The past decade has seen a proliferation of suggestions for market-based solutions to global poverty. While research emphasises that sustainability innovation aimed at poverty alleviation must be grounded in user needs, few studies demonstrate how to study the poor for purposes of early phase innovation in business enterprises, especially in multiple locations comparatively. This study suggests that the necessary understanding of low-income users and their practices can be gained through multi-sited rapid ethnography. We exemplify how the process moves from an understanding of the needs of the poor towards innovation and offer a general framework for evaluating the success of these types of projects. The paper describes the challenges and solutions found in a multi-sited rapid ethnography research in urban base of the pyramid (BOP) contexts in Brazil, India, Russia, and Tanzania. It suggests businesses can learn about the poor with the help of this method and conduct sustainability innovation on the basis of the needs of the poor, rather than start with existing products.

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This article locates itself at the interface of the innovation ecosystem approach and foresight methodologies. The need for writing this paper emerged from the notion that despite existing common praxis, there is a lack of academic studies combining these approaches simultaneously in a more profound sense. The study adapts the perspective of how foresight can assist in the development of innovation ecosystems. As a constructive study, the aim is to foster revealing the potential that foresight can have for the innovation ecosystem development in both theoretical and practical sense. Foresight approach and its methods offer anticipatory mindset and practical tools for developing and steering of ecosystem life cycle, keeping in mind that an ecosystem is not static but evolving system. For the foresight, the relevance of this article emerges from emphasising the viewpoint of stakeholders, which may generate wider and more engaged involvement of different stakeholders in foresight processes. As an outcome, the paper presents a model called the foresight wheel, which consists of three interrelated elements of ‘Thinking beyond immediate cooperating’, ‘Enabling continuous futures dialogue’ and ‘Building ecosystem futures’ capabilities’. The empirical reflection of this paper relies on observations achieved in an H2020-funded research project, in which both innovation ecosystems and foresight frameworks were applied as part of cybersecurity workshops organised in three Asian countries.

Objective To use a newly developed framework to assess the contribution that eHealth makes to closing gaps in primary health care (PHC) and to providing person-centered, integrated PHC services in Latin America and the Caribbean. Methods The new assessment model for eHealth-enabled primary health care (ePHC) is called the ePHC Assessment Framework. It is based on the National eHealth Strategy Toolkit developed by the World Health Organization and the International Telecommunications Union in 2012, and the Alberta Health Primary Health Care Evaluation Framework. To validate the ePHC Assessment Framework, a pilot study was conducted in 2017 in four locations: the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the countries of Brazil, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. Results The ePHC Assessment Framework was successfully used to evaluate the building blocks of a primary health care–oriented approach to eHealth and the eHealth-enabled enhancements for management of chronic conditions needed to improve prevention and management at PHC centers in the studied locations. The study found that Brazil, Costa Rica, and Buenos Aires are clearly engaged in eHealth initiatives as part of the transformation of PHC to provide person-centered, high-quality services. As for the Dominican Republic, there was not enough evidence to verify the contribution of eHealth in improving PHC in the country. Conclusions It is clear that eHealth helps improve the quality and effectiveness of the prevention and management of chronic conditions at the PHC level. To improve the foundations of ePHC, policymakers should ensure that their national eHealth strategies explicitly identify and establish the opportunities for eHealth to enable an effective PHC system to provide person-centered, integrated, high-quality services.