A. Make a dent
When people hear innovation, most think computers, mobile phones, and apps. That’s only a small part of the story.
A new kind of shoe that cures foot pains is innovation. A cure for cancer is innovation. A new source of energy is innovation. An organization that creates new solutions at scale is innovation. A beer that prevents a chronic disease is innovation. A system that predicts criminal activities before they happen is innovation.
Innovation is anything new that makes people’s life significantly better in ways that would not otherwise have happened.
That definition fundamentally shapes the way we think about why and how people should innovate.
We have a bias for innovations that make millions of people’s lives significantly better or transform industries — at scale.
Those kinds of innovations are usually hard, more fringe, and risky. The kind that when you pitch, people’s first response is either excitement and doubt or fear and doubt. But they should not be hard, fringe, or risky just for the sake. They must be valuable.
Valuable means that besides making people’s life significantly better, or transforming industries at scale, their outcome or product should be economically rewarding and durable in the case of a for-profit or simply durable in the case of a non-profit.
We approach innovation like scientists (ready to commit to a big, hard quest for the impact it will have on humanity) with an economic mindset.
We have this bias because we believe that —
Africa will be transformed by innovators (not governments)
The kind of innovations that transform are market-creating innovations
We have too many unsolved problems in Africa to be focusing on incrementalism; in Africa’s case, incrementalism is a bad quest.
We know that most of these kinds of ideas haven’t been built yet. They’re probably still in people’s heads. The conceptors might be afraid or unsure what to do. Some have been pitched and rejected. Some have stalled because the conceptors gave up. They’re hard, fringy, and risky.
We’re seeking them everywhere —in universities, among professionals, from dropouts, etcetera.
We want to help conceptors of those ideas to dare. To shape their ideas into value. And to increase their chances of succeeding.
And as we look to build success cases of these ideas and their conceptors, we will also support the less fringy and less bold but valuable ones because Africa's progress depends on innovators of all kinds.
We are on a mission to increase the number, quality, and scale of innovations in Africa.
B. Three beliefs that drive us
ONE. Africa is currently the most fertile place to innovate in the world.
We have countless unsolved problems which are innovation opportunities. We have the most natural resources in the world. We have the highest youth to general population ratio in the world. Therefore, we believe that the number of innovations in Africa should be the highest in the world.
TWO. Ideas are the foundational unit.
You have heard it was said that ideas are worthless, execution is everything. But we say that ideas are valuable; execution makes them infinitely more valuable. Innovation begins with ideas. To increase the number and enhance quality of innovations, we must increase the number and quality of original ideas. We see innovation as a pipeline.
THREE. Innovation can be taught. And we need to "mine" more.
We don't believe that innovation is for a select special group of human beings. We believe that innovativeness is a combination of these: Mind-frame, skillset, optimism, energy, resilience, and results-orientaton. Therefore, it can be inspired, taught, and nurtured. This is how you improve the number and scale of innovations. That's why we believe that 'mining' (seeking out people with big ideas and increasing their number) is just as important as and definitely harder than, plumbing (scaling already existing products and startups).
These are the underpinnings of our programmes.