2011 Ink Fellows Program

THE INK CONFERENCE, in associated with TED, is an annual conference that aims to fuel innovation and foster knowledge by bringing together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers from a range of disciplines such as art, design, science, social entrepreneurship, sports and technology.

INK 2010 featured Speakers such as science educator and innovator Arvind Gupta, filmmaker James Cameron, founder of Wired magazine Kevin Kelly, design guru Philippe Starck, and anti-trafficking activist Sunitha Krishnan.

THE INK FELLOWS PROGRAM will recruit 20 young innovators to attend the INK 2011 Conference in Jaipur, India, December 8th – 11th, 2011.

For further information, visit http://bit.ly/pNVpwK

Call for Entries for the 7th Annual Energy Management Awards - Innovation Category

The Kenya Association of Manufacturers invites companies, institutions and individuals to participate in the innovation category of the 7th Annual Energy Management Awards.

For more information, visit http://bit.ly/fCYXOv

Dell Social Innovation Competition

The Dell Social Innovation Competition has been launched jointly by the University of Texas and Dell for college students around the world who want to improve areas of critical human need through innovation.

If you have a groundbreaking idea in mind or if you can mobilize people and resources to affect wide-ranging, scalable social change with your fortitude and personality, then you can submit your idea for the competition.

For more information, visit http://bit.ly/ft7Y8Y

Only innovation makes the leap from poverty to prosperity

A fascinating post on The Curious Capitalist blog, titled “Escaping the middle-income trap” offers valuable advice to government policy makers when planning for economic development. Kenya’s Vision 2030 proposes to make the economy a middle income country; but what happens when that is attained and the time comes to make the leap to a truly world class high-income economy?

Taking the example of Malaysia and comparing it with South Korea, the writer posits that only innovation will enable a country to break out of the trap and make the big leap to high per capita economy. In fact the writer goes so far as to say that it is easier for a country to make it to the middle income level than it is to transition into the big high income league:

"The concept behind the “middle-income trap” is quite simple: It's easier to rise from a low-income to a middle-income economy than it is to jump from a middle-income to a high-income economy. That's because when you're really poor, you can use your poverty to your advantage. Cheap wages makes a low-income economy competitive in labor-intensive manufacturing (apparel, shoes and toys, for example). Factories sprout up, creating jobs and increasing income ..."

However akin to an engine running on its own momentum, this model of high growth starts to plateau with competitiveness rising as well as labour costs of the highly educated and skilled workforce. Thus the “trap.”

And apart from lowering the entry barriers into business, it is more vital that economies begin to innovate. So not only should technocrats focus on consolidating business licences, reducing taxes and other barriers to enterprise; innovation should be actively promoted. At YIPE we call this the W.A.R factor:

• Promoting Willingness: a scenario where financial institutions recognise the value of new technologies and entrepreneurs are willing to take risks in order to innovate;
• Promoting the entrepreneur’s Ability: by providing a platform where entrepreneurs can grow their social capital by networking amongst other institutional challenges; and
• Facilitating Resource transfer: by lowering the information asymmetry faced in access to credit and technical knowledge.

Read Escaping the middle-income trap here >>>>

Lessons on entrepreneurship and innovation from Brazil

Yesterday’s Sunday Standard had an article written by Prof. Anyang’ Nyong’o, Minister for Medical Services on why Kenya needs a science and technology driven economy to thrive. Coming at the back drop of Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s visit to Kenya, the article raises several points for why Brazil is a major emerging economy,  and which Prof. Nyong’o posits is due to the Brazilian government prioritising innovation as a major development concern. In turn he states that policies regarding technology as well as scientific societies need to be mainstreamed into Kenya’s national development.

However probably as a result of column space, a reader could maybe assume that making the public sector friendlier to technology change is all that is required. That ensuring adequate public resources are directed into science and technology will firmly put Kenya on the trajectory to become the middle income economy envisaged in Vision 2030. But that ignores the human aspect.

Brazil has placed emphasis on it's SME sector which accounts, just like Kenya for the majority of jobs and businesses in the economy. Indeed, according to an article on the Kaufman Institute for Entrepreneurship’s website titled Brazil’s Entrepreneurship Boom, the increase in new companies in Brazil has been linked with the country’s developing entrepreneurial culture and mindset. Each year this has been demonstrated by the number of participants in Global Entrepreneurship Week which increased from 1.5 million entrepreneurs in 2008 to 5.3 million in 2009.

And even though the country’s listing on the ease of doing business index has recorded similar challenges as Kenya in terms of high tax rates; as well as having structural impediments such as an education system that does not engender financial literacy, Brazil’s entrepreneurship development policy is strikingly different in that it focuses on promoting high-growth ventures as opposed to Kenya’s policy of just creating enterprises with the hopes that they will one day be able to create jobs.

This has meant that Brazil’s high impact intervention has brought about more immediate impacts on the economy, than the more laid back approach of just creating ventures with little regard for growth.

Similar to Kenya where according to the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, there are 2.5 million unemployed youth and barely 125,000 are absorbed into the formal sector annually; young people in Brazil aged between 18 and 24 years account for 36% of the country’s unemployed. Nevertheless, lessons learned on Brazil’s focus on innovation as well as the promotion of an entrepreneurial spirit does give hope that indeed Kenya could just be on a positive path to Vision 2030, come the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Disclosing Non-Disclosure

Yesterday a workshop was held by the ICT Board at the University of Nairobi’s Chiromo campus to discuss their Digital Content and Software Applications Grants. The grants have two categories that Kenyan participants can enter:

• Government information portal: to develop solutions and products that exploit mobile and web technology in the delivery of government information or services, and 
• Private sector content and applications: to develop innovative solutions and products that exploit mobile and web technology in the delivery of information, entertainment or services 

The venue was packed to capacity with entrepreneurs seeking to find out how their projects could benefit from this Kshs. 300 Million grant facility that is aimed at promoting the development of local digital content and software applications.

After discussing modalities regarding applications and eligibility amongst other grant criteria, one of the contentious issues that emerged was the intellectual property protection for the grant applicant’s projects.

Some participants expressed concern that even if they are not selected, their software could be used by unscrupulous people. However, one way that emerged to mitigate this was a suggestion that non-disclosure agreements could be included in the application supporting documents, if not on the online template.

Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), also known as confidentiality agreements, or proprietary information agreements are legal contracts between at least two parties to protect non-public business information.

With the ICT Board grant form not providing for NDAs, another suggested way of intellectual  property protection was through the use of patents, copyrights and trademarks. Some participants nevertheless raised the point that the triumvirate of IP protection tools were expensive and beyond the reach of small entrepreneurs. However, a lawyer who gave a short presentation advised that in fact the cost of registering copyrights was Kshs. 600 (US$ 7.40) - not as punitive as earlier thought.

Copyrights, patents and trademarks provide innovators with exclusive rights, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt their work. These intellectual property rights also give the owners the right to commence legal proceedings to prevent unauthorized use of their innovation.

The discussion then veered onto how an entrepreneur engaging a large corporation could protect their idea from being exploited. However the unequal relationship power balance means that even though an entrepreneur may ask a corporate to sign an NDA, they do have the option of refusal. Many entrepreneurs have done away with their NDAs only to see their projects being used by the same companies they approached. In Kenya, there is also the problem of the time and expense it takes to pursue court cases which also act as a deterrence when seeking out the IP rights and protection.

The ICT Board could take up this issue to sensitise the private sector on the ethical sense of respecting the hard work of entrepreneurs. In the meantime, we will protect our innovations the best we can.

Sage Kenya, Promoting Entrepreneurship Where it Matters the Most

SAGE Kenya is a country chapter of the Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship, a global community of teenage entrepreneurs sharing a common purpose. Started in 2009, Sage Kenya’s mission is to help create the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders whose innovations and social enterprises address the world’s major unmet needs.

Much of Sage Kenya’s work is currently within Western Kenya preparing students for success in college and in the competitive global community by linking them to role models from  Maseno and Great Lakes Universities.

SAGE Kenya has also worked with high schools within Kisumu East and West District to inculcate the culture of entrepreneurship among students by assisting them to set up model entrepreneurial projects.

The organization also has a mentorship programme working with university and polytechnics to assign one to two student mentors to each high school to assist participating schools to prepare for district competitions. This opportunity provides the students with a platform to develop their problem solving, opportunity-seeking and informed risk-taking entrepreneurial acumen that will be of use in starting their own commercial or social ventures in the future.

Current projections are that SAGE Kenya will be instrumental in creating between 100 to 400 more new entrepreneurial ventures annually.

During a recent competition, students from various schools presented ventures that included:

• Agriculture: a solar anti-ripening machine made from local materials such as polythene bags. 
• Health: a student design team presented a demonstration kit that educates the youth on the effect of nicotine to the lungs. This model is now being used by the Drug Abuse Campaign in Kenya. 
• Technology: a solar water purifier has been developed . 
• Food security: a Hydroponic Cultivation system has been developed using designed Shade nets that use old mosquito nets and local tree poles that reduce the cost of pest control among farmers. 
• E-Government: some student have developed a central database system that can be adopted by the Government to have all the government operations in and a central system. 
• Eco-Energy: using Jatropha as alternative source of energy, some students have developed a model plantation for a jatropha seed nursery. 
• Recycling: some students have started to sell curio product made from water hyacinth which is a nuisance from the Lake Victoria.

The timing for a programmes like SAGE Kenya cannot be better, and the organization is lobbying the government to make the education system more relevant and rigorous whilst at the same time promoting an entrepreneurial culture amongst students.

Indeed SAGE Kenya’s approach is a “pattern-changing idea to practical innovation”. The emphasis on the practical, scalable and cost-effective shows that it is a progressive organization that teaches students to create sustainable profits and more jobs for their peers.