AO: This project is an example of the type of market research work we conducted with technology companies such as Google, Philips, and IBM. Given our position "on the ground" in Nairobi, we had a strategic advantage over any Silicon Valley-based research companies who had their own learning curve when entering the market. Nonetheless, we also had a steep learning curve of our own when interacting with these companies who had their own ideas about what expertise looked like as well as strong opinions on the best research genre (scientific, objective, etc.). We were also cautious in how many of these types of projects we took on because many of their final reports could not be made fully open, which was against our ethos of open access of research. Therefore, by the end of 2015, we had moved away from doing such market research projects and focused on developing our own areas of expertise on topics that we felt could be beneficial for the entire ecosystem, but that few were funding on a project-by-project basis.
Paul Lee, "Google Market Research: "Understanding barriers to mobile Internet adoption in Kenya and Ghana"", contributed by Angela Okune, STS Infrastructures, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 6 July 2018, accessed 25 August 2024. https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/google-market-research-understanding-barriers-mobile-internet-adoption-kenya-and-ghana
Critical Commentary
AO: This project is an example of the type of market research work we conducted with technology companies such as Google, Philips, and IBM. Given our position "on the ground" in Nairobi, we had a strategic advantage over any Silicon Valley-based research companies who had their own learning curve when entering the market. Nonetheless, we also had a steep learning curve of our own when interacting with these companies who had their own ideas about what expertise looked like as well as strong opinions on the best research genre (scientific, objective, etc.). We were also cautious in how many of these types of projects we took on because many of their final reports could not be made fully open, which was against our ethos of open access of research. Therefore, by the end of 2015, we had moved away from doing such market research projects and focused on developing our own areas of expertise on topics that we felt could be beneficial for the entire ecosystem, but that few were funding on a project-by-project basis.