During the days I ran JustBooks - a community library chain of 60+ libraries across 12 cities (more on JustBooks some other day!), I & my colleagues would often discuss the absence of a "Koramangala" or "Indira Nagar" on the Internet. We felt that neighbourhood or hyperlocal businesses like JustBooks would benefit significantly if there was an easy way to reach the people of a neighbourhood (like Koramangala or IndiraNagar) digitally at a low cost.
After a year of such discussions, we started a pilot project (we called it 'Firstmyle') to make real world neighbourhoods accessible online. Mind you, this was to be a replica of the real world neighbourhood and not a digital community of people from across the world talking about Koramangala (or IndiraNagar)
For various reasons, we had to abort that pilot and leave things somewhat incomplete.
When I got an opportunity to pursue that idea in a new form (called 'Onemyle') I retained couple of slides from the original discussions as a sort of 'north-pole' for the new ideation process.
Sharing one such slide here...
We felt that the above 4Cs (Content, Conversation, Commerce & Campaigns) captured the core of all the interactions that happen across all stakeholders of a neighbourhood. (I feel the same even now.)
If we were going to make neighbourhoods accessible online, we had to decide on our approach for all these 4Cs. The challenge was in prioritising within these 4Cs.. We had to start with One C and slowly add the others. Starting with all 4 would be boiling the neighbourhood ocean.
So, what did we choose and why? More on this in subsequent posts..
Thanks for Reading.
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