CONCEPT
Context-Blind Design
Prahalad’s diagnosis of the most persistent failure in technology deployment to developing markets—the assumption that a product designed for one set of conditions can be successfully deployed in another simply by making it available—which describes with precision how AI tools are currently failing the majority of the world’s potential users.
The product fails not because the technology is wrong but because the assumptions are invisible. Context-blind design is
Prahalad’s name for the most persistent failure mode in technology deployment to developing markets: designers build for the conditions they inhabit and do not notice they have done so, because those conditions are the water they swim in. The result is products that work in Silicon Valley and fail in Lagos—not because of any deficiency in the user but because the design assumes reliable electricity, high-bandwidth internet, English-language fluency, and the economic capacity to absorb a learning curve. The assumption is so embedded that its absence is attributed not to design but to the market: “the infrastructure isn’t ready,” “the customer doesn’t understand the value.” Prahalad documented across healthcare, financial services, and telecommunications that this diagnosis protects the designer from the uncomfortable conclusion: the design doesn’t match the