THE INNOVATOR'S SKILL SET; WHAT IS ASSOCIATION?

               Innovation is the ability to confront a new set of circumstances and to create a solution in real time. An example would be watching a football game on television. A team has spent an entire week preparing for a certain game. The opposing coach comes out with a new formation. Innovation occurs when the first team figures out a way to offset this new set of circumstances. Innovation is changing the game plan in real time and off-setting your opponents surprise. Innovation is a critical skill set to have in the era of social media. Social media creates scale. The ease of use that social media affords is both a great asset, but also a great liability. A marketer in the social media age needs great skills in branding, redefining, and repositioning products.

In social media, great amounts of content are being created overnight. This means that new products and new brands are constantly making their appearance in the market place. When a new brand appears, how does a conventional marketer create a branding strategy to off-set this new product?                        Association is the ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields. Association may also be described as the “Medici” effect. This refers to the creative explosion brought on by the Medici family in Florence, when the Medici’s brought together the creative energy of sculptors, painters, scientists, poet, philosophers, and architects. As these individuals connected, new ideas blossomed at the intersection of their respective fields, bringing on the Renaissance, one of the most inventive eras in World History.

            To understand how association works, you have to understand how the brain works.  The brain works more like a Google search engine, than it does a dictionary. Google search is about your conventional experience with a word. If you Google “Red Sox”,  you might get many hits concerning Fenway Park or the history of April of 1912. In contrast, if look up “Red Sox” in a dictionary, you would get a straight definition of what socks, and not sox,  is.The more diverse our experience and knowledge the more connections the brain can make. The more connections we can make, the more innovative we can be. This is why reading and being aware of the world around us is a critical thing for a social media marketer. Fresh inputs trigger new associations;  this leads to new, fresh and unusual ideas. As Steve Jobs has said, “creativity is connecting things”. The world’s most innovative companies prosper by capitalizing on the divergent associations of their founders.

            Associating is like a mental muscle that can grow stronger by exercising. Innovation is created by exercising our minds and our imaginations.  As innovators engage in these behaviors, they build their ability to generate ideas that can be recombined in new ways.  The more frequently people attempt to understand, categorize, and store new knowledge, the more easily their brains could naturally and consistently make, store, and combine associations.

            Innovation is critical as Africa attempts to create a middle class market economy. In an era of social media, of fast, easy to use telecom networks, entrepreneurs can come to Africa. By using innovation these entrepreneurs can quickly create content that has a strong market and create middle class jobs for Africans.

Dean Hambleton

dnhambleton@gmail.com            

WHAT IS CREATIVITY AND HOW DOES THIS CREATE INNOVATIVE PEOPLE?

WHAT IS CREATIVITY AND HOW DOES THIS CREATE INNOVATIVE PEOPLE?

            Africa is in the process of evolving from an emerging economy to a middle class market economy.  For this to happen, Africa must have creative and innovative entrepreneurs to build Africa’s economy.  Creativity is the finding of a solution to a problem that was formerly, seemingly unattainable.

To make Africa into a thriving, market economy would seem to be an insurmountable task. Creative and innovative entrepreneurs that create legitimate jobs can do this. Let’s think about creativity and how it creates innovative people for a minute.

 Creativity is important because it demands innovative people.  Innovative people have the ability to connect a group of different things, different groups of information, and then place this information into a logical, understandable whole.  

The ability to innovate is the culmination of many experiences. What makes innovators different? Harvard researchers spent 6 years and interviewed three thousand executives to find out. The number one skill that separates innovators from noncreative professional is “associating”.  Associating is the ability to successfully connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields. The more diverse our experience and knowledge, the more connections the brain can make. Fresh inputs trigger new associations. The new associations lead to new, innovative solutions to problems.

            When you ask creative people how they did something they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it; they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. The reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they had thought more about their experiences than other people.

 Unfortunately, creativity is too rare a commodity. A lot of people haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very specific solutions to the problem. The broader one understands the human experience, the more creativity they will have.

            The ability to create is based on experience from a great many different sources. You draw on those diverse experiences and then you bring the whole together. Highly creative people are skilled at making associations, connecting seemingly unrelated things. Most important very creative people make a conscious decision to do so. They don’t always know where the dots will connect, but they are confident that they will.

            At the present time, Africa is in the process of evolving from being an emerging market into becoming a middle class economy. How can this be done? It would seem out of the question that a continent such as Africa could even think of joining the family of nations as a legitimate player. Social media has changed all that.

            Social media is the creation of engaging content that another group of people would want. What is needed is a platform. We live in a world of the smart phones. In the world that we live in, a creative African fashion designer could very easily create African dresses that are desired by Western audiences. She could place these designs on YouTube, and be an overnight (literally) success. A scenario that I have stated is not out of the question.

Dean Hambleton

dnhambleton@gmail.com

WHAT IS INNOVATION AND HOW DO YOU ACHIEVE IT?

WHAT IS INNOVATION AND HOW DO YOU ACHIEVE IT?

            At the present time, the continent of Africa is on the move economically. It is attempting to move from being an emerging market to being a middle class economy. Africa has the desire to be a significant player in the globalized economy. We are seeing the emergence of the African Gorillas.

If this is going to happen, African is going to need entrepreneurs to create jobs. Jobs are the key to Africa’s development. Foreign aid has a chilling effect on a society. It makes a nation and a people dependent. When people are gainfully employed, if frees them.  This is why jobs are so critical to the development of Africa. Innovation is the key to development of Africa.

 Let’s just ask a basic question, “What is innovation”? “How is it achieved?”       Innovation is the creating of “cool stuff”. This cool stuff is both necessary and unnecessary. Some things are cool, but not necessary, like jewelry or fashion, but they are nice thing to have.

Innovation is the bringing to life of Robert Kennedy’s quote, “People see things and ask ‘why’ and “how” and “can we, I wonder”.  An innovator will see things and ask ‘why not’.  To create innovation, you also have to create a culture for it.

            Innovation is the outdoing of the competition. Innovation does create competitive advantage for both a company, and also for a continent, such as Africa.

            To be entrepreneurial, you must constantly engender new ideas. Good ideas happen whenever you have thinking people. How are they created? Receptiveness and reward are ways to engage people to give their best and feel they have a stake in the company.  Through ideas, people challenge one another in a way that is not overwhelming. A leader will inspire competition and inspiration by showing their confidence that each person in the organization can express creativity in his or her own way. This new idea may be in product design, product usage. It may be in anything that involves the organization.

Innovation is mostly done by seeing how people use the product.  Creativity and innovation is “hands-on” but it is also “hands off”.  It is observing “what works” and “what doesn’t work”. It is about honesty, and the foregoing of silos.

            There is a “gotta”.  You “gotta” have a culture for this to work. You have to encourage people to discover new things, to see things differently. People in a professional culture have to be open to new things. Creativity takes leadership. Creativity is not just allowing people in an organization to just go off in their own direction. There must be at least some “adult supervision” for creativity to be developed.

            You “gotta” allow people to make mistakes, because they will. You are dealing with new things. When something is new, no one really knows if the thing will work. 

            In creating a culture for creativity, the wisdom of crowds is imperative. Through encouraging employees and their ideas, you get a grassroots intelligence network. Employees will focus on new things in that are in marketplace. They and their work teams will talk about them, discuss their advantages and shortcomings, test them, play with them…and then wonder, “What can we do that is better?” From these discussions, new products will be developed. A benchmark for innovative companies is Google. They are encouraged to think of new things. These new things are discussed. They are then developed and created. Google Maps was created in this manner.

Dean Hambleton

dnhambleton@gmail.com

WHY IS THE APPLE OPERATING SYSTEM CRITICAL IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICA?

            The Apple Operating system is critical to the development of Africa because the system revolves around elegant products that make information technology simple to use. At the present time, African economies are on the move. Africa is quickly evolving from being an emerging market into a middle class economy.

            These economies are now called the African Gorillas. The Gorillas are   analogous to the Asian Tigers of the 1980s. These were emerging economies that leveraged a common platform, the Pacific Ocean, to create middle class economies that are major players in the contemporary global market place. The Tigers used the Pacific Ocean to create export driven economies which are the key to their success. The Gorillas have social media. Social Media allows a person or a country that has content of some kind, to move that content anywhere around the world. The limitations of space, time, and capital do not exist in a social media era. What is needed is an operating system that can be used to minimize the limitations that present African economies possess.

            Large amounts of African populations are illiterate. This seeming overwhelming limitation is a non factor if you have an operating system that is based on easy to read graphics and icons. The Apple operating system does this. Apple’s approach to development and design is to achieve the very most with the very least. The system relentlessly focuses on customer experience and avoids anything that will compromise an elegant experience.

            Simplicity and accessibility are the two criteria for the Apple Operating system.  This is why this system is critical in the development of contemporary Africa. This is where Apple’s philosophy is in contrast to a lot of technology companies.

            The products that most Western companies develop do not emphasize user convenience and experience. Apple’s products are not just a collection of parts. In product development every detail is refined and if something does not belong there, it is eliminated. The iPod was not the first digital music player.  The many devices before the iPod had many buttons and dials that appealed to gadget obsessed geeks with the time to figure out how to work them.  The iPod was elegant, attractive, and sleek. It was a digital juke box that held 1,000 songs and yet fit into your hand. If you wanted a song, it was a simple few clicks away.  The iPod was simple, easy, and natural.

            This is the system that Africa needs. They need a basic, open, operating system,  that developers can create applications for as the need develops. The African applications are geared toward African market. The applications are simple and may appeal to a Western market. The applications can then be marketed to Western markets. If the content is popular, you now have a very successful software company operating in Africa, employing Africans at middle class wages.

Dean Hambleton

dnhambleton@gmail.com

"THE AFRICAN GORILLAS": THE NEXT EMERGING MARKET AND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT IN A SOCIAL MEDIA AGE

THE ‘AFRICAN GORILLAS’: THE NEXT EMERGING MARKET AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT IN A SOCIAL MEDIA AGE?

           

            American markets are beginning to become saturated. American companies must find larger, newer markets to create the revenue streams their stockholders are demanding. In a globalized economy it is imperative that newer markets become developed.

            Africa has great potential for American entrepreneurs. To create value in emerging markets, ease of use on social media networks has to be either created or developed. The easier that content can be accessed and shared, the more valuable the economic market is going to be.

            Africa has the best potential of any emerging market. Africa is the second most populous continent. It possesses 15% of the world’s market. This continent cannot be ignored if new markets are to be created.

            In the creation of new markets, telecom development is critical. Let’s use the United States as a benchmark.  Ninety per cent of Americans are within 3 feet their phones 24 hours a day. Phones are always “on”. The phone is a critical instrument in marketing products in the U.S. Our smart phones, which can easily access social media networks, make the marketing of products simple. Time and distance are no longer factors in marketing. A product, with smart phones, and social media networks, can be marketed in real time.

            In the same way that the Asian Tigers arose as export-led, middle-income economies in the 20th Century that fueled global growth we are now seeing the emergence of the African Gorillas that have the potential to fuel world-wide growth. A major asset in this growth is going to be social media networks. Social media networks can move content at the speed of thought. Social networks create speed and scale. Social media was not a tool that the Asian Tigers had available to them in the ‘80s.

            Let us look at the telecom networks of Africa.  Telecom is critical in development of emerging markets. Markets revolve on speed. There is nothing faster than texting. People read 90% of their texts. Texting is the equivalent to speaking to someone in real time. Texting is critical in the development of the African Gorillas because content can be now be shared at the speed of thought.

            Telecom companies in Africa have added 316 million subscribers which is more than the entire American population. Because of its telecom development, Africa offers a higher rate of return on investment than any other emerging network.

            The sweet spot for marketers is the 18-32 age group who live in metropolitan areas. This group  is young, growing, and migrating to cities. Today, 40% of Africa live in the city. This is a higher percentage than in India which is seen as an attractive market.

            Workers in cities earn higher pay, and can afford to buy more goods and services than just the simple necessities of food and shelter. Africa is developing a significant middle class. In 2008, sixteen million African household had incomes above $20,000. This level of income allowed Africans to buy cars, houses, appliances, and branded products. Another 27 million households earned $10,000-$20,000.  Another 41 million households reported incomes between $5000-$10,000, the level at which families start spending more than half their incomes on non-food items. The future promises a continued expanded market. By 2020, the total number of households in all three segments will reach 128 million, which will make Africa one of the fastest growing consumer markets in the world for this decade. The African Gorillas are coming of age.

Dean Hambleton

dnhambleton@gmail.com