---
title: Empowering small business owners in Brazilian peripheral communities
url: "https://oculto.sites.oculto.co/work/mastercard-strive"
type: page
site: øculto
language: en
description: Empowering small business owners in Brazilian peripheral communities through strategic business design
alternate_pt: "https://oculto.sites.oculto.co/pt/work/mastercard-strive.md"
alternate_fr: "https://oculto.sites.oculto.co/fr/work/mastercard-strive.md"
---

# Empowering small business owners in Brazilian peripheral communities

> Empowering small business owners in Brazilian peripheral communities through strategic business design

**Client:** Mastercard  
**Project:** Mastercard Strive  
**Services:** Strategy, Service Design, Creative Direction  
**Place and year:** Brazil - 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.

> 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.

## result

- **2** peripheral communities where the qualitative research happened, in person
- **1** workshop turning what was heard into possible solutions

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

[Book a 30-min conversation](/contact)

Next project: [Parable Studios](https://oculto.sites.oculto.co/work/parable-studios)

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