I am seeing lot of ‪#‎Impact‬ examples where ‪#‎affordability‬ to end user is missing. I made this note for myself:

“What is ‪#‎Frugal‬ can be ‪#‎Impactful‬ but an #Impact solution isn’t necessarily a #Frugal Solution.”

My definition of Frugal = Quality, Accessible, Sustainable & Affordable.

The comment I have heard from a Finnish colleague is “This might not be a top priority for a typical Finnish engineer or technological solution, i.e. being tech-centric as opposed to user-centric. I suppose the point-of-view depends what target market a product or service is being designed for. Personally I understand an impactful product or service to be either affordable for the end user or otherwise accessible (paid for my someone else), because what impact is there if the product or service does not reach its intended users?”

But isn’t it so that because even if we think of a developed country market..eg: Finland:

Average pension is less than 2000 Euros, Pensioners (1.525 million) make up almost 28% of the population;

Currently 341000 people are unemployed (The Ministry of Employment and the Economy has forecasted that by 2017 the long-term unemployed will rise to nearly 40 % of all unemployed …A bigger issue is if increasing number of unemployed have stopped looking for work);

The recent Employer-employee contracts show that wage growth will be more or less stagnant;

Government funding cuts to organisations already shows in lesser resources for education, research, healthcare, social security, pensions etc.. Also means government can’t or wont subsidise much;

Also I read that a growing number of Finns financial difficulty is now at record levels. 372,000 people had problems paying the bills in April 2016 (Turun Sanomat May 30, 2016).

So with these in mind how can we push the conversation in this country that actually “Frugal” solutions are needed here as well, not just in some distant faraway Africa or Asia.