub-processes that comprise the Opening-Up phase are, in fact, interdependent and overlapping. Indeed, knowledge gained in one “stage” may cause a change in another. For example, having gained a deeper understanding of local diversity and needs, it may be necessary to alter the Team composition or provide specialized training to the MNC Team. For this reason, there is an emphasis on maintaining flexibility within the organizational structures created. The next four pages have summaries of each of the four sub-processes.
Four primary tasks comprise the creation & preparation of the Core Team: the creation and training of a multi-disciplinary MNC Team, the identification of a BoP site, the selection of a representative set of community partners, and the creation of a “base camp”. It is important that all members of this Core Team be recognized and treated as equals.
The firm should assemble a small, cross-functional team of people (e.g., R&D, Sales, Manufacturing or Service Delivery) with a passion for the idea, an affinity for the culture and/or a connection to the area chosen. An example might be someone on staff with Peace Corps experience. To prepare the Team for the co-learning and immersion process, the MNC Team should be trained in participatory techniques such as Rapid Assessment Process (RAP), participatory rural appraisal (PRA), and participatory action learning (PAL). These techniques build the Team’s skills and capability to engage in peer-to-peer, 2-way dialogues that are sensitive to differentials of power and wealth among the participants. Appendix 1 provides a number of sources of information on these techniques. There should also be a mechanism (reporting or otherwise) in place that allows the knowledge and insights gained by the Team to flow back to the corporation.
There are two perspectives on the criteria for site selection. One argument would suggest that a firm choose a location that is generally supportive or convenient. Thus, it might seek to find one that is geographically proximate to an in-country HQ or a larger metropolitan area, has a supportive local government and populace, has a pre-disposition to wanting the firm’s products, and/or has a (relatively) good infrastructure. Though this might increase the probability that a successful venture may at some point be launched, it also reduces the likelihood of more radical innovation and idea generation. An alternative argument would be to conduct the “opening up” phase in a location that is the most divergent from what the firm is accustomed to and which presents the greatest “obstacles”. By locating in an area least apparent to utilize or benefit the firm’s current products (i.e., umbrella manufacturer going to desert climate), the firm is more likely to “suspend disbelief” and engage in non-business specific immersion.
To help the MNC Team identify and select local community team members, the MNC Team should seek out individuals or organizations with extensive local experience and expertise (e.g., academics, embassy, local NGOs or enterprises). These persons or organizations would act as a bridge, helping to assemble a provisional team that reflects the local diversity as best as possible. This person or organization can also help create a common language and shared vision among the various team members. The Team should be viewed as flexible, as people will likely be added and others dropped as the process evolves.
In recognizing that this process of co-learning is an effort jointly undertaken by the MNC and the local community, the process itself as well as the output should be viewed as co-owned by the community. Therefore, it is necessary that a local office or base camp be established that serves as an “open-source” hub where information is documented and made available to the community. This base camp also increases the transparency of the project, as it provides a means by which the broader community can engage with the Core Team and report back on the Team’s activities.
An extended period of non-business specific immersion within the local community plays a critical role in building trust and developing a deep understanding of how people live their lives. This is not just about identifying needs and wants, but about coming to truly appreciate the way other people and communities make sense of the world and their daily lives. This is particularly important at the BoP for two reasons. One, the MNC Team brings with it a set of perspectives and assumptions (e.g., what constitutes ‘good health’) that may differ markedly from local conditions. Without having a clear understanding of its own biases and assumptions, as well as an appreciation of local perspectives and capabilities, a business may fail to meet local needs and/or undermine existing economic and social support structures. Second, “the local” is highly heterogeneous and dynamic, with no single snapshot in time able to represent the “true” community. Recognizing the absence of an “average person”, an extended period of immersion and engagement provides a better understanding of local contingencies and variation.
The Opening-Up phase is characterized by a number of interrelated and iterative tasks, all of which utilize participatory practices to develop a deeper understanding of local ways of life and aspirations. Again, although the tasks below are presented sequentially, they are highly interdependent and may take place concurrently.
The primary objective of this task is for the Core Team (in particular, the MNC Team members) to participate as fully as possible (or allowable) in the local way of life, thus fostering empathy and appreciation for local values and practices. The MNC Team and its partners should spend, at the very least, weeks or months, living within the community – eating, drinking, sleeping, cooking, grocery-shopping, walking and working alongside people of the community. As much as possible, the team members should avoid the trappings of the “development tourist” – in place of taxi-cabs and four-wheel drive vehicles, the Team should utilize the most common forms of transportation; in place of hotels and restaurants catering to the elite, the Team should seek out opportunities to live with local families and eat at local establishments. Indeed, the Team should try to live off of the local wage. During this period, the Team should be guided by an attitude of openness and humility, reserving judgment on the “rationality” of how and why things are currently done.
Employing participatory techniques (see Appendix 1), the Team should generate ethnographic stories and other “thick” representations (e.g., video, oral, written) of local ways of life in cooperation with the community. Participatory techniques share the common goal of empowering people for social and economic change by actively involving them in generating knowledge about their own condition. Some of the key practices endorsed by participatory methods include:
The stories (broadly speaking) will be generated from both “open observations” by team members and through conversations and interactions with community members. All data acquired through “open observation” (e.g., written accounts, video) should be viewed and interpreted together with community members, having them comment on the contents. Conversations should be open-ended and un-rushed, generating discussions that have an organic flow and make use of all the senses (not just intellectual). Throughout the process, the Core Team should be open and transparent, sharing their own “stories” as well as their intentions. Analysis should be conducted across levels (individual, family, community, region, national, and even transnational), paying particular attention to the constitution of and linkages across those levels.
Because of local heterogeneity and hierarchies, the Team should cultivate multiple and parallel channels for engaging with the community, being vigilant to seek out its least visible members. Doing so allows the Team to develop a richer understanding of local dynamics and conditions. Furthermore, it minimizes the creation of a class of “gatekeepers” in the community - people who, by virtue of their being “privileged informants” (they may speak English, for example, or be in a position of power or authority within the community), come to mediate the rest of the community’s interaction and access to the Team.
All video, stories, and data should be kept at the local base camp and made readily available to the community. Also, throughout the immersion process, there should be a provision that allows community members to comment on and intervene in how the Team conducts its activities. Doing so helps to ensure that participatory methodologies and techniques stay consistent with the guiding principles of co-development, transparency, responsibility, and humility.
Once a working trust has been established between the Core Team and the local community, attention should shift towards identifying specific needs & aspirations, as well as the socio-economic systems and resources already in place.
Five primary tasks comprise this process: the co-identification of needs, the co-mapping of local assets and systems, the co-creation of metrics to evaluate mutual value creation, a critical assessment of the MNC’s resources, and the identification of capability gaps within the MNC. As in the Immersion phase, participatory methodologies and practices constitute the basis for engaging with the community. Both the process and the resulting data should be documented and made available to the community through the base camp. All information is jointly owned.
Working in cooperation with the broader community and using participatory techniques, the Core Team’s objective is to identify the various needs of the community. At this stage, the objective is to surface as many needs as possible, regardless of their apparent feasibility. Every effort should be made to frame or articulate the needs from the perspective/s of the community members and to seek out as many voices as possible. Again, analysis should be conducted across levels (e.g., individual, family, community, region, national, and even transnational), paying particular attention to the linkages across those levels.
Using an asset-based community development lens – a perspective that starts from the assumption that the local community possesses the wherewithal for self-directed change - the Core Team’s task is to identify and categorize the various resources, assets and capabilities that currently exist within the community. The objective is to not only identify resources in isolation, but to understand their relationship with one another in forming a larger socio-economic system. These resources and systems will provide the foundation for the idea generation phase.
Concurrent with asset and needs mapping, the Core Team should begin to co-develop a broad set of metrics that reflect both the firm’s needs, as well as local understandings of value and well-being. This effort should be as inclusive as possible, being careful to capture the perspectives of those who may be disempowered (e.g. women) and/or most vulnerable in the community. It is important that the firm be transparent of its intentions throughout this process.
The Core Team, thinking from the perspective of the local community, should begin to identify the assets and resources located within the MNC and to relate them to the community’s needs. This process requires the MNC Team to “suspend disbelief”, to think outside of its traditional categories and to relax assumptions about the firm’s core competencies. The objective is to utilize the insights and perspectives of the local community to open up new avenues of possibility within the corporation.
The MNC Team should also begin to identify potential gaps in its current suite of capabilities based on the initial needs and resource assessments. These gaps can be used by the MNC as a way to target those new capabilities and competencies that it wishes to develop through the creation of a BoP enterprise. The Team should assess the potential contribution of any new capabilities against the corporation’s strategic plan in order to best leverage the BoP enterprise.
Having gained an understanding of local needs, aspirations, and determinants of value and well-being, the Team’s focus shifts towards the generation of specific ideas and opportunities to be pursued by the Core Team. During this process, it is important that the MNC Team members manage the community’s expectations, being careful not to over-promise on what they can do. Indeed, the Team should not look upon nor represent themselves as possessing solutions for the community’s problems, but instead as participants in a locally-driven effort for positive change.
Three primary tasks are involved in this phase: the co-generation of ideas, the co-evaluation of alternatives, and the retention of knowledge and preservation of options. As previously, both the process and the output should be documented and made available to the community.
Using participatory methods, the Core Team should engage in a process of idea and opportunity generation with the broader community. This entails bringing the firm’s existing resources and capabilities, as well as those new skills and competencies that it plans to develop, into the discussion. This task is about imagination, about creatively blending the firm’s current and future resource and capability endowment with local resources and socio-economic systems.
Having identified various ideas and opportunities for meeting local needs, the focus shifts to narrowing down the list to those few opportunities to be pursued by the Core Team. Again, a participatory process involving the greater community is the means by which this is done.
The ideas should be assessed against the metrics of mutual value creation created earlier. It is critical to know both the positive and negative implications of an enterprise on the various local constituencies and to ensure that the weakest are, at a minimum, not made worse off through the intervention. The MNC Team should also consider how the various opportunities facilitate the development of new firm capabilities.
The Core Team should also make arrangements for ideas that are not selected by the Team but for which there are interested community members. Support might include the provision of resources, technical assistance, or simply establishing a network of contacts that may help identify additional resources. An “idea bank”, for example, could be established which would serve as a knowledge repository for both the Team and the community. In addition, the MNC Team should broaden its linkages back to the firm in an effort to capture the knowledge and insights gained through the visioning process.
The key content dimensions of the “Opening Up” process can be summarized in the following 4 P’s model:
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People & Preparation
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Performance
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Partners
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Places & Structures
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