It's all Business...

The RWI team conducted a half-day meeting with all of the technicians who had be trained by SUMAWA to build bio-sand filters. The intent of the meeting was to determine if the technicians were interested in moving forward with some enterprise to continue building the filters (they are!) The surprise from the meeting, for me at least, was the incredible business savvy demonstrated by these people. When asked for input, they provided key insights into the market for these products. In particular they told us:

• Product Features depend on the customer. (We were trying to determine if a filter made out of plastic would be acceptable - the response was "it depends on the customer.)
• Unique Technology sells over commonly available parts.
• The value of Diversity in a business team. With 42 ethnic tribes in Kenya, they felt their strength was that they came from so many different tribes and could related to their customers.
• The value of Benefits over Features. These technicians saw the need to emphasize the positive health benefits of the filter - and even considered a "clean water inside" sort of marketing campaign.
• Portfolio Pricing options. They saw the opportunity to charge a higher rate for the filters to NGOs in order to subsidize the pricing for poor users.

Somehow these Kenyan technicians demonstrated the same insights we hope to develop in our graduate students in Business. I don't know how they learned it, but I was very impressed.