Platform-driven ecosystem prefacing for emerging markets in developing countries

Developing countries take frog leaps in technological advance. For example, moving to 4G communications from scratch. This reveals tremendous opportunities as infrastructure for advanced service delivery is suddenly in place. As the technological advancement is so disruptive, a lot of prefacing needs to be carried out prior to an ecosystems’ emergence. This article presents an experience report on ecosystem prefacing for emerging developing country markets. We provide an analysis of the Tanzanian working environment; noting aspects that are present for a developing country, unique to the distinct culture, and similar to industrial countries. We then apply an ecosystem prefacing process that actively finds challenges and solutions for a fixed application context whilst acknowledging the previous aspects. For this experience report, we gather empirical data by executing the process in two-phase innovation workshop and stakeholder co-operation event where the fixed application context consists from SmartCity concept based on a major ICT vendor.