We are currently in the process of planning our distribution pilot in West Africa. I am finding out that there is a tendency to complicate things for ourselves, our target audience and all participants, forgetting our true objective - getting solutions that improve quality of life across to people at the grassroots.

I was reading Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds, and I find myself connecting simplicity in presentation with the need for simplicity in grassroots distribution. How do we eradicate superfluity and make our solutions and models very simple and cost-effective for ourselves and our target audience? How do we eliminate non essentials? For example, how do we ensure all revenues are reported by our micro entrepreneurs in the absence of elaborate and expensive technologies that would help to seamlessly keep track of revenues? Simplicity, interestingly, requires more creative thinking and inspiration upfront. 

I found these quotes in the book:

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" - Leonardo da Vinci

"When forced to work within a restrictive framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost - and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom, the work is likely to sprawl" - T.S. Eliot

"By stripping down an image to essential meaning, an artist can amplify that meaning" - Scott McCloud

"Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities" - Daisetz Suzuki