The Enabling Role of Stakeholders in Innovation
I had the rare privilege to deliver a keynote at the Art of Technology — AOT Lagos Conference on Thursday the 5th of December 2019.
As requested by many, I am sharing the presentation slides from my keynote with some explanations to give context into the message I hoped to pass across to the audience that included, His excellency, The Governor and Deputy Governor of Lagos State, various State Officials, ecosystem operators, founders, developers and enthusiasts.
My profound gratitude goes to the organizers of the conference for convening such an important conversation, during which, His excellency, Governor Sanwo-Olu unveiled the Lagos Innovation Masterplan and announced a N250m Seed Fund For R&D in Lagos State.
Indeed we are very hopeful.
Please share your thoughts and questions in the comment section. I’ll love to hear from you.
Over the last few years, innovation has dominated the conversation around development and entrepreneurship. Here again, I was asked to speak on the enabling role of stakeholders in innovation, and so I thought it useful to contextualize the kind of innovation I believe Lagos state needs to focus on enabling. This prioritization in my view is even more important in the age of scarce public resources.
To answer this question, it is vital to consider a few different flavors of innovation.
The 2019 book; Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty authored by Clayton Christensen, my good friend; Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon — identifies three types of innovation, namely; Efficiency Innovations, Sustaining Innovations and Market-creating innovations.
Efficiency Innovation: These reduce the cost of making and distributing existing products and services, enabling companies to achieve more with less resources. Think of the automation of the printing industry. Today, we have access to Amazon Kindles and other online reading platforms. This has altered this industry; by increasing access to books but negatively impacting bookstores and printers. This type of innovation makes companies more efficient but often leads to loss of jobs.
Sustaining Innovation: Sustaining innovations are improvements to existing solutions in the market and are typically targeted at customers who require better performance from a product or service. These replace old products with new ones. An example of a sustaining innovation is a new model of a smartphone or your favorite soft drink. These innovations drum up excitement in consumers, allow companies stay competitive, and often allow companies retain their market share.
Now to my favorite flavor of Innovation - Market-Creating Innovation: Simply put, market-creating innovations are innovations that create new markets. This type of innovation serves people who typically do not have access to certain products or services because of a myriad of factors. This phenomena is described as, “non-consumption.” Market creating innovations transform products that historically were so complicated and expensive to deliver that only the rich had access to them. An often cited example of a Market-Creating Innovation is what Celtel did in mobile telecommunications. Celtel provided millions of Africans with access to a previously expensive solution. Thereby creating jobs and improving communication across the continent.
Clearly, all innovations are not equal and giving the high levels of unemployment and non-consumption prevalent in Nigeria, we are better served focusing our scarce resources on enabling market creating innovations.
But, does Lagos State really matter. Really think about it. For far too long Nigeria has been described as the giant of Africa.
Have we earned this title?
I surmise that on the balance of scale, Lagos is a strategically important city state to Nigeria’s future and indeed that of Africa.
The state is already one of the fastest growing cities, and has a very dynamic commercial spirit. From its large population to its vibrant tech ecosystem, Lagos has the potential to set the tone for the entire continent, and so it is imperative that we get Lagos on the right track.
Lagos just might be Nigeria’s great hope!
Despite its great promise, Lagos needs to act boldly and swiftly to tackle its host of challenges .
Lagos currently ranks as the 10th most vulnerable city to Climate Change. This reality is becoming even more apparent with losses of life, and property caused by irregular flooding. This is compounded by the State’s fast growing population and the growing pressure on its decaying infrastructure.
Currently, in the urban areas of the Lagos metropolis, the average population density is over 20,000 people per sq. km. The population of Lagos is growing ten times faster than that of New York and Los Angeles. All in all, Lagos state faces grave immediate but resolvable challenges.
However, it’s not all gloomy, there is a silver-lining.
I strongly believe that this is the best time in history to be a “Lagosian.” Besides the fact that in a number of ways we are fairing a-lot better than those that came before us — modern technology, and it’s many applications and tools is now readily available across a flat and inter-connected world. Thanks to the internet and cheaper processing power, we now have access to the same tools as the rest of the world. This presents opportunities that can be leveraged by creating efficient support systems to strengthen the pillars of the innovation and technology ecosystem that has organically mushroomed in Lagos. This ecosystem today is already worth over 2 billion dollars.
There are very specific pillars that must be present in complimentary volumes to enable the health of the ecosystem. All nine pillars compliment each other with each requiring a very deliberate and consistent strategy from government and other stakeholders.
To contextualize where Lagos State stands, it is useful to benchmark with various other technology and innovation hubs across the world.
So where does lagos rank on each of these pillars?
As you see above, we have a lot of work to do across the board.
Now that we are here, it is not enough to make comparisons, lessons must be learned and action must be taken.
In preparing for this keynote I looked into my long wish list for Lagos and also reached out to a few friends, and together we have come up with a wish list to grow the pillars for lagos innovation and technology ecosystem. Getting behind this wish list will be like pouring fuel on an already raging beautiful bonfire.
Enjoy.
- On Talent:
2. On Culture & Role Models:
3. On Regulations;
4. Still on Regulations;
5. On Infrastructure;
6. On Funding & Platforms;
7. On Early stage funding;
8. On Funding;
9. On Infrastructure;
10. On Market potential;
Above all, Government needs to move from;
“How can we regulate, tax or control these guys”
to
“How can we ACCELERATE their growth”
Bearing in mind that public resources are increasingly stretched, with lots of competing priorities, I also thought it useful to plot an impact versus level of difficulty (cost) graph for the ideas suggested.
Now we have no excuses, do we?
