Caselet 5.1.

Hi All,

We had caselet 5.1. read and discussed in class today (sections A & B). I get the feeling it didn't go as well as I'd hoped. Essentially, the points regarding the caselet I'd wanted to articulate likely did not get across to the class.

Let me try to make amends and write down the main issues in that caselet here, separately.

1. Tech innovation and adoption are often (but not always) a function of the installed base for an application in any market. Hence, breakthroughs in broadband use and businesses built around broadband applications are most likely to come from South Korea than from anywhere else. One big point Shri Baijal makes in the article is that India has already acquired such a technological installed base in telecom and the next big innovations may get implemented here as a result. That is no small shakes.

2. Given that the desi telecom mart may become the testbed of choice for new technologies and business models in the telecom space, the author then goes onto speculate about the effects of what 4G or 5G means in speed terms. The impact, I thought, was simply wow. The amount of potential for disruption, innovation and basic change in the lives of ordinary people I could see there simply blew me over. However, I doubt my enthusiasm carried over as articulation.

3. OK, what was caselet 5.1. doing in the qualitative research section? Recall caselet 2.2 where we first discussed cross-industry disruptive influences. This is similar. From music to movies to education to medicine to personal communication to networking - every big sector I could think of from a consumer standpoint was being impacted. The potential for creation of new ecosystems that supported myriad new businesses and biz models overnight could be seen - the Oasis analogy, I wanted to convey. Then the UID example as an extension of this same phenomenon. End of the day, all this would manifest as latent needs that consumers can't articulate anything about today, requiring methods from the qualitative research toolkit - Indirect questioning, projective techniques, unstructured questioning etc would need to be brought to bear.

Thanks and regards.

Sudhir