Building a Customer Vector for Oppressed Communities

Innovation in oppressed communities is not about building social programs. Innovation is about selling goods and services, building jobs, and changing the idea that oppressed communities do not need the need technology. Connected X, IoT, robowriters, automated trading and machine learning are technologies that I have a great interest.  I am a continuous learner its a core value and not a hobby. I am fortunate to recognize learning as a key value because my family, schools, friends etc supported me and instilled an importance on learning and working hard.

A shift in mindset needs to occur more frequently in the innovation community. I will throw on my product manager hat and build  a customer journey map along with some customer vectors to predict some future outcomes of oppressed people in regard to the newest technologies such as machine learning, IoT etc and I would argue that there will be MORE people interested in these technologies who look like me act like me and care as much as me. The question that haunts my brain now is how do I build innovations to further encourage this thinking? How do I support and provide responsibility for disruptive technologies to communities that need them now and in the future?

I acknowledge I busted my once every four day window. I'll try not to let that happen again.

Build solutions that make you angry

As a product manager, entrepreneur, technologist, and person of color this statement alone make me angry. How do I build something that solves my anger when a) my anger wasn't properly channeled until my thirties and b) I didn't have the financial resources to approach a solution until my 40's?

I went to a small liberal arts college* which I love, met my wife, and eventually learned to channel my anger. I felt encouraged to build solutions to address my anger - but I didn't know this until I was in my 30's. 

My father and mother said study what you can to make yourself a lawyer and get a job. My professors and counselors said study what makes you happy and the job will come. See the conflict? 

I started as a computer science/math major, failed a few classes and didn't know how to ask for help. I became a sociology major. I studied what made me happy which was oppression in all its nasty forms. My grades were pretty low so becoming a lawyer with a bunch of student loan debt wasn't going to happen. I understood computers enough so I became an analyst/system admin/security professional and the interviews were rough. Questions like "what did you study in college?”  “oppression within society?" never went over well. 

Sociology taught me to look at problems from a macro and micro level. Business school taught me that there is a solution to every problem.

As I said in the beginning a well-funded CEO of a major startup told me to build solutions for what makes me angry. What makes me angry is that most kids are only getting an hour of computer science training a week if that. What makes me angry is that the expectation is that the kids will go home and learn more. BUT you have to remember a large portions of kids that look like me or my wife DONT have INTERNET so HOW can they learn more at home?  So I'm building a solution that doesn't require the internet to learn about computers and coding. What makes me angry is that I and the team I am apart of will have to beg money to build this solution with minimal if any financial gains which only increases my anger.

Innovation of the Oppressed - An Introduction

Validating results for innovation models for oppressed peoples. I argue  if there are different ways to teach market and sell to oppressed peoples then innovation models are different too. This blog is dedicate to building innovation in oppressed communities. Innovations like machine learning, IoT, connected X, mobile etc will be discussed.