Rogério de Paula is a research manager at IBM Research, Brazil, where
he leads the Social Enterprise Technologies Group, an interdisciplinary
group that explores the new frontiers of social, smart technologies in the
context of large-scale organizations.
Designing for the
‘Emerged’ Markets
March + April 2013
interactions
In the past 10 years or so, emerging
markets have become the growth
engine of major North American
and European multinational organizations. Going after the untapped
consumer market created by the
“base of the pyramid” (referring to
low-income populations), these organizations established local research
labs, product teams, and design
groups; shifted management oversees; and reallocated resources to
best address the needs and desires
of these populations.
While we can list a number of
successful products that cropped
up from these efforts (in particu-
lar, those that were able to “trickle
up” to the mature markets), I
believe we have yet to fully real-
ize the potential for innovation
and novelty that these regions
offer. This is because we have yet
to fully grasp how to appreciate
the ways in which these popula-
tions are emerging. In this col-
umn, I offer a few personal takes
on how companies have misread
these groups and the opportuni-
ties they present. I will draw upon
my own experiences as a design
ethnographer who worked for a
large corporation in Brazil to dis-
cuss what I consider to be a few
major misinterpretations. These
center on the following themes:
• Emerging markets as a develop-
ment problem.
• Local solutions in global-scale
businesses.
• “They are just like us.”
Let me start by tracing the arc
of my research career. After an
extended stay in the U.S., I returned
to Brazil seven years ago as an
“embedded researcher” (an allu-
sion to embedded journalism), an
ethnographic researcher working
within a product group with the
mission of unveiling new business
opportunities and the wonders of
the “emerging markets.” Together
with colleagues stationed across
the hitherto invisible markets
of China, India, Latin America,
and the Middle East, we set out
to explore, investigate, design,
and document the latent growth
opportunities in these regions. For
the most part, that meant design-
ing new products to address such
emerging-market opportunities.