[kictanet] On standing on shoulders of giants

[Matunda Nyanchama]

Friends 

Great discussion on the above subject.

Yes, we need entrepreneurs; and NO, not everyone can be one. In the latter case, 
we need risk capital and entrepreneurial injection to make the ideas a success. 


There is also a famous article that once appeared in Havard Business Review 
titled "Why Entrepreneurs Don't Scale"; they should hatch ideas, demonstrate 
that the ideas can be commercialized and step off and leave business leaders and 
managers scale up the business. We have a short supply of the latter and need to 
invest in their development.

There is also the environment in which ideas thrive; a technical idea, hatched 
by a technical person doesn't necessarily turn out as would be intended. The 
path to development is a graveyard of many, many initiatives that started and 
died; but later some (with luck) are picked up by others that had a more 
well-rounded understanding of the same or when the right time had come. 


How do we increase the chances of success of ideas? I think we need to co-locate 
technical (e.g. product, service creation), business (business viability, etc.) 
and law (confines of law: securing IP, formalizing org, etc.) 
faculties/institutions. The informal interactions amongst students, researches, 
and faculty in these areas can be an incubation laboratory for many an 
enterprise. The knowledge exchange (informal and otherwise), relationships 
forged and trust engendered can be the foundation for long term business 
success. 


This suggests that they way we are building and deploying our institutes of 
higher learning and research doesn't fit with the above scenario. Example: 
faculty of commerce at UoN shouldn't have moved to Kabete but stayed alongside 
engineering or both should have moved to the same location; ditto for law. 
Someone once asked what happens when you put an engineer, sociologist, lawyer, 
accountant, etc together! The answer: something much bigger than the sum of the 
individual parts! 


We need environments where players (with difference background) can interact 
more and on an ongoing basis. Today, we have universities operating out of 
high-rise towers where students jet in for class and take off thereafter, with 
little time to be with colleagues, consult with faculty or simply hang out with 
others attending a seminar here or another there, in one's line of study or not.

Ideally we need campus/research zones, complete with residential facilities, 
sports, seminar rooms, labs; alongside industrial parks and business advisory 
centres.

Just some thoughts!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Matunda Nyanchama, mnyanchama at aganoconsulting.com
Agano Consulting Inc.;  www.aganoconsulting.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you 
and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea 
and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”- George 
Bernard Shaw 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This e-mail, including attachments, may be privileged and may contain 
confidential or proprietary information intended only for the addressee(s). Any 
other distribution, copying, use, or disclosure is unauthorized and strictly 
prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender 
immediately by reply e-mail and permanently delete the message, including any 
attachments, without making a copy. Thank you.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.kictanet.or.ke/pipermail/kictanet/attachments/20110115/6302e98d/attachment.htm>