The protests for racial justice following the death of George Floyd, an African-American who died in the hands of the police in Minneapolis weeks ago, have weighed the business policies of Facebook on the scale of morality.

The social media giant has come under intense pressure from companies and individuals to rein in hateful content or risk being boycotted. Facebook came under severe criticism after it allowed Donald Trump’s “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” response to the protests to stay on. The CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the statement, though it has racial connotation, did not violate Facebook policies, whereas on Twitter, Trump was flagged for posting the same message.

The incident has drawn wide condemnation, from Facebook staff to companies and individuals who buy ads from the social media platform, and thus puts a question mark on what matters more to Mr. Zuckerberg between morality and money.

In the past week, more companies like Patagonia, The North Face, Ben & Jerry’s and REI have joined the Stop Hate campaign organized by civil rights groups, and some other companies are changing names with racist hints to reflect the new antiracial message.

Facebook has over the years, asserted for itself enormous influence on people around the world, using its over 2 billion population. But that has also made it a powerful weapon at the disposal of hate mongers, a situation civil rights groups have been trying to remedy before it gets out of hand.

The groups, the ADL, NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense, have held private meetings with Mr. Zuckerberg for years on how to improve the way the platform handles racist, bigoted, white supremacist and other contents of extremism.

While there was no deal, the group is using ‘ad boycott’ in the wake of racial justice rallies to force Facebook to change its stance on racist, bigoted and violent posts, thanks to the credence from George Floyd protests.

“I think the country is reckoning with this legacy of systemic racism in a way that it hadn’t before. You see this playing out in the public square and it seems to be playing out in political arena. That environment, I think, creates the conditions in which this advertising pause has so much appeal,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) told The Hill in an interview.

The groups launched a campaign last week calling on advertisers to boycott Facebook in July. They are demanding that Facebook create a threshold for ham, so that users facing threats and harassment can speak to an employee, and that it develops an internal mechanism for removing ads labeled as misinformation, and also a system for flagging content in private groups.

The campaign has drawn support from over 100 companies pledging to stop buying ads on Facebook and Instagram. Outwear companies Eddie Bauer and Arc’teryx and web browsing company, Mozilla, shipping company Local Postal, film distributor Magnolia Pictures and global freelancing platform Upwork, Unilever, Verizon, Lending Club, etc have all joined the campaign.

The CEO of Upwork Hayden Brown said they are joining the campaign because they can’t stand and watch the message of hate become a norm on social media.

“As the world largest on-demand remote talent platform, we are committed to building a safe and inclusive space for companies and professionals. We cannot stand by and be complicit to or complacent about the spread of hate, racism, and misinformation, and that is why we are supporting the Stop Hate for profit advocacy campaign,” he said.

More companies are joining the movement to force Facebook to yield to their demand. Facebook said earlier it would respect the decision of any company that joined the campaign and will continue to work with concerned advertisers in effort to rid the platform of hate speech.

Facebook has massive ad revenue that stood at $70 billion in 2019, and a one-month boycott will do little or no harm to its ad-based revenue that experts said would likely increase despite the scourge of coronavirus. However, the campaign is already forcing Facebook to mend the rules.

On Friday, Mr. Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is changing its policies to address hate speech. Under the new policies, the social media platform will ban ads that claim people from a specific race, ethnicity, nationality, caste, gender, sexual orientation or immigration are a threat to the physical safety or health of anybody else.

“I am committed to making sure Facebook remains a place where people can use their voice to discuss important issues. But I also stand against hate or anything that incites violence or suppresses voting, and we’re committed to removing that content too, no matter where it comes from,” he said.

Mr. Zuckerberg said henceforth, Facebook will protect immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees from ads that suggest that they are inferior to other nationalities or groups. And that will also apply to ads that express contempt, dismissal or disgust directed at them.

Facebook’s stock went down 6% on Friday. It is not clear if the #StopHateForProfit Movement is going to halt its plan to boycott ads in July, following the announcement of these new policies.

Adopting an innovation requires a change of mindset. A change in mindset means leaving the world’s current way of doing things or system to an upgraded one, because an innovation must solve a problem in a more efficient and effective way than an old system.

That was the story behind the invention of the motor car industry. It was in 1886 when sir Carl Benz invented the three wheeled motor car and subsequently four wheeled coach without the usual horse driver. But, the people of that time were reluctant to adopt the new invention because they did not see the obvious reasons to do so.

Something dramatic had to take place. Bertha Carl, the wife of this inventor, had to develop a market strategy that will solve this adoption puzzle. The marketing strategies succeeded. That was how the motor car was adopted by the people of those days and the industry was born.

As at 2019, the market worth of the motor car industry is $398.58 billion, Busineswire reported.

According to Statista, the total sales and production of 2019 are 91.3m and 92m respectively. That was when the innovation of the motor car was complete, when the users accepted it and started using the value in exchange for money.

The focus of this analysis is to know the processes it takes for an innovation or invention to be complete.

What Business Experts Say About Innovation and Market

To do that we shall start by looking at the hypothesis of some business experts on the subject of innovation.

• The Third law of value states that the value of a product is determined when it undergoes a market test –  When money is exchanged for the value. This was stated by Progress Ibrahim in the book “3S Rules”.  Innovation =f(Market Test).
• Prof. Nduibisi Ekweke stated in the ongoing Tekedia Mini MBA that, Innovation is simply invention plus commercialization. Innovation =: invention + commercialization.

• Peter Drucker states that innovation (I) and marketing (M) are what makes money (P) for a business, others are cost ©: (P=I+M-C).

These principles pointed out the fact that innovation becomes useful market friction solutions when it is accepted and used by the market. But, what are the processes of making an innovation complete?

 Processes to Develop a Complete Innovation

I will explain four phases in making an innovation complete from the idea to the final product.

 Business Model phase.

In order not to invent what the market does not need, it is very crucial you develop a business model for the idea that is behind the innovation. Ideas and imaginations are good but most ideas are not strategic enough to move the market forces.

So the business model is the architecture of every business. It will help you to thoroughly consider the value propositions of the proposed innovation. It will help you to build the most suitable revenue models for such innovation and it will help you to connect the innovation to the market target.

 Invention phase

This is the second phase of an innovation. This is where with the help of the model, you designed the right framework for the proposed innovation.

This is where the engineering designs and the technical works of the innovation will come in. This is where you add layers and flesh to the idea to make it come to life but should be guided by the model.

 MVP and Marketing phase

The MVP is the minimum viable product(MVP) of a new product or an innovation in the market. It is usually like a beta version of the full and complete product, with fewer features.

The essence of the MVP is to test the business model behind the innovation. It is to test if the hypothesis of the innovation is valid or invalid by knowing if the market accepts it or not through feedback from users.

To do this you need a marketing strategy for the MVP. Marketing is the process of taking a product to the people that need it even when they know and they don’t know they need it.

Complete Product phase

Let assume that the product or innovation was accepted in the MVP phase, that is there is value in the new product. It also shows that there is a market for the new product. At this phase, the product can now be launched to the market as a complete innovation, that is having complete features.

On the other hand, when the MVP fails the market test, then there is a need to tweak the innovation for another test.

To develop an innovation that has value is to develop an innovation that is accepted and used by the market and which the market is willing to exchange money for.

It is a cost effective approach that business owners,entrepreneurs and innovators should use when introducing new product lines or new business ideas into their business.

It is only the market that has the power to know if your invention is an innovation or not, until then it is not yet an innovation but an idea.

The only thing stopping a lot of men from checking the paternity of their children is the cost of the test. Somehow, DNA tests have become the order of the day. Some men look at their lovely children and wonder if they are their biological fathers. This is both hilarious and scary.

While in secondary school, I believed that DNA tests only existed in Biology textbook, notebook, exam question paper and exam script. I knew then that there was something called DNA and another one called RNA. But what they actually mean has never been my concern. My only interest then was to pass my Biology exams. But today, every Tom, Dick and Harry knows about the DNA test because the world is beginning to question the fidelity of wives.

It is quite funny that all of a sudden men decided to ensure that the children that bear their names are actually theirs biologically. It may be necessary if these men should go home and ask if they belong to their fathers. Maybe when they do this, they will understand the damaging effects of demanding for their children’s paternity tests.

Of course I know that none of the men dragging their children and wives to hospitals for this test will be courageous enough to ask of their own status.

I know some people will say that I stand against men checking their children’s paternity because I am a woman. No problem. Any woman that kicks against this has been tagged with several vile names. Both men and women waste no time to tell her that she is unfaithful to her husband and is, therefore, unsure of her children’s father. Hence, she fights against paternity tests to protect her crimes. Well, that still won’t change the fact that opting for that test, when it is not needed to sort out legal issues, is damaging.

Damaging Effects of Demanding for a Child’s Paternity Test

The effects of this act will be considered under its effect on the child, the wife and the man.

• Effects on the Child

No child will want to hear that the man he calls “Father” is questioning whether he has the right to call him such a name. You can imagine the psychological trauma that child will pass through when he finds out that his father once questioned his paternity. It is untrue to say that the child won’t know because he will definitely understand later that the sample collected from him at a particular time in his life was because his father needed a piece to decide whether to provide for him or not. Believe me, a lot of people ignore their fathers these days because they, their fathers, once questioned their paternity. Men that made this mistake regret it at their old age, when they realise that it takes more than mere sperm donation to have a child. Unfortunately, the cycle is repeating, showing that the future will produce more adults that hate their fathers.

• Effects on Wife

No woman takes joy in proving her innocence. The fact that their husbands suspect them of infidelity breaks them. For the rest of their lives, they will always talk about their husbands’ suspicion and accusations. It is inconsolable. So when women kick against their husbands asking for their children’s DNA testing, it may not be because they have something to hide but because of the reason behind it. It is an act of betrayal, and no one wants to be betrayed. And when a woman is betrayed, it is hard to say what she will do next.

• Effects on Men

Sometimes I wonder what these men that spend their hard earned money on their children’s paternity test pass through. Do they have sleepless nights, wondering if the woman lying beside them cheated on them? Do they look at their children with fear that they may not be theirs? Or do they look at them with looting, hoping that the test will give them a reason to kick them out of their lives? These men obviously placed themselves at tight corners. No wonder we hear of the ones that kill their wives and children because a piece of paper told them so. Truth is, any man that looks at the lovely children in his home and wonder if they deserve him, actually doesn’t deserve those children. In fact, those children should be taken away from him even if DNA tests declare him as their biological father.

You know, the Igbo culture isn’t stupid to declare every child born in a man’s household as his. Obviously the forefathers must have seen the damaging effects of questioning a child’s paternity and, therefore, declared that every man must inherit a child born for him (including the ones born by his unmarried daughters). It is time we stop westernising family lives and think of how to bring back our culture because it is there to protect us.

But like I stated earlier, any man that still wants to conduct DNA testing for his children, should be courageous enough to question his own paternity. Let the golden rule apply here. If you would have been happy that your father questioned your paternity, then go ahead and question that of your children. Remember not to complain when the monster you created comes back to haunt you.