In 2021, I challenge you to live your life. We are all different and unique. Be inspired and be challenged by others, but do not fit their lives into yours. Until you take charge of yourself, life would be a rolling rock. He is now a CEO, a bank manager, a professor, a sports legend, etc; but here I am.!
Those should inspire, but yet, should not matter. What should matter is your VISION for yourself. Create one . Quantify it. Measure It. Get Excited about it – and bring it to pass.
To create that Vision, we have introduced a new course –Human Productivity Innovation – in Tekedia Mini-MBA. Dotun Moses Jegede, PhD, FIODN, RODP , a Senior Partner of Dee Bee Consulting and a pastor in Deeper Life will teach the course. His course provides a framework to help members innovate on their careers, and thrive.
Let us return to business and look at how the Inversibility Construct applies to President Trump who loses his most prized possession in politics. Yes, without Twitter, he would not have been a president. I make that point as old century media powers would have filtered him out. The media moguls were the gatekeepers; they decided what the world consumed. There is a lesson on that dynamics within the digital business ofaggregation construct.
For the Inversibility Construct, you need to turn a typical frustration in the meatspace into strength in the digital space. That means, you need to INVERSE the experiences of people, so that what annoys them in the physical becomes strength in the digital space. I provide some examples:
People hate crowded shopping malls; make people to like crowded shopping malls via your products (Amazon, Konga)
People hate crowded classrooms; make a classroom where everyone is happy when it is crowded (Udacity, Facyber)
People hate crowded bank halls; make products where everyone enjoys the service when the bank hall is crowded (Paypal, Paystack)
People hate crowded motor parks with passenger hailers; make a hailer which people like because it is crowding many people together (Uber. Little Cab)
Yes, Vanguard, New York Times, and Punch were in charge of the news to break, and the elements in the political world to champion. Because they were the gatekeepers, they controlled and influenced demand (the readers). Then, it was “Blessed is he who is a friend to a media publisher!”
Being published in the Guardian Nigeria newspapers was a career turning point for most people 40 years ago. Simply, the supply of newspaper space was extremely limited, and only few articles made it past the editors.
But today, in the digital era, supply is unbounded and constrained, shifting the power from New York Times, Punch and Washington Post to companies like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. These entities are the gatekeepers now. They control and influence demand and magically become exceedingly powerful. The problem of today is no more supply of contents, but aggregating the amalgam of contents which come out daily. So, the world congregates in ecosystems where those contents are aggregated, pushing power from suppliers to those who control demand.
If the New York Times drops Trump’s subscription (if he has one), the world would not blink. But with Twitter pulling the account, it is a big deal. Without Twitter and Facebook, Trump goes into a political existential threat because he cannot influence demand (his base) and without the base, he loses influence. The power is not just in his written words or the spoken words. Rather, on the platform where they were put. He can build a website but would that site give him 87 million followers? That is the issue.
That is why social media platforms are extremely powerful – and why companies must pay attention to them: they can make you and they can destroy you. The deceleration and acceleration are asymmetric: take more than a decade to build 50,000 followers; lose all those customers in one day. In Trump’s world, 87 million people; today, he has zero! Here, we see the new order in the powers of the future.
Invent, innovate and drive organizational transformation, performance, and growth. Capture emerging opportunities in changing markets while optimizing innovation and profitability. Digitally evolve your business or functional area, turning digital disruption into a competitive capability and advantage. Master the concepts of building category-king companies, and thrive, in any business sector.
Registration for the 4th edition of Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 8 – May 3, 2021) has started. Tekedia Mini-MBA is an innovation management 12-week program, optimized for business execution and growth, with digital operational overlay. It runs 100% online. The theme is Innovation, Growth & Digital Execution – Techniques for Building Category-King Companies. All contents are self-paced, recorded and archived which means participants do not have to be at any scheduled time to consume contents.
More so, it is a sector- and firm-agnostic program comprising videos, flash cases, challenge assignments, labs, written materials, webinars, etc by a global faculty coordinated by Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe. When we finish, we will issue a certificate from the Tekedia Institute, Boston USA.
Full curriculum is here; it costs $140 or N50,000 naira. Register via any of our payment options (bank transfer, Flutterwave, Paypal, Bitcoin, etc)
More reasons to join us and sponsor your staff:
For corporate members, our Lead Faculty, Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe, will host 3 private sessions. These slots could be used in company events, boards, staff meetings, etc.
We have more than 90 Faculty members from great institutions like Shell, Flutterwave, MTN, KPMG, MIT, Access Bank, Afreximbank, Schlumberger, etc.
Professionals from more than 30 countries including Singapore, US, Canada, India, and Nigeria attended our last edition, enriching our community.
Besides our self-paced programs, we run thrice weekly live sessions, making our Faculty and invited guests available for members to ask questions.
We have a growing library of business case studies on companies. Also, our books including the highly popular “The Dangote System: Techniques for Building Conglomerates”are available FREE to our members.
Session Labs on Blockchain, Decentralized Finance, Cryptocurrency, Work from Home Admin, etc
We have bulk discounts for institutions registering many team members; please email. Happy New Year and a great profitable 2021.
Good People, let us discuss and debate with civility. Make your points and do not attack people. Those who are saying that Twitter ought NOT to have banned President Trump while he is a president have the rights to their opinions. The same applies to those who think otherwise. But calling names should stop please. Trump was the only person who made me vote for the first time in America; I campaigned and voted against him BIG time. He is a poor leader. Yet, banning him on Twitter while a President is not about Trump but about his office. I think that is WRONG. He is the Commander-in-Chief as we write, and he commands the land, air, sea, space, and bytes.
See what Twitter is doing to the @Potus handle. Since they cannot ban Potus which belongs to the American people, they are deleting his tweets. Is that not what we have proposed to Twitter? Embargo his tweets for 60 seconds and filter as necessary. We do that in Tekedia Forum; New York Times does it, and it is a common protocol.
Please you do not need to agree with those who think that Trump should not be banned, at least, while he is the big boss in the land. But respect that perspective. The other argument applies. I want people to keep coming to this digital square; let us not use hard words. Make your point and do not attack please.
Nigeria is one of the countries in Africa where the digital agriculture startups are evolving every year. The emergence is not strange to a number of public analysts and business minded people because the continent and the country cannot continue to play second fiddle in terms of modern agricultural practices. Available information reveals that Nigeria has more than 85 technology hubs, supporting development and growth of over 80 Agritech companies in the last decade.
The main aims of these Agritech companies have been significant improvements of the livelihood of smallholder farmers and encouraging those with sufficient money for investment to consider agriculture industry as one of the best areas to invest in. Outcomes of these objectives include food sufficiency and increase in the contribution of agriculture to the Gross Domestic Products in real and nominal values. As stated by one of the leading technology companies in the world, GSMA, Nigerian Agritech companies are offering services such as digital advisory and agri digital financial services (access to services), agri e-commerce and digital procurement (access to markets) and smart farming (access to assets).
From FarmCrowdy to Thrive Agric and a number of other brands, Nigerian farmers and investors deserve better products and services. This is one of the reasons these brands have strategic mission and vision statements. In the world of business development, these statements say a lot about how businesses see themselves in the short, medium and long time periods. Having a clear and communicated mission with the targeted customers and stakeholders makes value creation and sharing easier. A clear mission statement is the one that encompasses how people, products, processes and technologies would be used to create and share value proposition expressed in business model.
However, our examination of 34 Nigerian Agritech companies indicates that these elements [people, processes, products and technologies] are not stated [at first, second and third word levels] in all the mission statements of the brands available to our analyst. Only 20 brands have their mission and vision statements stated on their websites. According to our analyst, this has many implications. For instance, it would be difficult for customers and prospective investors to understand the value proposition from the mission statement indirectly. Analysis further shows that Thrive Agric, out of the 2o analysed brands, crafted its mission uniquely. The uniqueness of the statement lies with the fact that the company chooses words that resonate with the issues and needs in the industry. It also has 90 unique words, the highest from a total of 431 unique words employed by the brands.
Exhibit 1: Companies’ Ranking in Terms of Mission Statement Uniqueness
All the 20 companies do not have technology related words in their strategic mission statements. With this, our analyst notes that it would be practically impossible for stakeholders to believe these companies truly applying emerging technologies to solve issues and providing needs. It also suggests that the companies do not see technology related words as one of the strategies for attracting targeted publics.
From our analysis, it emerged that product as a core element appears at the second and third levels of dominant words in the mission statements, while process mostly appears at the third level. Analysis indicates that people as an element appears at first level than at other levels. Having people element in the first level implies that the brands prioritise people than other elements, which aligns with the fact that people are the heart of any business. Without people, processes cannot be formulated towards sustainable value creation and sharing.
Exhibit 2: Business Components Driven by Mission Statement
Our analyst examines public sentiments about Thrive Agric, with a view of revealing attitudinal dispositions towards the company’s processes, people and products. The statement that the company is making investment in agriculture seamless is explored along with the mission statement and views expressed by customers on online review community. In its bid of providing improved services and value to investors, Thrive Agric made a number of strategic decisions and choices between 2019 and 2020.
Despite this, customers believe that the company needs to work more on its value delivery, responses to investors’ plights, especially the payment of returns. Our analysis reveals that in the last six months, people were more negative than being positive to Thrive Agric’s value creation and delivery than in the last one year. More than 49% of 51 customers expressed negative feelings about the company, while 31.37% and 19.61% of the same number maintained positive inclinations and neutral views about the company respectively.
However, these feelings are blessings and issues for other brands. According to our analysis, positive sentiment towards Thrive Agric gives FarmKart and Payfarmer same sentiment. This does not lead to same sentiment for Farmfunded. When customers had negative feelings about how Thrive Agric is creating and delivering value, it leads to negative and absence of negative feelings for FarmKart and Payfarmer. Neutral dispositions towards Thrive Agric leads to neutral expressions towards Farmfunded.
