They taught us in the economics class that companies have to specialize and build core competencies. They need to do things really well and be the best possible in their chosen domains. But today, especially in native tech companies, we think that does not overly make sense as technology has changed the cost of entering into new domains.
For technology companies, everyone is doing everything, even at top-level. Alphabet, Google parent company, is a car company, a search company, a medical company, an advertising juggernaut, fintech, etc. Amazon.com is an e-commerce firm, a publisher, a movie producer, a drone maker, and pharmacy chain.
Today, what do you think IBM does? Practically everything when you know that Watson has more than 100 flavors focusing on health, finance, real estate, etc. So as frenemies era hits up, the entrenched mantra of core competency must be examined.
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The Eastman Kodak Company was an iconic industry leader. For decades, it was synonymous with photography. But it got stuck in its core competence of traditional film products and missed the rise of digital photography and printing. Uber got the message and has acquired Dallas-based Transplace from TPG Capital, the private-equity arm of investment firm TPG for $2.25 billion.
People, build a technology stack and expand the stack into anything you want in future. Once the foundational stack is there, adding new things on top of it becomes easier and cost-efficient. That is what they are doing in Tencent, Alibaba, Alphabet, Facebook, etc and that seems to be the path into the future.
In Africa, the banks, insurers, etc of the future will be technology companies which offer those services. They are the ones which will capture most value from the edges of the smiling curve. It could become easier now that the Central Bank of Nigeria is digitizing the Naira.
According to private sources, the pilot scheme will be launched on October 1st, 2021…The project name is tagged Project GIANT and it will use the Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain.
Nigeria’s central bank further revealed that the importance of eNaira includes Macro management and growth, cross border trade facilitation, financial inclusion, monetary policy effectiveness, improved payment efficiency, revenue tax collection, remittance improvement, and targeted social intervention.
The Nigerian Apex Bank also underlined the benefits for the fintech ecosystem that include enhanced operational efficiency, opportunities for fintech start-ups in building services/products like financial inclusion that will contribute to the economic growth, and the creation of a new system complimenting the traditional payment system.
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The main job is getting that stack off the ground, and then having a foothold in the market. If people come to you to buy boli, it becomes easier to sell groundnut, coconut, soft drink, you may even add light bulb and face cap; boli made all of that possible.
All the things playing out in the digital space have been happening in our local shops for decades, we are simply going to add bits and bytes and continue with what we have been doing before.
I do think that our people have been super inventive for decades, there’s always a local equivalence of anything the tech behemoths do today; time to evolve our native intelligence and ingenuity…