Can you maybe walk us through an example where a low cost solution built for a developing market maybe ended up disrupting a more expensive product in a wealthier market?

Yeah, so you're referencing the first article that my co-author and I wrote about 11 years ago now, and it was called Engineering Reverse Innovations.

And to give you a little backstory of that, I had read my co-author's book called Reverse Innovations, and I was very excited saying, wow, this guy's talking about from a business strategy perspective what I'm doing from an engineering perspective.

And so we got together, we became fast friends, and we realized there was a lot of value in telling our stories from our respective fields, both engineering and business.

And that's what resulted in that first article about engineering reverse innovations.

And so the case study we used in that article is a good example to answer your question in that it's the lever-powered wheelchair we mentioned earlier, the LFC, Leverage Freedom Chair.

And so the origin of that is that As I was looking at wheelchair technology in developing countries, I realized that there was no product, particularly for rural wheelchair users, that could satisfy their needs.

I don't know quite how to ask it other than to say, Why do you think so many companies then still default to designing for rich markets first instead of doing the reverse that you're doing?

Because out of all the variables you discussed, cost, reliability, performance, culture fit, what do you see as a single most important design factor in creating global products and why? This

is such a great question, Charles.

And I like that you use the word singles.

Because there's not a single, but people want a single, right? Because it's easier to focus on a single, right? And this is, we talk about this in the book in that so much innovation is driven by what we call primary requirements, like making that new widget smaller or lighter or more efficient.

But in reality, when you get into the real market, there's a lot of secondary requirements that are just as important, like price.

consumer preference, robustness, repairability, supply chain.

So there isn't ever a single thing that somebody should think about as far as requirements, but there is a single thing I think you can think about as an innovator to equip yourself for success.

Well, if a leader listening to our conversation today wants to start applying global by design, that mindset tomorrow, what would you tell them to do first? So

Amos, for people who will read the book, what do you want them to take away?

So there's a few key things, uh, that I want people to take away from the book.

First, I want them to see the tremendous opportunity that resource-constrained communities present, both from a pure economic, uh, uh, opportunity standpoint in that you have the biggest economic growth in emerging markets, and you have enormous collective purchasing power just because of the population sizes.

So i-if you want to grow your country-- your company, that's where the action is.

Um, but then also resource-constrained communities present the greatest humanitarian challenges, uh, facing the world right now that w-that we have to address around poverty and, and food and water and energy and housing and healthcare.

And, and, and so just I think society owes it to, to, to our brethren to, to try to solve those problems.

And we try to s-- instill in the reader this understanding that even though solutions to these problems exist, they don't map over necessarily to poor countries, and it's because of a price-performance mismatch.

For someone listening to us right now, how should they think about AI beyond design?

... big enough, especially when you look at it at the social scale, as you're talking about the bleeding heart aspect of it, what are those three merits that make something meaty enough to go after?

So in, in Global by Design, we present this three merits framework of how to identify challenges that are worth tackling.

And so the first area is called problem merit.

And what you wanna convince yourself of is that you're tackling a problem that, if solved, is going to make a substantial impact, ideally a meaningful impact on a large number of people.

But also ideally, you're addressing an unmet economic opportunity, and there's like free market drivers that you can, you can tap into to solve that problem and make a viable business around it.

And, and another important part of, of really distilling problem merit is, is understanding the requirements that have to be met to actually create a viable solution.

So not just superficially looking at a problem like people need clean water, but understanding what are the contaminants, how much water do people need, how much will they pay for it? So you can really direct your innovation towards a viable solution.

They can't move water easily.

Could one of you just briefly walk me through an effective structured design process?

Yeah.

So, uh, your, your very general design process is first understand the problem you're trying to solve and generate a list of requirements.

Then generate multiple ideas for viable solutions.

People tend to kind of lock themselves into favorite ideas oftentimes and just think of, like, one really cool one.

If you think of a cool idea, force yourself to take a step back and say, "What are some other ways I could solve this?" Then you have to evaluate those ideas and down select to what the most compelling concept is.

Then you go into a detailed design phase where usually a concept has multiple parts to it.

How has the fact that you've followed this global de- by design process made it more likely that you will be successful in adapting your initial products to deliver around the world? Is the idea that if you follow these steps, that shift to scaling locally and globally will be inherently easier?