Is innovation only about creating radically, revolutionarily new knowledge and tools or is it also about taking common and mundane knowledge and tools and applying them in radically, revolutionarily new ways, ways that are also embarrassingly and elegantly simple? Indeed isn’t the latter view of the meaning of innovation even more exhilarating than the former view of the meaning of innovation because of the way the latter view amazes, dazzles by extracting exceptional, revolutionary, innovative and simple accomplishments, achievements from common and mundane knowledge and tools? The TED Talk, which is furnished by Shapshak (2013) and presented below, underscores and illustrates the idea that the latter view of the meaning of innovation is both legitimate and more impressive.
Shapshak also discussed what he termed “real problems” (when he mentioned that, unlike innovators elsewhere, innovators in Africa are addressing or solving “real problems”) – this evidently suggests that he opines that some problems are actually not “real” problems, i.e., problems that don’t really matter, problems that are merely trivial, problems that are not very significant. In order to determine the utility of a solution, whether or not such a solution is innovative, it will be useful to define a metric, which can be used to evaluate the utility of various solutions – this way, we will be able to see how some solutions are superior, objectively speaking, to other solutions. The examples in the following paragraph clarify what Shapshak probably meant by “real” problems, in comparison to those problems that are actually not “real” problems.
For example, on the one hand, some of the contributions of the innovative SMS-based solutions that Shapshak discusses include very critical, crucial solutions – e.g., solutions that are life-saving, greatly income-expanding, dramatically, drastically security-ensuring, etc. – while, on the other hand, some of the contributions of traditional innovative smart phone solutions may include less significant achievements and solutions – e.g., merely luxury-granting solutions, solutions that furnish merely marginal improvements (over previous similar solutions), etc. It can be quite reasonably argued that the former examples of solutions are, objectively, superior to the latter examples of solutions. The foregoing former examples appear to be what Shapshak describes as innovation out of necessity and they would be the innovations that he referred to as solutions to “real” problems – Shashak describes such innovation out of necessity, which is the kind of innovation in and from Africa, as the purest form of innovation.
Shapshak also discusses another way of comparing innovations from Africa vs. other innovations, namely: Solutions that are extremely simple, to the point of appearing “primitive” vs. solutions that are overly complex, more intractable and more cumbersome, with inferior usability; he does this by, for example, challenging his listeners to evaluate and judge whether the “liberation” of the credit/debit card from the Point Of Sale (POS) terminal, by the replacement of these POS terminals with the “square” device (which is plugged into a smart phone and at which these cards may also be swiped), is more innovative than simply getting rid of the cards in the first place and completing transactions by making payments via sending simple, “primitive” SMSs.
In addition to Africans innovating to address “real” problems, Shapshak mentions that African innovations also rank – at least one African innovation ranks – as among the most useful, not only to the African population, but to the global population as well; for example, he claims that one African innovation, i.e., pay-as-you-go (a.k.a. prepaid mobile phone), just like franchising, is one of the most dominant forces of economic activity in the world. Furthermore, in addition to SMS-based innovations, Shapshak mentions other innovations that have emerged from Africa; these innovations include (1) The aforementioned pay-as-you-go (2) The dolos, which is used by the global shipping industry – he claims that the global shipping economy would not be possible without the dolos (3) Nontraditional solar and wind power technologies, one of which employs very primitive components and approaches (4) Disruptive technologies in the global automobile industry and (5) Technologies that could get humans to the planet Mars. By devising, crafting various innovations from Africa, Shapshak explains that these innovations eventually get to address problems everywhere else on the planet (and not only in Africa alone), for the benefit of humans everywhere else on the planet.
Pictures/maps of the earth, which are taken from space at night, show Africa to be very poorly-lit during the night-time, in comparison to other continents on the globe. Shapshak argues that, rather than for one to brand Africa as the “dark continent,” based on these night-time maps/pictures, one should construe that, on the one hand, the well-lit parts of the planet are not those areas where innovation is happening and, on the other hand, the poorly-lit parts of the planet are actually those areas where innovation is happening; this, Shapshak explains, is because (1) The greater the level of innovation a society attains, the less there are more innovations to be attained and vice versa – one can say that, the greater the level of innovation a society attains, the greater the level of innovation “saturation” in the society and (2) When innovation “saturates” a society, the people in such a society tend to indulge in the luxuries afforded by these copious innovations than they tend to be driven, by unmet needs, to seek to innovate – one can imagine and argue that the converse is also true.
Two forces, which can impact (either positively or negatively) the innovation idea discussed in Shapshak (2013) are legal and political forces. The fact that legal systems in Africa are very weak can militate against the successful perpetuation of these innovations in and from Africa. Regarding the political force, the political environment in Africa is rife with crises and instability; this can greatly militate against, rather than facilitate, the progress of these African innovations. The converse arguments are also valid – i.e., strong legal systems as well as stable political environments in Africa will facilitate, rather than mitigate against, the progress of innovations in and from Africa.
Shapshak concludes by opining that, while innovation elsewhere is “innovation at the edge,” innovation in and from Africa is “innovation over the edge.”
References
Shapshak, T. (2013). You don’t need an app for that. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/toby_shapshak_you_don_t_need_an_app_for_that
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (2014). Dolos. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolos
