Niti Bhan and Dave Tait, having just returned from exploratory research in Africa to understand the mindset and consumer behavior at the bottom of the pyramid, share their insights for designers hoping to serve this population. This research was part of a larger study conducted by Experientia, an Italy-based international experience design consultancy.

"Design has a social function and its true purpose is to improve people's lives."
--Nokia Design Manifesto

This theme shows up, in one form or another, on most of the application essays made to design schools. Young designers aspire to improve people's lives by creating products that matter. They dream of Eames, timeless designs and creating products that get called 'Classic.' But the real world soon starts putting commercial demands on the designer's time and talent, and the dream gets slowly wrapped up in dust, to be tucked away, as focus shifts to styling trendy products that catch the fickle consumer's eye. Planned obsolescence influence the very consumerism and market forces that now demand 'New!'

When a consumer-goods company casts around for the best growth prospects, rarely does anything look more promising than emerging economies. These markets are growing so rapidly that within just two years they will account for half of all the world's consumer spending, estimates Harish Manwani, head of the Asian and African businesses of Unilever, a giant of the world's consumer-goods industries. But even with more than a century of experience in some of these countries, Unilever tripped up.

Few companies have had the head start in places like Africa, China, India and Latin America that Unilever enjoyed. Yet despite the Anglo-Dutch giant's formidable range of products and unprecedented depth of local knowledge, when rivals began to push harder its empire came under threat. Unilever was forced to re-examine its legacy and to act on what it found. Now the results are coming through.

By Chuck Bartels

A $42.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that was announced Friday will enable Heifer International to expand a program designed to reduce poverty among 1 million people living on rural dairy farms in three East African countries.

An important focus of the effort will be bringing more women into positions of responsibility, both on family farms and at regional milk chilling plants.

The grant is for parts of Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, where 179,000 families are to receive assistance.

Heifer intends to provide 169,000 head of cattle - better livestock than the cows now on the small family farms - and get another 10,000 families able to provide forage for the animals, said Sahr Lebbie, Heifer vice president for its Africa Program.

Lebbie said that the program has already succeeded on a smaller scale, and that women are a key part of managing the farms.

"The cow goes to the family unit. The man and the woman sign the contract," Lebbie said. "We have found out women-led cooperatives are led better than the men."

The quantity of milk that farmers in the region can now sell is small because of spoilage, Lebbie said.

Heifer will develop 30 collection points where farmers will be able to bring their milk, where it can be chilled before being sold. Farmer associations will own the chilling plants, as organized by Heifer. The project will be carried out with two other organizations: U.S.-based TechnoServe, which encourages business development as a way out of poverty, and the International Livestock Research Institute, an animal research group based in Nairobi, Kenya.

The project will help the farmers produce and sell their milk in a manner that is more profitable.

"The British brand of corporate responsibility is seen as the gold standard," says Julia Cleverdon, chief executive of Business in the Community, which for 25 years has been championing the cause in Britain. And it is true that Britain, especially London, has been a hive of innovation in CSR since the mid-1990s, thanks to a creative cluster of think-tanks, NGOs, consultancies and inventive bosses. But according to Simon Zadek of AccountAbility, a think-tank that has been part of the cluster, this is also a repeat of a familiar British business story: superb innovation, poor implementation.

By contrast, when American firms get serious about CSR—Wal-Mart on sustainability, for example—the execution is generally impressive. The Japanese, for their part, see the roots of CSR in the traditions of Japanese business, such as shobaido (the way of doing business) and shonindo (the way of the merchant), and Japanese firms pay a lot of attention to the environment and to relations with local communities. The lead on CSR could even shift from the rich world to the big emerging markets, each with its own traditions and priorities.

For global companies this means that a one-size-fits-all approach to corporate responsibility may not work. What is right for Europe may not be appropriate for India. Such differences in priorities (see table 7) are bound to grow in importance as the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—and other emerging markets gain in economic clout and confidence.

Among the BRICs, Russian companies seem the least interested in the idea of corporate citizenship, but Brazil has a lively CSR scene. Some 1,300 companies are members of Instituto Ethos, a network of businesses committed to social responsibility. "We are developing a unique process in Brazil," says Ethos's founder, Oded Grajew. Ethos tries to influence public policy and corporate behaviour "to establish a socially responsible market". A few Brazilian firms—such as Natura, a cosmetics company, and Aracruz, a pulp and paper producer—are widely known for their CSR efforts.

With Purchasing Power Rising, Euro Firms Eye Developing World

By Julia Bonstein

Ever on the lookout for tomorrow's customers, Western corporations have set their sights on industrializing economies and developing nations. It's a huge opportunity, but low cost isn't the only important criterion for a vast new group of consumers. Innovations are also important for this growing market.