MY PATH TOWARDS INNOVATION- THE INNOVATE FOR AFRICA EXPERIENCE

I have always had this idea that to be an enterprenuer, one needs to just have a business and make money from said business. I have thought of the process of entrepreneurship and the only thing that came to mind was setting up a business and making a profit from said business. I never really thought of the intricacies, the initial idea about the business and how said ideas are created and generated and how said idea is turned into a business before the profit making process. At IFA, insights were given on how to strategically form an idea and build on the idea through creative process and innovative thinking. This post is meant to show my path towards greater understanding and utilization of creativity in the past one month as a trainee in the Innovate for Africa fellowship program.

Innovate for Africa is a platform whose mission is to create the next generation of African innovators while supporting existing innovators, strengthening the whole innovation ecosystem. We exist to create, grow, and sustain innovation by investing in people.

It consists of a team of experienced educators, entrepreneurs, and consultants. In addition to these, we had also had facilitators during the training program as well as hard skill coaches and mentors who aided in the refinement of our hard skills.

One of the first thing I learnt was thinking critically about a situation. A scenario was given to us on how best to make someone who was stranded in a cold freezing island survive. We were distributed into teams initially to discuss based on the materials given and to decide which was most important and which was least important. This initial exercise, improved my collaboration skills as well as learning to accept diversified thinking processes and how to come to a cohesive conclusion. Some other things I learnt during the one month innovative training includes the following:

DESIGN THINKING PROCESS

This wasn’t my first go with design thinking process as I have come across the term and how to use it with respect to data analysis but in the fellowship program it was made better. In the program, design thinking process was done not individually, but in a team, collaboratively to reach a cohesive agreement. We used design thinking process in our hackathon project where the first thing we did was conduct a primary market research which was the empathize stage of the design thinking process. This enabled me to always approach a problem by trying to know what the user desires or need and in the process try to refrain from passing judgement or reaching a pre-determined conclusion. Next in the design thinking process, we defined the problem by looking through the primary market research and creating a customer persona which is a fictitious customer and the kind of problems and challenges the customer could face. Next, using the ideate stage of the design thinking process, we, as a team, had to come up with potential solutions to the users problem. We initially placing quantity of potential solutions over the quality and as a team, came up with various solutions to the problems, then as a team, filtered the solution based on feasibility and viability. The solution to our problem needed us to build a prototype which was the fourth stage of the design thinking process. We pitched this idea to a group of judges. Furthermore, we were taught qualities of a good pitch and how best to send your message across. This increased my presentation skills, collaboration skills and creativity as a whole.

DEVELOPING STRATEGIES THROUGH ANALYSING ORGANISATION

Before a strategy is developed by a company, a lot of factors has to be considered with respect to the strategy. Things like how well would the strategy play out, is it realistic or could there be another strategy that is being overlooked. In the one month training, we were taught factors to consider before forming a strategy for a company. This factors includes:

· What is the company’s strength

· What are their weaknesses

· What are the opportunities and what are the threats to their organization.

Furthermore, with respect to the environment of the organization, the things considered were, the social factors, technical factors, environmental factors, political factors, economic factors, ethical factors, external stakeholders which may comprise of the competition and customers and legal factors that might have an effect on the running of the company. This enabled me to see a structure in determining a strategy for an organization as a strategy being concocted haphazardly is more bound to fail than one that is structurally and meticulously planned from knowing these factors. It also created a new way of seeing how to establish what an organization can face and how best to overcome those challenges and what new things lie in wait for said organization.

PERSONAL BRANDING

There is always this possibility of being well versed in skills but not having the proper way to show yourself to the world and to potential people who would need those skills. This leads to someone having the said skills but no opportunity to use those skills. To that end, there was a personal branding or professional dress-up in the one month innovative training. To conduct the personal branding, we were placed in groups and compared documents within one another. The personal branding was done in terms of resume, portfolio creation, how to showcase oneself professionally on linkedIn and how to generally showcase one’s self professionally. This taught me something that is easily overlooked which is one may have said skills but how does the person go about announcing themselves that they have those skills.

INTERVIEW PREPARATION

So, the application gets you the noticed enough to reach the interview stage but preparing for the interview gets you the job. In the Innovate for Africa fellowship, we conducted a mock interview, we were further given potential interview questions and how best to answer them. This taught me that not all answers are worthy answers and an answer which has a particular format can drive an interview process giving one the best chance to succeed in the interview process.

CONDUCTING A REAL WORLD PROJECT

In our world today, experience on a particular subject in a field is always vital to have a headway in said field. In Innovate for Africa fellowship program, I and my team where given a real world project in other to know how things would look like in the real world and what to expect with respect to achieving a stakeholder’s goals and objectives. This taught us how to collaborate and to know the confines as well as the challenges of the real world.

LEARNING FROM REAL WORLD EXPERIENCES

In addition to learning the above skills, we regularly had guest speakers in various fields of life such as data analysis, volunteers, product management, etc. This guest speakers shared their life experience, how they hurdled through challenges and how they came up on top at the end.

Afolabi Opeyemi taught me that having the knack for volunteering opens doors beyond your imagination. Furthermore, we should be patient with the result but still put in the work to make it happen. These guest speakers taught me valuable life lessons which they have gone through and through their experience it means the outcome would be favourable.

Key Takeaway

The program was intensive, collaborative most of the time, end to end but above all it was intriguing, it had a lot of learning opportunities, increased my potential for growth, determination, inclusivity, diversity and innovation. Furthermore, it made me realize that in the journey of skill acquisition, it is just as important to acquire soft skills and hard skills. It is not only important to know what to prepare for but also very important to know how to prepare as this encourages a lot of confidence on the part of the person doing the presentation. In addition, with every skill being attained, it is very important to know how to show yourself in the best possible way to organization or people who needs your skills.