Young people, this is a message for you. In anything you do in markets, do not simply conform to the settled ordinance. Yes, when you launch, many will tell you to become like this company, because for most, that is what they are used to. Interestingly, if you follow them, you will lose your mission. Think about it: how would you be different if you become like others?
That takes me to Tekedia Mini-MBA: many want us to partner with UK, US or Canadian universities. For them, that is what everyone does. My response has been: “if your motivation is to have a certificate that has a ‘university’ on it, you can find many online. Look at Udacity, the world’s leading digitech trainer and its clarity that it has no plan of being a university or being accredited”. Google, Amazon and some of the BigTech train therein.
You know what? There are many reasons for that. If we become accredited, instead of using a CEO of a logistics company to reach the logistics and supply chain course, we would be forced to look for one engaged or disengaged PhD holder. Yes, the PhD is the qualification irrespective of the readiness to impact knowledge. I prefer to use the CEO of a fintech company to teach fintech than a professor of finance (or tech) who has never worked outside a university.
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As I have written extensively in Harvard, winning in today’s market requires going beyond Needs and Expectations of customers, but Perceptions of customers. You cannot anchor that Perception if you just build to conform to what everyone is doing.
A Lagos big bank is sending us its early level staff to work with. We are very humble to note that it has all the funds to send them to the regular “universities” but it wants them to come to a school that does things in new ways. The first course begins next month and the CIO of India’s finest digital bank will open it for us. A Managing Director of a US bank region comes. By the time they are done with us, they will understand the world of banking at deeper levels and at a globalized depth.
Find your voice in the market – and try not to calibrate out what makes you unique. Sure, in the next coming weeks, we will have a university partner which can offer a paper to those who want to see “university” in their Tekedia certificates. We understand. But our core will remain being great on the education of entrepreneurial capitalism on the tenets of Innovation, Growth and Business Execution.
Do not conform – pioneer your path!
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Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Jun 3 - Sep 2, 2024), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.
Universities don’t train founders or builders, rather they train managers. Which university will train you on how to invent and advance Amazon or Tesla? But whatever Bezos does becomes use cases for thousands of universities and business schools across the globe. What does that tell you? It shows that visionaries and founders create the paths, then schools will pick them up to mass produce managers who will help refine and advance those paths. We need to understand these things, in order not to confuse or misinform.
Nobody has ever created anything profound or transformational by following the conventional path, there’s no big surprise there, you will simply be working on what is already known; you cannot become legendary that way.
Those with uncommon visioning capability don’t listen to too many advices, because it’s obvious that those who are trying to educate or lecture them are nowhere near their level of thinking and execution, so paying attention to them will only derail their mission.
The challenge most times for young people is the financial capital, it’s never easy convincing average thinkers with deep pockets to release money for your swashbuckling and spellbinding innovation, because they can’t comprehend it!