Check out the design research blog of Jan Chipchase - Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at frog design.
It’s an exciting documentation of design influences from around the world or as Chipchase puts it, “the stuff that inspires or challenges me, helps me understand how the future might turn out.”
I first came across it in a Design Research thread, Design research in major cities - #13 by yo1 where Yo shared a study done by Jan and a colleague as they traveled through Afganistan to investigate the the mobility of money in a country with little semblance of a banking infrastructure, yet with a burgeoning and creative force of mobile phone users. Really gutsy stuff. http://www.frogdesign.com/files/pdf/Mob%20...%20nistan.pdf