INNOVATION IS WHERE THE ACTION IS, WILL BE

Hot on the heels of the National Science Week that ended last week, the Kampala Innovation week will kick off next week.

One may ask why the two weeks didn’t coincide –  after all science and innovation go hand in hand, but for emphasis alone, it is good that they are held on separate weeks.

What is of particular interest to me with upcoming innovation week is that it will bring together innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and government stakeholders to “explore the role of innovators and entrepreneurs in achieving Uganda’s development ambitions, deliberate on how innovation and entrepreneurship can be harnessed for job creation and employment.”

The best of innovation allows for more output from the same inputs. Innovation comes with improvements on an existing idea.

"The challenge for innovators is often how to commercialise their innovations. It is not true that if you create the best mouse trap all the world will make a beaten path to your door. On the rare occasion that this happens look out for a good business mind supporting the innovators. It happened at Microsoft with Bill Gates backing up Paul Allen or at Apple with Steve Jobs providing the environment for Steve Wozniak to do his thing.

Left to their own devices innovators’ work will never receive wide acceptability and the benefits lost to the wider world.

This is an important point to note, especially for a country like Uganda.

I heard years ago that after an aerial geosurvey for Uganda’s minerals, it was found we have so much mineral potential that were we to exploit it fully, we would have to move all Ugandans out of the way, essentially exile them. And that is all the natural endowment under the ground without considering that we have a fifth of the region’s arable land.

The reason we are a poor country – judging by our sub $1000 per capita income measure, is because we have failed to unlock this value. That we have failed to create an environment for our innovators to exploit this rich bounty.

We have seen the artisan miners from Busia to Buhweju, that the people are there, trying to exploit these mineral deposits. However, their innovation is not being backed up by an enabling environment or the business person.

This is just one example.

The point is, innovators cannot operate successfully in silos. They are part of a wider ecosystem that includes business people, financiers, academia and government and the sooner we appreciate this and act on it, the better.

Hence the importance of the innovation week. When all these members of the ecosystem find themselves in one place it can only be a good thing.

As always happens the private sector leads the way. While this week is sponsored largely by the UN Capital Development Fund and Startup Uganda, an association of innovation and entrepreneurship support organisations, in places from Kamwokya to Ntinda and Lubaga to Kanasanga there are private operators who have tried to create spaces for the innovation ecosystem to find root.

But beyond the lucky meeting of minds one week annually, government needs to take a more proactive role in creating the enabling environment to allow these players to not only survive, but thrive...

As stated earlier good innovation allows us to do more with less. In a country looking to take advantage of our youthful demographic, our appreciation of what it takes to make innovation work is more critical, if only because it can be an engine for job creation.

Also especially because the covid-19 pandemic has reset the way the world works. The reality is that many business models in trade, services and manufacturing have been disrupted for good. For one, we are moving towards more automation and digitization, minimizing the need for labour. The people who argue for manufacturing as a driver of job creation have forgotten or are ignoring the fact that fewer jobs than in the industrialization era, are required in modern factories.

Which all points to the fact that we are going to have to rely on our own ingenuity, to make paying work for ourselves.

"Government is always tempted to jump in and throw money at the problem, but this money will go a longer way if it is anchored by a good strategy that takes into account our endowments and capacities, our needs and the available markets in which we can compete...

The innovation week can be a good learning and networking opportunity for all concerned. See you there.

 

 

 

BOOK REVIEW: BUILT TO SELL

AUTHOR: JOHN WARRILLOW

Why do most people go into business? To earn an income or t o increase their income. For the latter type the business is a side pursuit to their job. What happens when the business makes more money than you have imagined in the first case or gets in the way of your main job, in the latter case? This is the beginning of the end.

In the former case the owner pushes up his living costs at the expense of the business and in the latter case the business owner decides in favour of keeping his job and the certain income that comes with it, and folds the business.

In “Built to Sell” author John Warrillow suggests an alternative, What if you built your company in such a way that you could sell it? That would mean for our first business owner, when he starts making too much money there is a process of investment of those additional funds to increase the value of the company and make it more sellable or in the second case the businessowner can sell his side hustle rather than just fold it.

"If we learnt how to build our businesses for sale – even if we never want to sell them, it will also ensure their sustainability and longevity....

The number is that barely one in a 100 companies in Uganda live to see their fifth birthday. But someone pointed out to me that is never the end of the business owner who just goes ahaead and opens another business. No wonder we are among the most entrepreneurial country in the wolrd.

So the author using a fictional narration a la Rich Dad, Poor Dad, begins with the businessowner who is stressed out and wants to sell his business. Unfortunately despite having buit it for five years, the way in which it is structured, with him as the center of gravit of the business, means it is worth nothing. A business is not the buildings, cars and machinery but the systems that take labour, capital and land and convert them into saleable products, that’s what investors are buying. 

The book therefore is how he restructures his business to make it saleable.

If there is only one quote to take away from the book it is “You should always run a company as if it will last forever, and yet you should also strive constantly to maximise its value, building in the qualities that allow it to be sold at any moment fro the highest price buyers are paying for businesses like yours.”

If you building it to live for ever you are unlikely to raid the till every Friday evening and to maximise its value the author urges that you focus  your offerings, build a sales force and a management team. Essentially build a company that can go on with out you. Think about it, no one wants to by a business where the star of the team is living, the value is that the functions of the company have been institutionalised, that you can place anyone in charge and the system will still work, that is where the value is.

Think of any business and the trouble they go through in the transition from the original founder to the next generation. The figure was that there was only one company with indegenous founders that has transitioned from one generation to the next in the last 50 years. This was true ten years ago and is probably still largely true.

What we are talking about  is a mindset change from subsistence, working to support your family and you to commercialisation, where you build a business to take advantage of market opportunities in a sytematic way...

 Easier said than done. It requires business owners to not see themselves as working in the business but rather working on the business. How do you tell the carpenter, who built his workshop from the ground up to stop working on the workshop floor with the th other carpenters step back, cretae a sales generation system, build and manage a team, who in turn manage the carpenters? You can say the same for the butcher, the farmer or the florist.

"We are still a very agrarian society where hard work is measured more by the sweat on your brow and the dirt on your hands. This book is saying business owners need to shift towards creating the intellectual property that is the business...

The book is a must read for every one in business, those going into the business and those who have been burned by a prior business but what to get back into it. It encourages a major mind shift which if achieved could reduce the attrition rate of our businesses. 

Of course the everyday challenges of business mean that not every thong will go to plan, but it does not hurt for businessmen to have a basic business model on which to overlay their experience, at least it will offer them a better chance than before at success.

As it is now even the MBAs among us blunder into business and hope for the best. This book might help in reducing that uncertainity.

Available on Amazon.