Commentary@ITRealms:
I
recently attended the Infosys annual confluence in San Francisco. The keynote
speaker was former US President Al Gore, who spoke passionately on the topic
very close to his heart, climate change. While Vice President’s Al Gore’s
message was compelling, what held my attention throughout the conference was
the potential of our bourgeoning millennials and their impact on grassroots
innovation.
In
October 2004, researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss called Millennials
"the next great generation," They define the group as those born
between 1982 and 2004. Millennials are likely the most studied and talked about
generation to date. They are the first generation in history that have grown up
totally immersed in a world of digital technology, which has shaped their
identities and created lasting political, social and cultural attitudes.
Without a doubt, they have embraced technology like no other generation.
For
instance founders of Airbnb in America, millennials Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia
and Nathan Blecharczyk, have built a business in the hospitality sector with
over 1.5m accommodation on their platform, and is now valued at $25b.
Similarly, millennial founders of Didi Chuxing, Cheng Wei and Zhang Bo have
built a transport platform that is pooling over 8m drivers and serving 11m
commuters every day. Didi has more than 87% of the market for private
car-hailing in China, and recently attracted additional capital of $1b from
Apple.
In
2008, Millennials were the number one reason why Barack Obama won the
Democratic nomination, and also the reason why Bernie Sanders is sticking
around in the current Democratic nomination battle with Hilary Clinton, despite
the odds against him.
In
his address, Vishal Sikka, CEO of Infosys, described zero-distance as staying
close to the customer, understanding his needs and wants and ensuring
disintermediation. This was collaborated by Sandeep Dadlani, Infosys’ President
and Head of the Americas, who shared a story that best illustrates zero-distance.
He describes it as where the rubber meets the road.
According to him, it took
mankind to go to the moon before putting wheels on suitcases even though both
have been there for a very long time. It took a further 17 years to put 2
more wheels, and a then 17 more years to put a telescopic handle and make it
rotate 360 degrees. This is because a pilot went 'zero distance' where the
rubber meets the road, to get to the desired innovative point.
Innovation
culture often speaks to breakthrough innovation, but Grassroots innovation
amplifies the whole innovation idea. What do I mean by grassroots
innovation? Let me illustrate with an example; the story is told about a
company which manufactured and sold baby food. One of the sales teams, whose
members were young rookies, and not particularly regarded, also had the worst
patch. But they continually busted their targets. In actual fact, there were hardly
any babies in their territory, since it was an area typically inhabited by
pensioners and elderly care giver homes.
Nobody
bothered to ask them the formula for their success. It turned out that the
old people in their patch, having lost many of their teeth, were mostly
consuming the baby foods, and therein lay a spontaneous innovative idea. Could
the company have used this new discovery to strategically diversify into ‘specialised
old peoples’ food and diversified their business? Leveraging new ideas
within the company to amplify breakthrough discovery is what constitutes grassroots
innovation.
Education is the bedrock for design
thinking helping us think in an organized way about creativity and consistently
improve through continuous iteration. Properly articulating a problem however, is
half the solution. New and innovative ways of doing things can come from the
most unexpected sources, not least the current generation of millennials. They
are the sort that dare to believe that they can make the elephant dance.
The
core medium for education in the workplace is story telling. This is the time
tested way by which the culture of the company is passed onto future generations.
While the ‘elders’ in the company are a trusted custodian of ‘how it is done’
and mentor the young rookies, there must also be a reverse mentorship program,
where millennials are engaged and have a voice at the highest levels in the
hierarchy. While the elders may know where we are coming from, it is definitely
the millennials that can point the way to where we should be headed.
I
personally have two reverse millennial mentors, my son, Omimi Okere, and my Digital
Media assistant David Afolayan. They both have a deep role in my belated
online presence. I guess I became a convert when my son at thirteen years old
launched his first computer game ‘Catch it’ on iTunes and Android. He followed
two years later with ‘Jetraider’, a paid game on both platforms. The clincher
was the insightful articles and comments I saw on his blog ‘Knox Tech’. I
thought to myself, not bad for a teenager. This is what motivated me to launch
my blog, austinokere.com.
I
sit on several Executive Committees with many old ideas being constantly recycled
and hardly any young people with fresh ideas in the room. The danger here is
the dinosaur effect. We keep listening to the same cassette with our best songs,
while losing touch with new music and new genres. In the end, the company
perishes as a result of a lack of innovation.
As
the sun is setting on old ways of tacking social problems, millennials may well
save us from our broken socio-economic system. They certainly possess the
attributes of what Harvard professor Joseph Nye refers to as tri-sector
athletes or multilingual leaders; these are individuals and organisations that
nimbly cross traditional spheres of influence to translate and broker these different
institutional logics into private-public, government-civil and civil-private
partnerships and solutions. Their careers typically straddle sectors, defying
the labour market siloes, and thus enable them make the necessary linkages.
My
advice is that organisations infuse millennials in their workforce, and create
winning environments that aim for zero undesired attrition. Above all, give the
millennials the freedom to engage in ‘Innovation Blitz’, where failure holds no
fear of punishment, but is rather regarded as part of the experience
culminating in generating fresh ideas for the continued sustainability of the
enterprise.
Contributed by Austin Okere is the
Founder of CWG Plc, the largest Systems Integration Company in Sub-Saharan
Africa & Entrepreneur in Residence at CBS, New York. Austin also serves on
the World Economic Forum Business Council on Innovation and Intrapreneurship
ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!
%20Taxation%20ethics,%20revenue%20neutrality%20&%20campaign%20finance%20paradox%20by%20Remmy%20Nweke%20-%20Telecoms%20Clinic@ITREALMS.jpg)
