INNOVATION

       After concluding that innovation is an advisable pathway to prosperity and how both an individual and a nation can drive themselves towards a life far above average with innovation, let us talk a little about the innovation and how to go about it. Learning how to fish has been proven to be better than learning how to eat fish.

What Is Innovation?

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       One thing about innovation is that it not confined to the rich or geniuses alone. Any man can be innovative irrespective of his or her background, race or sociological upbringing. A well cultured mind will most likely tend towards innovation. In our previous post "What Is Poverty?" we made a stance on innovation being one of the most potent route out of poverty and its related discusses. What I want us to consider in this piece is how to go about innovation. Innovation could have a broad meaning, depending on who you ask and in what context you ask them, the meaning could have distant meanings. To a sound woman in the middle of a wealthy city, innovation could be the necessary ethical steps to take to better her current society and the world at large. To a mother of 5 in a 'mouth to hand society' could frown at the word because a more common word in her context will be survival and if innovation has nothing to do with that then it is not a topic to be considered.

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       Innovation could be defined as seeing what others are not seeing. Our society is guided by certain boundaries that defines the space people are allowed to thread upon. Any system that wants to thrive needs a well established grounds that whoever has come to live by that system is advised to follow. Churches, schools, peer circles, villages and any form of society tends to provide its citizens with its DOs and DO-NOTs. Innovation is fitting together different parts of a puzzle to arrive at a better solution that was not before that time, not rebellion which is trying to disobey an established order without providing a better solution to the problem.

 

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       There are men today that are reputed for being great innovators from the most famous of them all probably being Thomas Edison to men like Bill gates, Elon musk, Anne K. Rweyora of Uganda and Safiatou nana of Burkina Faso, Beth koigi of Kenya, Nikola tesla, Alexander graham bell, just to name a few. Richard Branson an entrepreneur in U.K, has a mantra that guides his companies. The philosophy is A-B-C-D (Always Be Connecting the Dots) Life can be said to be made of dots, we seeing them or not does not make any difference because our everyday decisions are guided by the dots we see and how we connect them with one another. If we can see any connection of dots in some person’s way of life that matches with ours, we gravitate towards them and if not we repel. Whenever two persons are having two conflicting ideas, it could be said that they both are connecting different dots to arrive at their conclusion. If a man does not understand how the dots of the current school structure connects him to financial abundance, he could tend to focus more on the dots he understands best connects him to financial abundance. Interwoven with our societies are already connected dots on how to behave, what to say and what not to say, how to dress, how to react to certain beliefs and how to act in order to fit in and anyone who tries to break out of this already connected dots will appear strange and in most cases will be ridiculed because he or she is breaking out of the already established rules. Innovation is not familiarizing with ideas common to humanity, it is connecting different kinds of dot for the purpose of solving a problem you perceive is limiting humanity. Innovation is seeing what others are not seeing and acting on it. The already established dot on how to shop is walking to a store and getting what you want, that was until e-commerce became a thing, communication was a dreaded process until phones and the internet were born. Those innovation came about by people connecting dots others were not seeing for the purpose of making a positive impact on the society and its people. Thank God for light bulbs, also thank God for the man who connected the dots to invent it.

 

Ways To Innovation

 

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1) Have a desire to make meaning not money.

2) Deploy and seek perfection and not the other way round.

3) Do not shy away from criticism because great products usually polarizes people.

4) Be flexible enough to listen to your customers and not stick with your product even when the market has no space for it.

 

1) Choose Impact Over Money

 

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       One of the ways to innovation is genuinely seeking to bring about a change as to oppose the urge of making money. Contrary to popular beliefs, your passion is not very rewarding unless it is bringing about a change. People are willing to dig deep into their bags for a product if they believe the product is going to help them in a certain way. This is because when you truly desire to make an impact by creating a product or services that empowers people, evidently you will be rewarded based on the level of impact people perceives you are having on them. But when you choose to make money and not impact, you will not make money, you will not make impact and you will probably not succeed. You will be short sighted and all your energy will be geared towards maximizing profits instead of developing quality products. Most companies and products we see as innovators did not start off looking for money, the money they posses is only a reward for the impact they have made on the society. With an excel sheet you can handle the work load of more than 50 bookkeepers with more accuracy, with amazon/Jumia shopping is made easier, with Google and other search engines information is more accessible, apple brought PCs to our homes, Dangote brought sugar refinery to Nigeria, YouTube empowered people to not only be creators but to share their works with the world. The desire to make money is not bad but when it comes to innovation, the desire to make a positive impact should be the priority.

 

2) Deploy & Seek Perfection & Not Vice-versa

 

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       A common mistake most innovators make is waiting for the right and perfect product/services before launching. As an innovator you must not get all the facts right the first time and waiting for the perfect product usually does take longer time than anticipated. Early 2000s phones are nothing compared to the semi computers we have right now on our hands, but those companies did not wait until they perfected their product. They found a niche they could innovate around and built an empowering product around it then worked towards perfection on that line of product or services. Because of the other highly competitive minds around, delay is dangerous in the field of innovation. You could miss out on an opportunity to create the impression on people that you have a vision but this is where you have started, arriving late with your product or services to the market could brand you as a 'copy cat' even though that might not be true in your case, this is not to say that you should deploy a totally dis-functional product to the market. Your journey to making an impact should be a process not an event, and in that process a product or services gearing towards perfection can be accommodated. Do not wait for the right time or product before you start production, have a clear understanding of what changes you are trying to bring about and start.

 

3) Great Innovation strikes

 

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       Great innovations always come alongside with criticism. One of the reason that necessitates the need for innovation is a desire to fix something that is broken, that means some persons are breaking some things you are trying to fix and are benefiting from it, when you decide to disrupt an entire industry, it is normal to expect criticism. A few researches suggests that most of the top officials in the energy oil and gas industry knew the negative effects of fossil fuel on the planet as regards to global warming but decided not to do anything about it because transitioning into a more clean source of energy would eat into their profits, they kept on lobbying governments around the world to deny some laws that might affect their business model. If you as an entrepreneur decides to revolutionize that industry, it is normal to expect backlash from such people and industry. Do not shy away from backlash because true innovation truly threatens the status quo. The reason for your innovation being that you want to provide more authentic product could have others who was producing the same product but only more inferior to make sure you don’t succeed with your product because it means you will start eating into their profits. Coca-cola, the world's largest "colored beverage sugar" manufacturer is well known for diverting the attention of the public from the health risks their products poses by mainly misinformation, advertisements and lobbying scientists to produce a fake report on the importance of soda. For example, your innovation is in the lines of beverages and soft drinks, encroaching into the space of a company willing to go this far just to maximize profit definitely will not come without criticism and push backs. This indicates that true impact does not come about without a fight and you as an innovator must not be fragile towards such blockades but strong and firm in your resolution to bring about a positive change.

 
4) Listen To Your Customers

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       Some of the best products we know today were not always what they are now. As an innovator, you must learn how to listen to your customers and to provide better services for them because you are out to serve and not to be served. This is not for you to abandon your initial drive and vision, this is only listening to your customers to know if your innovation has a market. You could decide to make a computer with the ability to download food but the download button has the price of a private jet. While that could be innovative, how exactly does your customer download breakfast, lunch and dinner the same day without robbing three banks the same day? On that case, the customer's feedback could be to make the download button cheaper. You will loose market share and ultimately will have to exit the market if you decide to ignore your customer's feedback, a good response to such feedback would be to reinvent around your invention to better suit the customers need while still producing a computer that can download food.

 

Conclusion

     

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Innovation and the reinventions that happens in the society is not inevitable, they could be low in some region and slowing down in another but one thing is clear, human beings will always seek to be better than they were yesterday and will draw towards whoever is helping them actualize their full potentials. When you either as an individual or a nation is not available to provide certain valuable products to people, someone else in the world will come up with something similar to your idea if not exactly and resources will have to migrate as well. Ask tough questions, brainstorm around your questions, arrive at your eureka moment, take action on it and resources will be allocated to you by the same people you are impacting.