Africa is the only continent which has fallen short of expectations this century .Other land masses have realized growth paths that have transformed their peoples .The only bright spot in innovation is in mobile telephony and it’s where Africa boasts to have scored high. This has brought in investment dollars and investment partners in droves.
The success has partially been attributed to the more diverse innovative ways the industry has taken.
In Africa outside South Africa few companies are such huge hits through innovation. Innovation transcends everything in business and must have to involve the whole machinery from marketing, production, services and R & D. Every function in the company will be innovated.
African managers are more than ever required to embrace what the rest of the world is doing specifically appointing those fellows with the trait to spearhead and sustain innovation in continuous flow. Investor money cannot dawn on goods ideas and follows potentially lucrative ideas even with accumulated risk attached. Africa is considered a risky geographical investment area prone to wars, diseased and all sorts of ills and that weighs on profit forecast.
Some investors who have invested in high flier Sub-Saharan African companies have defied the odds however by realizing double digit growth not mentioning the accumulating revenues with bulging profits, there is reason to laugh all the way to the bank. With roots in Uganda Celtel has emerged a power house in telephone with networks in close to 12 countries. Safaricom is putting the Videophone people in such command of the most powerful economy in east Africa. Huge profits compared to investment not compared to any where they have investments
MTN and Vodacom have had their own success stories becoming household name overnight. The innovation within these companies is the secret weapon to have to attract big foreign money.
Given you are a manager in Africa these days there is a need to synchronize your sourcing of raw materials, labor relations, logistics and services differently from what the rest are doing or call it a trend in much the same way companies like Vodaphone,or even lesser known Orange are doing.
Innovative personnel in companies ought to be able to find relevant pockets of Knowledge around the world and push them here. Asses best fit on possible courses of action ‘footprints’. There will also be a need to be able to move vital pivotal information at low cost without changing its nature and therefore value from other regions to this region. This will have measured our companies to the level of those operating globally which traverse borders with solutions to problems as diverse as continental problems to be solved.
The procedure in so doing is actually going to make African Grown companies give rise to high value information at low cost and offcourse flocks of investors.
With increasing competition, innovation should not be product or service oriented only looking at say fields like Engineering, outsourcing and Cost reduction prescriptions, it’s rather important to realize that, companies first of all have to synthesize the trends in innovation, should be eager to go away from only value creations but also mix up experience environments. With an aim not only to improve product per se but co-creations of personalized services .The evolving experiences are the goal but product and services are the means.
Any good managers will thus be able to co-create a unique value Company environment and that environment should be supported by the network of communities.
Emerging technologies, services, features and functions are not enhancers but facilitators of a richer experience. Technology today has become a facilitator of a nascent trend towards experience in innovation
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