Skip to content
MASTERCARDMastercard StriveStrategy, Service Design, Creative DirectionBrazil - 2023

Empowering small business owners in Brazilian peripheral communities

The challenge

More than the realization of a dream, starting a business in a peripheral community is about creating survival alternatives and building some kind of a security and stability for the family in the future.

The partnership

Mastercard Strive wanted to understand the main needs of businesses in peripheral communities, exploring aspects that can show opportunities to increase their revenue and/or efficiency. In order to tackle that challenge, we ran a qualitative research in two different peripheral communities in Brazil, talking with small business owners. With the results, we facilitated a workshop to depict insights and possible solutions to serve them with innovation, in their context, in the way that they understand.

overview

Opening a business in a peripheral community is not the realization of a dream. It is the building of a way out.

Approach

The question Mastercard Strive brought was about revenue and efficiency. The answer was in no spreadsheet. A business in a peripheral community runs inside an economy of relationships, made of credit on trust, neighbourhood and reputation, and any solution designed from outside that context arrives as an imposition, however good it looks on paper.

So the research was qualitative and in person, in two different peripheral communities, talking with the people behind the counter. It is not about collecting opinion. It is about finding out which problem the owner has already solved alone, because that is exactly where the solution with a chance of working is.

Workshop

What the listening produced became a workshop, not a report. Insights and possible solutions were built together with the people who live the context, in the vocabulary of the people who live the context. Innovation that has to be explained to its end user was born in the wrong place.

Two people seen from behind at a high point in a peripheral community, one of them pointing out across the valley of houses and rooftops opening up ahead, on a clear day
An interview being recorded on the street: the camera operator in the foreground, the business owner seated and answering, and the researcher holding the script, with the monitor showing the framing

result

  • 2

    peripheral communities where the qualitative research happened, in person

  • 1

    workshop turning what was heard into possible solutions

A group gathered on the pavement in front of a clothing shop, talking while the team records, with the street's shopfronts and power lines behind them
A mural painted on a wall in a peripheral community carrying the Mastercard brand, the lines Débito Mastercard plus rewards and moments that are priceless, and the figure of a child flying a kite

What you see is the expression of a solution formed by hidden processes.

Book a 30-min conversation
Keep scrolling for the next projectPARABLE STUDIOS
Empowering small business owners in Brazilian peripheral communities · øculto