FINCA’s workshop at the 2026 Marmalade Festival explored how inclusive finance product teams can navigate the tension between evidence-based design and the urgency to deliver solutions in complex operating environments.

Product innovation rarely unfolds as a linear sequence of concept, research, design, pilot, and launch. That is even more true for inclusive finance: Products take shape in unstable environments where constraints emerge faster than plans, and where learning continues long after decisions are made

In an ideal world, teams start with an idea, identify research needs, and develop a sensible plan. In reality, inevitable competing priorities and obstacles emerge — things like infrastructure gaps, regulatory red tape, and internal resistance to change — disrupting that clear trajectory from insight to impact.

At FINCA, we call this period of tension and adjustment the “messy middle.” It marks the point where unfolding circumstances and tricky tradeoffs dismantle even the best-laid plans. For organizations committed to developing and scaling responsible financial products in underserved markets, this phase is unavoidable. But it’s also where we make the most meaningful progress in refining our products, and where a practical roadmap forward takes shape.

At this year’s Marmalade Festival, FINCA’s Poverty Eradication Lab hosted an interactive workshop and invited participants to explore this messy middle deliberately, surfacing valuable lessons on how product teams can balance speed and evidence in challenging markets without losing sight of who they are building for.

1. Research Does Not Resolve Ambiguity. It Forces Decisions.

Most product teams aren’t used to working in the messy middle, where evidence often raises more questions than answers, and teams still feel pressure to advance even when the full picture has yet to come into view.

But this is where research plays its most important role. By clarifying the consequences of different paths, evidence helps teams determine how to proceed as products are still evolving — understanding what they can responsibly act on immediately, what requires further testing, and what tradeoffs they are implicitly accepting.

2. When the Plan Meets Reality, Reality Wins

Most products rely on a set of assumptions about how people use financial tools: that demand for credit is predictable, that business capital stays within the business, and that reliable data exists only in formal systems.

But those assumptions begin to break down when people start actually using products. Take Amina, an 18 year old tailor from Chipata, in the Eastern province of Zambia. An expectant mother who saves consistently through mobile money, Amina participates in a village savings group and keeps detailed written records. Recently, a single health emergency for a relative wiped out her savings, and the money she set aside to grow her business shifted immediately to cover unexpected medical costs. The information that reflects her discipline and creditworthiness remains invisible to formal finance, whose rigid rules deter her from engaging in the first place.

Amina’s situation highlights how quickly linear product logic unravels in practice. THIS is the messy middle. Carefully made plans are quickly upturned, exposing gaps that the design process did not anticipate. That’s not a setback, it’s an opportunity. Product success comes from identifying those gaps, revising assumptions, expanding what counts as evidence, and reconsidering perceptions of value and risk long before we scale a product and lock decisions in place.

3. Evidence and Speed Run on Different Clocks

One constant in product development work is the persistent push and pull between the evidence stack and rapid prototyping. As pilots evolve, insights accumulate through customer feedback, testing, iterating, and observation. At the same time, market expectations, organizational priorities, and urgent customer needs all press for forward movement.

Effective product innovation is a result of successfully navigating that tension. Progress depends on understanding when additional insight will meaningfully shape outcomes, and when execution itself becomes the source of learning. It is a constant balancing act. Products gain traction when they remain flexible enough to absorb new information while continuing to take shape in the real world.

4. Tradeoffs Are Design Conditions, Not Failures

Evidence and speed are only part of the decision pressure product teams face — in the messy middle, each choice narrows the range of what can happen next. Pushing for greater impact can strain short‑term profitability. Moving quickly can weaken long‑term sustainability. Expanding reach can reduce how closely a product fits local conditions. Decisions about design, timelines, and delivery shape not just the product, but the paths that remain open.

Tradeoffs can be frustrating, but they reflect the inherent conditions of product development in inclusive finance, not failures in planning or execution. They are best understood as an unfolding sequence of design constraints that accumulate over time, carrying the effects of earlier choices forward into later stages of work and, by doing so, essentially defining the roadmap.

5. The Messy Middle Is a Practical Working Model

Eventually, the messy middle stops looking like a phase to push through and starts functioning as a way of working. It offers a lens for understanding how products evolve once insight, execution constraints, and external shocks begin to interact.

This requires holding two perspectives at once. Product teams must look outward to understand how financial products are experienced in fragmented, high‑pressure environments. They must also look inward to assess what their organizations can realistically deliver, absorb, and adapt.

This mindset proves especially useful when conditions shift — which they inevitably will. Economic volatility, policy changes, funding freezes, and operational disruptions quickly test whether a product still serves its purpose. As a working model, the messy middle supports product development that remains grounded, responsive, and resilient in environments where certainty is the exception rather than the rule.

This article first appeared on finca.org