“I
Agree, Coronavirus or COVID-19 is Making Things Fall Apart”
-- My
Coughing Thoughts
Waking up and scrolling through
my Facebook page today, I saw the post of Nke
Ise sharing a few thoughts as he is hoping the publication will serve as a
conversation starter for innovators both in Africa and also across the world.
The oracle believes communities
will always be front liners for innovative ideas or innovation in general. In
Igbo “Otu onye tuo izu, o gbue ochu”,
which means in English "Knowledge is
never complete: two heads are better than one."
Not like I speak the Igbo
language but once you see a Yoruba man speaking Igbo passionately, you can
confidently deduce that things might be fallen apart. His kick-starter wit of
Chinua Achebe has perfectly been paraphrased this way:
“As hunters
have learned to shoot without missing, birds will have no choice but learn to
fly without perching”
I will like to ask these
questions:
a) Do birds fly
endlessly? or better-still;
b) How long can
birds fly without perching?
Well, those questions are distractions
from the real conversation here, which are:
i.
There
are HUNTERS, and there are BIRDS.
ii.
The
hunters have LEARNED, while also the birds are FORCED to LEARN.
iii.
The
NEW SHOTS will be coming with FLAWLESS PRECISION, and birds will have no choice
than to either INNOVATE OR DIE.
iv.
Chinua
Achebe chews words gently, so he spoke with this benign phrase “learn to fly
without perching”.
"Onye hapu onu ya, uguru arachaa ya"
(Igbo Language)
In English "If one fails to lick his lips, the
harmattan will do it."
Coronavirus or COVID-19 has
broken the dam. Remember, "The Ocean
never swallows a person with whose leg it does not come in contact."
In Igbo, "Oke oshimmiri anokataghi
rie onyeobula nke o na-ahughi ukwu ya anya."
The Ugandan Entrepreneur -
Elijah Kitaka puts it this way:
“If I could offer one piece of
advice to you and me right now, it would be to wake up, stay home, stay safe,
and get to work. Fast, intense, status-quo challenging work. We all need it
more urgently than this COVID-19 panic will let us realize. The world is
changing in front of our very eyes. This is not a dream. This is not a drill.
This is life, changing in our lifetime.”
Well, I also believe we need to
wake up 10x (times ten). In actual fact, Clayton Christensen (Late) predicted
these indicators and evolution in his profound theories on disruptive
innovation.
He said:
1. The best time
to start innovating is now. One must start on the new before the old gets sick.
2. Always wear the
lenses of jobs to be done to understand the causal mechanism behind products
and services.
3. Products and
technologies come and go, but jobs to be done persist over time.
4. Having the
ability to look beyond the core is a key component in using jobs to be done to
unlock growth.
5. Skate to where
the new opportunities will be emerging from.
6. Sometimes you
have to integrate forward to the decoupling point.
7. You should
never believe that the strategy that allowed you to become successful will
always help you to become successful. If the layer in the value stack is
becoming modular, then it becomes commoditized, that means where you normally
make money is not where money will be made the next time. And always view your
strategy as temporarily a good strategy, not something that will always lead to
growth.
You can read more here:
It’s fair enough, you can call
me “A Claysian”, I guess it means a
follower of Clayton’s Theories.
Until his early passing in
January 2020 Christensen was the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business
Administration at Harvard Business School. Clayton Christensen is the ARCHITECT
OF DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION, twice topped the Thinkers50 rankings, in 2013 and
2011. Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2019.
Back to Nke Ise, I love the proposition of “Solution to Challenge #2”, I
quote:
“One idea being proposed to
mitigate this is to have a common open database of ideas, innovations, and
initiatives for tackling various aspects of the COVID-19. The objective of this
database would be to provide a curated searchable list of COVID-19 tech-related
initiatives. These initiatives could be ideas, prototypes, or fully
operational. These could also either be open source or proprietary.”
And also, as it addresses the
preferences or needs of different and interested stakeholders’ i.e.
a) WHO, National
Health Ministries, and Disease Control Parastatals
b) Innovators
c) Health Advocacy
Groups
d) Health
Professionals
e) Investors and
Corporates e.t.c.
Reflecting from the words of Elijah on the
following deep questions COVID-19 has brought:
i.
What
skill sets, contributions, and tools are truly core and valuable to your
current industry, business, employer, or even position?
ii.
How
is your customer evolving?
iii.
What
are they going to need less of?
iv.
What
are they going to need more of?
v.
What’s
the new customer journey and experience shaping out to be?
vi.
What
value are you going to provide to them in this new future that they are willing
to pay for?
vii.
How
are budget priorities changing?
viii.
More
importantly, who is the new customer?
These are my concluding thoughts:
1) Innovation is
about what you do, with what you have,
where you are. So understand that:
“Ewu nwuru
n'oba ji abughi agu gburu ya.” (Igbo Language)
A
goat that dies in a barn was never killed by hunger. (English)
2)
“Eze mbe si na
ihe ya ji-achiri ihe egwu ya aga njem bu maka ya ezu ndiegwu.” (Igbo Language).
In English “The
tortoise said that it always travels with its musical instrument in case it
meets other musicians.”
Post COVID-19,
you have to play with your best instruments.
3) As at this
writing, the Coronavirus or COVID-19 stats worldwide were:
i.
Confirmed:
677,622
ii.
Cases
per 1M people: 96.17
iii.
Recovered:
141,698
iv.
Deaths:
31,750
“Okuko si na ihe ya ji-ele anya n'enu ma ya na añu
mmiri bu na ihe na-egbu si n'igwe abia.” (Igbo Language)
In English, “The
chicken says it looks up when drinking water because what kills it comes from
the sky.” BE SAFE!
4) Think about the
current evolution happening globally now, i.e. education, aviation, tourism,
sports e.t.c. Post COVID-19, what’s your game plan?
“Mmiri riri enyi ka mbe huru na-awa ogodo: o ga-efe
mmiri a efe ka o ga-awu ya awu?” (Igbo
Language)
In English, “The
tortoise gears up to besides a river that swallowed an elephant: is it going to
fly over this river or just jump over?”
5) I have heard
this meme a lot "Hustle beats Talent
when Talent doesn't hustle." Well, to both “Talent and Hustle”, this
is for you:
“Okuko mmanya na-egbu ahubegh i mmanwulu ara
na-ayi.” (Igbo Language)
In English, “A
drunken fowl has not met a mad fox.”
I hope this was informative and Chukwuemeka
Afigbo’s (Nke Ise) post boosted the
Jinja to write this! Oh! Apologies Elijah Kitaka, I guess Jinja also means the
name of a city in the Eastern Region of Uganda. I didn’t mean that Jinja… Lol…
CONNECT
. INFORM .
INSPIRE
#Innovation #Community #BuildForCovid19
#HealthTech #GBGAbuja #Covid19Response #Covid19 #CoronaVirus
#DisruptiveInnovation #InnovateOrDie
REFERENCES:
Tech and Innovation In the Time
of COVID-19, A Few Thoughts by Chukwuemeka Afigbo
COVID-19 and the Urgent Future
of Work by Elijah Kitaka
Source: Igbo Proverbs, Idioms
And Parables by IgboGuide.org
Image Credits: Creator Willowpix, Credit:
Getty Images
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