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.
Co-identifying Needs
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.
Co-mapping Local Assets & Systems
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.
Co-creating Metrics
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.
Critical Self-Assessment
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.
Identifying Capability Gaps
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.