Silent Design for Services in BoP Entrepreneurship

Abstract

In line with recent calls to further service research on the interrelationships between Base-of-the-Pyramid (BoP), entrepreneurship, and service design, this study aims at understanding how entrepreneurs at the BoP use (often non- intentionally) service design as ‘silent designers’ to transitions from necessity-driven to opportunity-seeking states. We couch our argument in effectuation theory. In this context, the service design concept of ‘design for service’ provides an understanding of experiences and processes of BoP entrepreneurs (i.e. ‘what is happening’), while effectuation provides an understanding of the entrepreneurial logic (i.e. ‘how it is happening’). We eschew a top- down notion of service design, which tries to understand what should be developed for the BoP, and instead focus on service design ‘by the BoP’ and ‘with the BoP’, and proffer a new explanatory concept of silent design for service. Two longitudinal case studies of a boat service innovation through an individual entrepreneur and a NGO- led transport vehicles program are introduced to exemplify this concept. A key finding is the necessity to embed service design concepts in the context of BoP, i.e. by employing silent design characteristics, and by complementing design concepts with effectuation logic. From a practical perspective, the findings indicate that active and passive interventions in BoP entrepreneurship must be based on such embedded service design concepts, as exemplified in silent design for service.