Post from Finland : Er...Nokia country

We just got back from doing a two week immersion into the Hindi speaking heartland of India, Kanpur, home of the Indian Institute of Technology who boasts Infosys founder Narayanan Moorthy as alumnus, and boy were Finns worthy of national media attention, this was very unexpected since most of the time, when attempting to explain the research and why we needed to interview you on mass communication, primary education and packaging or take photographs in your shop, school or neighbourhood, we had to start by explaining what Finland was, Yes Virginia its an honest to god real country right up north where Santa Claus lives somewhere near Lake Inari I believe. My colleague pictured in one of the leading newspapers. He found himself agreeing that this centre of the informal ragpicking industry in north India would make a great tourist spot. Poor chap he’s not fully Finndian yet. One of the easiest ways to introduce and give context to Finland, I found was to start by saying You know Nokia? and the people would nod. Now why dis i need to do it this way and simply describe it as part of the Nordic countries in Europe bordering Russia? Well primarily because we couldn’t assume education particularly geography among our target user groups so we had to start with what they knew in this case in India, Nokia with over 70% penetration in Indian mobile handset market. You do the math except interestingly enough not a single person told us they thought it was Japanese. I wonder if that has something positive to say to us? Anyways then I’d say OKAY. Where we are from is where Nokia is from but we’re not working for Nokia. We’re um actually on an academic project rented by the Helsinki School Of Economics. On a project they are conducting for the forest industry, Finlands very own Detroit at a similar place it imploded so ,1,1uietly and so gracefully. Now may be we’ll get sustainable transportation solutions. Any way other than the challenges of contextualizing Finland. The trip was an eye opener in many ways. My early thoughts and insights on the BoP consumer and their design preferences were right on the button.Good to get that validation from two different continents, it helps with comparative context and knowledge. Since it seems this letter did’nt really have a big point to make.I’ll wrap it up now and write again later. -Niti Bhan by e-mail