Sylver Consulting Collaborates with Emerging Futures Lab to Create New Business Models for the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP)

Chicago, IL, January 18, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Emerging Futures Lab, a multidisciplinary team from Singapore, has recently been awarded a grant from the IDRC supported iBoP Asia Project (http://www.ibop-asia.net/) for the design of “Payment strategies for those on irregular incomes at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP).” Niti Bhan, founder of Emerging Futures Lab (EFL), has appointed Brianna Sylver of Sylver Consulting as Consulting Advisor for the duration of the project to ensure that all sampling and research protocols meet the requirements of sound qualitative, ethnographic-based research. Sylver will also play an integral role in the design and development of conceptual payment strategies that emerge in response to the insights gained during fieldwork.

The grant funded project seeks to understand how those at the BoP currently manage their household budgets in the face of unpredictable and irregular incomes. Building from these insights, the research and design team, lead by EFL, aims to design innovative new business models and pricing strategies that are relevant and appropriate to the BoP’s purchasing power and buyer behaviour, either at the individual, family or community level. Fieldwork will be conducted in India and the Philippines in early 2009, followed by a collaborative concept development workshop in Helsinki in April 2009 with Prof Minna Halme of the Helsinki School of Economics. The final report, detailing the outcomes of the project, will be available to the public by June 2009. Ongoing project documentation online and further details are available here:
http://www.ibop-asia.net/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=431&Itemid=84

About Sylver Consulting
Sylver Consulting is an innovation product research firm whose offerings extend beyond the capabilities offered by traditional marketing research firms. The principal qualitative research method used in Sylver’s work is Design Ethnography. With a focus on customer-driven innovation, Sylver Consulting’s areas of expertise are designed to fully support R&D, product development and marketing functions within an organization. The firm’s core services include: Innovation Research, Innovation Planning Workshops, Integrated Custom Research and Cross Border Research.

For further information, please e-mail info@sylverconsulting or visit www.sylverconsulting.com

Emerging Futures Lab
The Emerging Futures Lab is a small multidisciplinary team that aims to increase the understanding the people at the base of the pyramid across the developing world in order to improve the success rate of new ventures, products and services intended to serve this market in a holistically beneficial manner.

To know more about Emerging Future Labs please visit: http://www.emergingfutureslab.com.

###