SMART’s Distinguished speakers

SMART Presentation Summary

Before the mobility industry begins thinking about solutions for the 4 billion strong , low-income consumer segment called the ‘base of the pyramid’ (BOP), it is advised to take a large step back from its existing assumptions about mobility consumers. The established mobility industry has tailored its products, solutions, business models, marketing and standard operating procedures to a very different ‘TOP’ consumer segment, and the assumptions underlying its current business do not likely apply to the BOP consumer.

The TOP industry is dependent upon operating conditions that do not apply in the BOP. It is entirely dependent on monumental public sector infrastructure investments that have not been made in many BOP markets. It is dependent upon a socialized, trained and licensed consumer society that can effectively use their solutions. It is dependent on a service sector and licensing and regulatory institutions to support consumers. It is dependent on an established understanding of the different kinds of benefits, functional and emotional, that TOP consumers seek in a mobility solution; in other words on a relatively predictable, static consumer.

In the BOP, the user environment is radically different. The service sector and regulatory and training institutions—in other words, the ‘ecosystem’ to support a mobility industry as we know it—are not necessarily there. Yet, we know from extensive research that BOP consumers allocate significant wallet to mobility, and are highly inconvenienced if not physically harmed by existing mobility choices. They demand new mobility solutions, and there are profits and development benefits alike to be reaped from serving this demand. Lacking any mobility industry to relate to, BOP settlements have often developed their own mobility systems, such as the tuc-tucs, auto-rickshaws and jitneys that service the BOP world.

In this presentation I explore the different profile of the BOP consumer, and the kinds of utility to which they typically allocate their wallet. We might best understand the BOP consumer, and the mobility solutions they seek, as a producer-entrepreneur rather than as a commuting employee-consumer. This can have dramatic implications regarding the functionality of mobility products and ways in which they are supported.

• View his PowerPoint presentation (pdf)

Links

The Next Practice’s Website:
Visit for more information on events, founding principles, and services offered.

Jeb Brugmann’s website: A new website is being developed:
You may contact Mr. Brugmann at: jeb@jebbrugmann.com

Biography and CV

Jeb Brugmann is a Founding Partner of The Next Practice (TNP). For 20+ years he has been a leading practitioner in devising localized solutions, at scale, for business, government and international development agencies. Most recently, he led TNP's work with bp in India to develop its rural distribution channel, marketing concept, and partnership management frameworks.

His work has ranged the fields of "base of pyramid" (BOP) enterprise, poverty and regional economic development, urban development, transportation and infrastructure, climate change and air quality, water and natural resources management, refugees and disaster reconstruction. Partners and clients have included large corporations, diverse agencies of the United Nations, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, more than a dozen national governments, a wide variety of international, national and local NGOs, and hundreds of local governments in more than 50 countries. His work has been officially commended by the United Nations General Assembly, by three United Nations Summits, and received awards from the European Environment Agency, the King of Sweden, the Princes' Trust (of Denmark and Portugal), and by major cities around the world.

Brugmann's current work in The Next Practice focuses on supporting large corporations with consumer research, high-impact product, business model and distribution channel development, and customer relationship management approaches for very diverse local BOP markets. In this work, he also assists clients to develop their competencies, management procedures and contracting frameworks for co-creation and commercial relationships with diverse local actors, including NGOs, local community-based organizations and entrepreneurs and local governments.

Some of the other initiatives that Brugmann has pioneered include:

• Community and urban enterprise models in Brazil, Canada, Colombia, India, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
• The Local Agenda 21 initiative, launched at the 1992 UN Earth Summit and involving more than 6500 local communities in 115 countries to prepare local measures to address their sustainable development priorities.
• The Cities for Climate Protection Campaign, a programme in alliance with multiple national governments and the Conference of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, involving more than 500 cities, representing more than 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, in a uniform process to identify and implement local measures for GHG emission reductions.

Prior to joining The Next Practice, Brugmann served as President of Globalegacy International, a group of companies that supports diverse experiments in how to use and scale enterprise to reduce poverty in low-income urban areas around the world. From 1990-2000, Brugmann served as founding Secretary General of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), the international environmental agency for local government.

Brugmann is an economist and public administrator by education. He holds a B.A. in economics with highest honors, specializing in regional economics, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government.

• View his CV (pdf)

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