In this video, I explain how you can build an advisory business in Nigeria. If you have capabilities, there are many ways you can monetize them in the nation, across industrial sectors and markets. I have a list from own services.
IT Skill Capabilities Mapping
Digital Products (business model, strategy, growth)
Quarterly Report (max of 8 pages, summarizing key industry evolution, around your business, with how you can prepare)
IT Governance
IT Value Realization
IT Process Documentation
Center of Excellence (design, development, deployment, evaluation)
IT Product Conception and Launch (business model, strategy, growth)
IT Spend Planning
Data Consolidation
This video explains how you can grow your advisory practice.
Spatial Web is an evolving web computational environment that exists in three-dimensional space — a fusion of real and virtual realities — made possible by connected sensors and systems, and accessed and used through the amalgam of Virtual and Augmented Reality. Spatial web (or loosely Web 3.0) will enable the translation from physical reality to […]
I celebrate this photo. It was taken in my lab as a PhD student in the Johns Hopkins University. An alert had gone out that I had created something really awesome (the screen of the PC shows a layout of an integrated circuit or microchip). The chip had made it back from the foundry and test result was superb.
My advisor sent a note to the university IP team – a patent would be filed and the university asked the outside attorneys to come and interview me. I put on a tie and arrived in the lab, explaining the work.
Then, calls started. Intel Corp made an offer and a week later Analog Devices followed. I chose Analog Devices – joining 18 months later. ADI offered the opportunity to work on creating sensors for iPhone and iPad.
I worked on the accelerometers and engineered the company’s first wafer level chip scale package for inertial sensors (packaging integrated on silicon). Then CMU called.
This photo – opened many opportunities. I was on tie! That spirit has not changed – we continue to design and create in Zenvus, bringing new nexus on how electronics can improve farm yield. If you can, get a top-grade education: it liberates your mind.
Few weeks ago, someone was about awarding a contract to my firm to advise his foreign startup on market entry into West Africa. It was a midsize advisory deal but could lead to bigger projects. We were to produce a roadmap; they would execute. We spoke, and agreed. But within hours as they were going through approval, I discovered that we have a conflict I had not known. I quickly wrote the firm to withdraw explaining that we would be unable to serve it. Certainly, the founder was not happy but was genuinely thankful.
Today, through his effort Zenvus would not be paying Amazon Web Services bill for years. This man went ahead and made introductions, linking me with managers in Amazon, offering kind words. Unbelievable kindness for a man I derailed his entry into West Africa (on principles) and certainly cannot even discuss his plan anymore.
Email from AWS to Zenvus
As they told me many years ago in Diamond Bank training school: do not deplete your Trust Bank. Yes, that is the most critical skill in modern business. In this blog, some customers come here and pay more than the $20 per year subscription. I’d told my team to follow up with them to be sure it was not an error with Paypal or their bank. In all cases, they just want to support this blog (more on that in a blog this weekend).
We have noticed that most readers pay above our quoted subscription rate for Tekedia
In business, I evaluate people on three metrics: Trust (25%), Energy and Hardworking (15%) and Result (60%). Interestingly, you cannot get great Results without Trust. Trust means partners, suppliers, customers, colleagues etc have confidence in what you do or promise to do. There is no greater skill than Trust as you build. That mindset will expand your scale as the cedars of Lebanon.
That’s where interpersonal intelligence plays a great role, and you do not get trusted by mere invitation or wishful thinking, it must be earned. Interestingly, people have different metrics to measure or calibrate trust, so you must be able to demonstrate your competence in this all important skill called TRUST, by passing the tests, without even knowing when they were/are set.
Humans connect with their hearts, not heads, so for there to be trust, relationship is precedence. It is not science, and therefore does not follow a well defined methodology; but when you demonstrate brilliance and competence, men and women are likely to have faith in you.
Again, going by your story, it’s very clear that one must stand for something, else you fall for anything. With discipline laced with sound ethics, and abiding principles; it would be difficult for anyone not to trust you, all it takes then it’s to have a word with you.
That Trust Bank needs constant recapitalization and consolidation, especially in these trying times, when many people struggle to remember their identities. And when you have earned that trust from so many people, you are barred from misbehaving for the rest of your life; that’s the little price you pay in return.
In one of the Champion League games yesterday, Manchester City star Raheem Sterling tripped over himself (not diving) as he was about to shoot. The referee awarded penalty to Man City, and the shooter scored. They ended up winning 6-0 against Shakhtar Donetsk.
Watching the clip, it was not a good moment for FIFA’s Fair Play. There are moments in life when it makes sense not to win (here, score) because you have no reason to win. Yes, the best result is NO WIN – of course, it is easier written than done! That a striker clearly tripped himself, and was mistakenly awarded a penalty would have been a moment for someone in Man City bench to pass a message: pass that ball to the goalkeeper; do not score.
Sure, you may say it is football (yes soccer). But we face such decisions in business. You have tripped and yet your opponent was punished because of your mistake. WIN-WIN for any industry will not have any meaning unless someone can shoot that penalty away. Get me right – I am not saying it is easy but it would have been a moment if Pep Guardiola, the coach of Man City, had asked his men to pass the ball to the goalkeeper.
Yet, there may be a good outcome from this: UEFA may be shopping for video replay systems which it has resisted. FIFA is smiling because when you pay men state budgets to run around fields, you must ensure the calls are right.
What you see play out in football pitches isn’t different from how most humans live their lives, a complete departure from what almost everyone professes to hold in high regard.
One of the most overused words you hear from businesses, corporations or institutions is ‘values’, but when the moments to demonstrate the much vaunted values, men and women either grow dumb or become invisible, suddenly. Yes, almost all sporting institutions profess and harp on fair play, but somewhat cannot protest, when an unjust goal, penalty or foul is awarded in their favour. We can argue that it’s just football, but there are people whose happiness and life-savings are on the line, depending on what a referee chooses to do; they do not seem to matter…
We see same in corporations and businesses of all kinds: after all the talk about corporate governance, ethics and values, there are still rampant cases of sexual harassment/assaults, with the subsequent cover-ups; because we all care about reputation than HUMANITY, and life goes on.
There are too many bad behaviours all over the place, whether we wear suit/babaringa; our art of telling lies and countless cover-ups haven’t changed.
Every bad call affects someone, we must pay attention to that.
