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Due to the setup of the new brand paid service - VIP-Membership/
VIP-Lounge - and the heavy
workload that it implies, the periodicity
of the free access magazine - Africabiz
Online Current - had been extended from a monthly
delivery to quarterly dispatch. Click
here for more
Routine
Can Be Lethal To Business Development
By
Dr. Bienvenu-Magloire Quenum
Peter Drucker, the late Management Guru wrote:
"Long Range Planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future
of present decisions."
As stated
earlier,
the abrupt cessation of service by a feed provider forced us to take action,
as quickly as possible, to find alternative solutions.
This was done leading to the complete lifting and upgrading of the existing free
access website and the preparation for the new brand paid service VIP-Membership/VIP
Lounge, which services and scope
go far beyond the free
access website and his flagship Opportunities Section. click
here for more about VIP-Membership
And now, looking back just three months ago, we think it was a good thing
that the then unique and sole feed provider let us down without notice.
Indeed, as
far as the unique feed provider was delivering, we keep on doing business as
usual, having our weekly in-house and video conference with team of collaborators
worldwide - the way of the
so-called New Economy; making Long Range Planning
based on existing working procedures and adopted/chosen "obsolete" technology
(see the quote from Peter Drucker at the beginning of this article), missing
a lot about Web 2.0 and not keeping abreast of innovation in the field.
The "disappearance" of the then sole unique feed provider revealed
flaws that exist hidden in our business model and opened up our eyes about the
fact we were deep into routine, not taking into account the ever evolving technology.
In brief, we discovered that we were not paying enough attention to innovation.
We realized that, sooner or later, certainly sooner than we were aware of, we
were heading for the wall.
- Quick Definitions of Routine and Innovation
The term innovation may refer to both radical and incremental
changes in thinking, procedure, processes, managerial practices and or in services.
In the organizational context, innovation may be linked to performance and growth
through improvements in efficiency, productivity, quality, competitive positioning
and market share. Etc
According to the free
dictionary by Farlex, routine can be defined as follows.
1. A prescribed, detailed course of action to be followed regularly; a standard
procedure.
2. A set of customary and often mechanically performed procedures or activities.
3. In Computer Science: A set of programming instructions designed to perform
a specific limited task.
|
- We Were Routinely Managing the Business
So we discovered we were deeply involved
in routine precisely as described above by the free dictionary by Farlex. We
discovered that we were following same procedures of coding, formatting and
publishing the free access
newsletter, month after month for 11 years running
- starting from 1997.
Feverish working hours and research for new alternatives make us aware of the
formidable changes brought about by Web 2.0. And we discovered that we have
accumulated quantities of data, documents and projects that were not exploited,
because the free access business model was not the right platform to expose
them to the audience.
Now, with the brainstorming, the lifting of the site,
the updating of coding we clearly saw the picture and decided to setup
a paid membership service,
that will co-exist with the free access website that is running since 11 years.
- Innovation Is A Necessity. But Controlled Innovation
Past three months activities were
practical lessons about innovation, that demonstrated it is an absolute necessity
to submit, from time to time, a business model to deep scrutiny - like
a medical body checkup - to see if the model is still capable of driving the
business upward.
We realized a business needs to be shook up from time to time - under pressure
from external events/causes or deliberately shaken up by "provoked" internal
events/ decisions, to force management and staff search for better ways to improving
productivity, business efficiency and keep on with the developing pace,
to confront the competitors and survive.
Now, the decision had been made that each member of the team should dedicate
up to one hour of his daily time to check the evolution in his field of expertise -
whatever maybe the workload and urgency of problems waiting to be solved. And
to circulate findings to other members of the team.
Further, each member of the team is required to make proposal(s) about "changes" he
feels may improve productivity to be discussed by all members -
during the monthly staff meeting or video conferences.
- How To Benchmark Productivity Gains Resulting
From Innovation?
Our move from routine to "permanent" shake up and innovation was made
easier because we are a small business team of seven people working at the main
office - plus twenty others scattered around the world. It had been an easy task
to coordinate the effort and input of everybody thanks to the
Internet.
You can imagine, however, the resulting chaos and nightmare if existing procedures
and working patterns are suddenly reshuffled and radically changed in a company.
This will, doubtless, create a period of uncertainty, a less-productivity's
gap and frustration among the staff who may be at lost with the new "innovative"
managerial and organizational system. In few words, the
innovation process can be disruptive. That is why innovation should
be undertaken with care and under the strict control of the management.
In brief, a key challenge in innovation is maintaining a balance between old
way and new way, in order not to disrupt the organizational structure of the
company to such an extent that productivity suffers and efficiency drops to a
low level that threatens the bottom line. This is easier to say than
done.
Hence the absolute necessity to have management tools that could assist assessing
the productivity gain and value added resulting from innovation. In order to
see, as quickly as possible, if the company is heading the wrong way or not,
and change course if necessary.
Two UK organizations, dedicated to strategic studies about innovation had developed
tools to assess the results gain through innovation.
So, now Africabiz
Online is moving a step further in the voyage undertaken 11 years ago to better
assist and service the international community of investors and African businesspeople,
companies and government agencies to efficiently trade and invest in and out
48 sub-Saharan African countries.
VIP
LOUNGE
VIP
MEMBERS
ENTER |
Starting from end of September/ beginning of October 2008, the
new brand paid VIP-Membership/VIP-Lounge will come live - in
addition to the existing free access services: The quarterly delivered
magazine - with its flagship "Opportunities
Section" and the permanent Africabiz
Online Global - which exposes regularly updated newsfeeds and videos
(some times hourly and at least once per day or weekly) about news, events,
reports and strategic studies.
Stay tune to Africabiz Online and register to the
VIP-Membership when available, to take advantage of wealth
of information, data, documents, projects and reports - that would be streaming
daily into the VIP-Lounge - to assist you being part of the profit-ride
in Africa: "the only
virgin investment territory left over in the whole world to grabbing double
digit growth rates on vested money".
About the author: Dr.
Bienvenu-Magloire Quenum is the principal/
managing director of Dr. Quenum & Associates, IBC. He is an experienced Investment & Business
Planner with 25 years consulting practice in African countries. He is the
editor in chief of Africabiz Online
| MORE ON ROUTINE & INNOVATION |
1- Innovation:
The Five Disciplines
for Creating What Customers Want
by Curtis R. Carlson and William W. Wilmot (Hardcover - Aug 8, 2006)
2- Innovation
to the Core:
A Blueprint for Transforming the Way Your Company Innovates
by Peter Skarzynski and Rowan Gibson (Hardcover - Mar 18, 2008)
3- The
Art of Innovation:
Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm
by Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman, Tom Peters, and Tom Peters (Hardcover
- Jan 16, 2001)
4- The
New Age of Innovation:
Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks
by C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan (Hardcover - April 8, 2008)
5- The
Ten Faces of Innovation:
IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity
Throughout Your Organization
by Thomas Kelley and Jonathan Littman (Hardcover - Oct 18, 2005)
6- Diffusion
of Innovations, 5th Edition
by Everett M. Rogers and Everett Rogers (Paperback - Aug 16, 2003) |
7- Innovation
Nation:
How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We
Can Do to Get It Back
by John Kao (Hardcover - Oct 2, 2007)
8- Disrupting
Class:
How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns
by Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn (Hardcover
- May 14, 2008)
9- The
Myths of Innovation
by Scott Berkun (Paperback - May 8, 2008)
10- Making
Innovation Work:
How to Manage It, Measure It, and Profit from It
by Tony Davila, Marc J. Epstein, and Robert Shelton (Hardcover - Aug
1, 2005)
11- Harvard
Business Review on Innovation
by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael Overdorf, Ian MacMillan, and Rita
McGrath (Paperback - Jun 15, 2001)
12- Innovation
and Entrepreneurship
Peter F. Drucker (Paperback - May 9, 2006) |
"CONTRIBUTOR'S
GUIDELINES" are
available here.
We invite you to contribute to AFRICABIZ ONLINE MONTHLY ISSUE -
with articles related to "How Africa Could Bridge The Developing
Gap".
| Your
feedback / objection / contribution is welcome. Visit WorldWide
BizCenter,
and choose General
Information (as topic) to
create a thread for discussion. On the top of the WorldWide BizCenter page,
there is a HELP link to assist you making an efficient
use of the discussion board. This
link also is useful |
Many
thanks for subscribing to Africabiz. See you here on October 15, 2008.
Dr.
B.M. Quenum
Click for email address
|
Visiting
African countries "traditional" marketplace, one can see open-air butcher stalls
(as per picture at the left side of the paragraph) swamped by flies. This enables
bacteria to be transmitted that boost micro-organisms proliferation, degrade
meat nutritional quality, which may result in food poisoning when the meat is
eaten. 