Twelve business ideas that are changing the world – Link

Here is a link to a 12 episode series published by the Times and the Times Online. In the series, they interview 13 influential business figures from a wide range of sectors as they explain an idea that they think is fundementally changing the way we do business today. Although some episodes were published as long ago as 2007, most are still relevant and though provoking. The Times now charge for their content, so I found that these episodes sometimes download from Podcast Directory, and at other times don’t….

Here are the direct links to the episodes:

1. Medicine in the developing world

Innovative partnerships are crucial to overcoming diseases like malaria, which, as well as their devastating cost in human terms, are hampering the economic progress of developing nations

2. Government as a business

A strong and efficient public sector is fundamental to the strength of any society, and governments can draw lessons from the private sector

3. Micro finance and its role in 3rd world poverty relief

The provision of financial services in the developing world is a crucial means of ensuring sustainable economic growth and lifting people out of poverty

4. Private equity modern entrepreneurship

Sir Ronald Cohen, Founding Partner and Executive Chairman, Apax Partners Worldwide. Successful entrepreneurship and the importance of the private equity industry in the British economy

5. Vacating HQ: how social innovation is redefining the corporate world

Ben Verwaayen, CEO, BT: Technology is changing the way we do business, bringing the world’s best talents together

6. The flexibility of industry’s new access to capital

Sir David Walker. Author, the Walker Report into private equity. Tuning the balance between transparency and secrecy in the world’s most private industry

7. The business of engineering

Engineering has changed the world and can continue to do so, but first it must change its own fate

8. The evolution of the equity market

From their origins in the seventeenth century, today’s high-tech stock exchanges are playing a crucial role in global economic development and are at the heart of the globalisation story

9. The day corporates gained responsibility: the chief executive’s view

How companies turned the inevitable into the profitable

10. The day the corporates gained responsibility: the investors view

11. New world order

The global marketplace for skills is revolutionising business and communities – but where will it lead?

12: The democratisation of information

Jay Adelson, Founder and Chief Executive, Digg. The internet is changing the way we access and share information, and it gives us all a voice

13: Powering the future

Britain must reinvent its attitude to energy if it is to meet the challenges of climate change and fuel inequality

I hope that you are able to download these episodes.

Re-learning the things we once knew

I have recently spent a time browsing through old documents, textbooks and manuals as part of my preparation for a “creative facilitation” event to be conducted in South Africa in October 2010. I am stunned by how much I can immediately recognise, and how much I have vaguely remembered. Perhaps I should do this more often. Just browse through old documents and old books.

It is funny to find something I wrote in 2005 and then think “wow, how cleverly this was written!“. I even re-discovered some useful summaries I had made on process consulting, change management and facilitation.

What have you recently re-discovered?

New feature enabled on the site

One thing about this blogging platform is that they are constantly adding new features.  I have enabled the feature that makes it easier for you to share any my posts with others. At the bottom of each post (just above the comments) there is a share button. Click it and share!

A few of you have asked me how often I plan to update this site. Generally I am trying to post an entry every two weeks. Perhaps you should subscribe to the site (top right) then you wont miss any new postings!

Thank you for all your feedback!

Shawn

Developing territories from the bottom up

Its been a while since I have made a post, largely because watching the discussions in our local press is so amusing and entertaining. I had to keep my fingers in fists not to type anything I would regret later. This is a poor excuse, so let me get back to the reason why you are reading this post.

Strangely, our discussions here in South Africa is not yet focused on the real issues of how to grow the local economies. Most projects contained in Integrated Development Plans are still un-systemic and often deal more with social than with business and growth related issues. Yes, with our history this is important. But I would immediately argue that it is possible to have systemic interventions (that unlocks growth and investment) that at the same time also has benefits or leveraged impact for the poor and marginalised.

Why are we not talking about building local meso-level institutions that not only supports local industries or address local issues, but at the same time draws on science and research to create new solutions? Why are so many local municipalities still doing such shallow Local Economic Development? At what point will the private sector at the local level realise that they need to be more reflective of their competitiveness and cooperation. OK, granted, this happens in some places. But not everywhere. And not enough.

It seems to me that so many solutions are still driven from the national level of government (and business) in South Africa. At what point will locals start demanding “economic” service delivery, which means infrastructure that supports the growth, profitability and expansion of business. Why bother with “small town economic development” if the potholes in the main road are as deep as opencast mines? (see the picture further down below)

Perhaps a reason for this hesitance to seriously and systemically engage in “Territorial Development” is because Local Economic Development is still seen as a narrow field of enterprise support through public planning instruments, instead of being seen as a multidisciplinary approach aimed at improving the local economic system. The systems perspective and an understanding of the complexity of this systems seems to be lacking. You cannot develop the tourism sector in a small town by itself, without dealing with retail, infrastructure, and many other issues.

I know there are many places that gets this right, and where a proper and interactive relationship exist between local government and local business.  But we need much more than a few anecdotal examples. We need to inspire our local businesses to invest, to grow and expand. Inspire them to paint their shops, and tidy their yards. Get them to think of new ideas, new opportunities. Only when we unleash the creativity of our existing businesses will new businesses emerge.

Look at the nice pothole below. The largest employer in this little town is moving to Johannesburg. Guess what, hardly any of its employees are staying behind and starting businesses. With them, they take their spouses, who are often providing services as teachers, medical staff, managers in other firms, and local consumers.

– Why would locals start a business here in this town?

– Why is fixing the potholes and the general look of the town not a major priority?

If business was important here, the main street would not look like this

– How can a few isolated “entrepreneurship” training and other isolated projects undo the impact of the large corporate moving away?

– Why can not a single business person here remember when last a local official contacted them to find out if there is anything that the municipality to can do to support the business in growing.

I think I know the answer. Business is simply not important here. LED in this place is about little projects and not about the bigger system. Business people also tend not to block roads and burn councillor houses.

Perhaps we should coin a new phrase “local private sector development” to describe what we should be doing as Territorial Development Practitioners. But then again, we know that you have to look at the whole system at the territorial level, so perhaps this title is not a good idea. To grow territories from the bottom up would need a focus on the private sector, but it would also require attention the public sector, both as a provider of critical infrastructure and other services, as well as a coordinator of many essential (and often overlooked) public goods. My main point is this. While the national frameworks are important, local energy is what matters. South Africa appears to be trying to build local economies from the top down (depending on national policy, grants and programmes), and not from the bottom up with based on an  understanding the local economy, opportunities and constraints, and then using local energy and resources.

Crossposting from Aid on the Edge of Chaos

I enjoy the Aid on the Edge of Chaos blog. Although I have listed them under “other blogs and podcasts I like”, I have decided to highlight two of their recent posts.

The first post, “From the Neoclassical Logic Piano to All That Jazz” is about a recent speech by Dr DeLisle Worrell, Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados. Worrell focused on the problems with economics today, with much of his talk given over to ‘complexity economics‘. If I said anymore here I would spoil a really good posting.

The second and more recent posting, “Complexity, crises and moving beyond recipes“, is about complexity in development. To quote from the posting directly “The argument that modern organisations have to deal with complexity on a daily basis is fast becoming one of the least controversial statements any analyst, policy maker or practitioner can make. But what this actually means in practice is up for debate.”

I don’t get any commission!
Go there, read it.

Announcing a series of 1 day training events in South Africa

At last, what so many of you have asked for….

We will host three separate 1 day training events in Pretoria, focused on the following:

26 August 2010                 Facilitating the diagnosis and improvement of local and regional value chains

Event Brochure in PDF

28 September 2010           Diagnosing local and regional innovation systems

Event brochure in PDF

28 October 2010                Understanding and addressing market failures in local and regional economic development

Event brochure in PDF

The cost involves R 1,850 (200 Euro) excluding Vat per one day event (fee includes materials, coffee breaks and lunch).

To register for an event or the complete series, complete the registration form on page 2 of ‘mesopartner Africa Capacity Building Series’ and send to ac(at)mesopartner.com

I will try my best to make these events fun and interesting for you to participate in! Some pictures of previous events:

 

Prerequisites for markets to function

UNCTAD releases Economic Development in Africa report 2010

UNCTAD release.

Two weeks ago the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released the “Economic Development in Africa Report 2010-South-South Cooperation: Africa and the New Forms of Development Partnership” report. The report examines the recent trends in the economic relationships in Africa with other developing countries, as well as new forms of partnership that have emerged in the past years.

The report argues that South-South cooperation has the potential to enhance Africa’s capacity to deal with the challenges of poverty and poor infrastructure, the development of productive capacity, and emerging threats associated with climate change, as well as the food, energy, financial and economic crises. In this regard, the report argues that there is a need for African countries to mainstream South–South cooperation into their development strategies to ensure that it further contributes to the achievement of national and regional development goals.

Highlights of the report can be found here

What is the effect of Finland declaring broadband a basic right?

The news services are alive with reports that Finland has declared broadband of 1mb/s a basic right for all Finns.  Quite interestingly commercial service providers will be obliged to provide this service from 1 July to all households. No I can hear you all say “but that is a developed country, we have different priorities in a developing nation!“. And you would all be right. I agree completely with you. We have huge unemployment here in South Africa and the rest of Africa. Apparently, we (South Africa) have more people receiving grants than we have employed persons(also reported internationally today).

However, you have to wonder what the potential effect on our and other developing countries may be. Exactly what happens to the levels of innovation and of course comparative advantage when a whole society gains access to the internet at high speed for free? Will this affect our economy? In which way? How will this affect the so-called knowledge gap between industrialised and emerging economies?

Any ideas?

Stimulating demand led innovation in Africa

To do business in Africa is not easy. I am not being pessimistic with this statement. I am based in Africa because I believe in our opportunities here. But lets face some truths:

  • We are far from input suppliers (a problem for many and an opportunity for others)
  • We are far from our customers (I mean those international customers or the pockets we have on the continent)
  • Things take longer to arrive here (inputs and my Amazon book parcels), and
  • We stretch our infrastructure on a daily basis (roads, rail, health, education).
  • It is not difficult to trade between countries, or to find partners, markets etc. because of various barriers (I think Europe and Asia is ahead of us in overcoming technical and cultural barriers to trade – whether perceived or real)
  • Our societies spend a huge amount of time arguing, blaming and politicising that could probably be better applied to solving problems and exploring opportunities
  • We have many government and market failures (more on this in another post) that only benefits elites (public and private)

Most people think that we have to innovate to reach markets that are far far away, line Europe or the US. Or we think that we have to out-innovate the Asians. But we have something right here under our noses. We have demands from consumers, businesses, policy makers. These demands are not yet always expressed as needs. If you think it is important to save energy in Europe to save the planet (or save money), then we have an additional and more urgent reason to save energy – our constraints to produce enough to go around. Same for water, food, technology and other areas.

So why are we not exploiting the opportunities created by local demands and unexpressed needs?

I think part of the answer is about our policy incentives, and then another part is about our low self esteem. Ok. There is also the fact that innovation is increasingly becoming difficult, because consumers are getting so smart at selected the better products that combines elements of good design with functionality (functionality alone often doesn’t make the cut). What I mean with difficult is that you have to spend a lot of time searching for the right components, process technology (and perhaps even patents).Many of you will probably come up with other reasons as well.

But here is a question worth spending our collective brain power on: what can we do to stimulate more demand led innovation here in Africa?

The OECD last year had an interesting seminar on this topic. I am relieved to find that industrial countries are also thinking about these things (it means we are not so far behind), but I am very envious because we also need to be discussing these things in Africa. Perhaps our greatest resource is not our minerals. Perhaps it is the huge number of problems that we still have to solve, and the millions of demands that are not yet articulated. But how do we turn these challenges, problems (or opportunities if you like) into profitable ventures?

Any ideas?

The Worldcup of graphs

Gapminder has realised some fantastic graphs about the FIFA Worldcup.

For instance, for a view on how uneven the participation in the Worldcup is, click here. For instance, 53 countries in Europe competes for 13 spots in the Worldcup. Africa competes for 5, with Asia competing for 3. More than half of the teams competing in the Worldcup are from rich countries. Click here to see this visualised.

On the question of whether popilous countries far better, click here. Although it seems harder for a very small country to be successful, Slovenia and Uruguay shows that it is possible.

Next is the question of whether rich countries far better than poorer countries? Here you can see the correlation between income and the ranking made by the International Football Association, FIFA.

Gapminder is making statistics a beautiful game….

To this point, the spirit in South Africa around the Worldcup is great. I hope that our teams exit will not mean an end to the euphoria that is still ruling the cities.