BOOK TIPS | When the same innovation doesn’t work everywhere

When Gillette wanted to reach the Indian mass market, the company took an existing two-blade razor, adapted it, and tested the product on Indian students at MIT in the U.S. The tests looked promising. But once in India, the razor didn’t sell well. It turned out that one reason was that many Indian men used a cup of water instead of running water when shaving. As a result, the razor easily became clogged.

That example opens the book Global by Design: How to Create Innovations That Scale, Travel, and Transform by Amos Winter and Vijay Govindarajan. In short, the book is about how products and services can be designed for markets with widely varying economic, technological, and cultural conditions.

The authors’ model consists of three steps. First, it is important to understand the requirements and limitations of the new market. Next, the solution is designed by combining socioeconomic and technical insights. Finally, the focus is on how it can be scaled, both locally and globally.

The book raises the question of whether every problem requires a new innovation—a notion the authors are skeptical of. That is why Winter and Govindarajan suggest that innovators and companies ask three questions before beginning the development process:

• Is the problem significant?

• Does it really take an innovation to solve this?

• Does the solution create value for the people and organizations involved?

If any of these elements are missing, the authors argue that there is reason to think it over one more time before investing resources.

Another key concept is reverse innovation. Instead of starting with a product for a wealthy market and then scaling back features, the innovation process can begin with the specific requirements and constraints of a market with more limited resources. The result can be a high-performance solution at a significantly lower cost, which later also reaches customers in wealthier countries. The all-terrain wheelchair developed for low-income countries, which later served as the basis for an American model, is one of several such examples in the book. Other examples are drawn from sectors such as healthcare, transportation, water supply, and education.

A recurring argument is that innovation should not be driven by novelty for its own sake, but rather by the value a solution actually creates. Furthermore, complex problems require more than one perspective. The authors therefore reiterate the need to understand the limits of one’s own knowledge and the importance of seeking help from people with different areas of expertise.