My presentation today at the KESSA Multimedia University of Kenya joint international interdisciplinary conference on how innovation can be used to build resilience of African countries. #InnovationForResilience

1. Innovation For
Resilience In
AFRICA
JOHN PAUL

3. Innovation – The two sides
CHANGE that creates a new dimension of
performance
O Innovation = Invention × Commercialization
Creative Problem solving/Design thinking
AND
Entrepreneurship/Business process
O Invention could be an idea, intellectual property,
technology, process improvement
O Commercialization includes entrepreneurship,
business processes, delivery/extraction of value.

4. Creative Problem solving
The generation of ideas that result in the improved
efficiency or effectiveness of a system.

5. COMMERCIALIZATION
Processes of shepherding an invention through to
the creation, extraction and delivery of value

6. Innovation Philosophy

7. Innovation Philosophy

8. CREATIVE MYTH
GENETICS vs LEARNING

9. STRUCTURE AND CREATIVITY
Paradox of Structure – Enabling and Limiting
What is the Box? Standard operating procedures? Best Practice?
Understand the box? Know the box?
Create an environment in relation to the box that allows for critical
thinking? Creative decision making?
Pass Judgement – when is it appropriate to create own standards
Smart Heretics – Question orthodoxes? encourage innovation?
Encourage structure? At what cost?
What is enabling about the structure?
What is limiting?
Compare your views?

10. Innovation Environment
Steven Johnson – Long Zoom

11. Innovation Environment
Six Patterns of Innovation

12. Drucker’s Opportunities

13. INNOVATION
COMMUNITIES AND
HUBS

14. WHY
DO
THEY
NEED
TO?
They meet up and cluster
Their way of life isn't mainstream
and they offer each other
psychosocial support
There are opportunities for
collaboration
Their work is interrelated

15. Members of the innovating community are
spread out in terms of activity in equal
measure to the vulnerabilities
Assets – just like vulnerabilities cluster
Build integration
Assets can be integrated to make us better
prepared. On the flip side things like corruption
will affect physical infrastructure
Hypothesis

16. SOCIAL ENTERPRISE

17. CONTINUUM OF SOCIAL
ENTERPRISE
Social enterprise
0 Purpose – social/humanitarian
0 Process –
business/entrepreneurial/innovative
STARTUP
0 A human institution designed to Deliver a new
product or service under conditions of extreme
UNCERTAINTY
Eric Ries

18. Intersection of SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
And STARTUP

19. CITIES RESILIENCE IN A
CHANGING WORLD

20. Vulnerabilities
Risks are accelerating shocks and
stresses that are more
unpredictable will hit us but we can
prepare ourselves for anything
UNCERTAINTY is the new normal
The intersection of globalization,
urbanization and climate change is
resulting in a larger scale of
disruption
The economy, technologies and
communities intersect

21. The Intersection

22. BUILDING FOR RESILIENCE AND
FOR A RESILIENCE DIVIDEND

23. Components
of Resilience
Build capacity for resource
mobilization and robustness
social capacity/infrastructure -
physical infrastructure e.g. Boston
Robustness - inherent to
withstand external demands
without loss of functionality
Redundancy and Differentiation
Redundancy - allow substitutions
to occur even under stress
Resourcefulness - the capacity to
mobilize needed resources in
duress
Rapidity - speed with which
disruption can be overcome and
safety and access to services
restored

24. Building
citizen
resilience
Reduce chaos and noise
Reduce levels of stress
each person is
experiencing
Helps us be level
headed when disaster
strikes

25. CASE STUDIES
OF STARTUPS AND
RESILIENCE

26. G-jenge makers
group is making
this carbro from
plastic waste.
Resilience
dividend - plastic
waste blocks
drainage but we
can use it to build
drainage systems
G-jenge Makers

27. Strauss has
created a BIPV
solar cell that
allows all roofs to
become renewable
energy generators
Resilience dividend
– housing is a
challenge. Why not
generate power
while solving
another challenge?
Strauss Energy

28. Allows people living in
city flats to balcony crate
grow groceries while
Dry house provides
mobile modular storage
to farmers and pre-buys
their produce
Resilience dividend –
Solves two challenges
food sustainability in
cities and ready price
guaranteed market and
storage for farmers.
Urban Garden and Dry house
(in ideation)

29. Allows people to own
pre-fabricated houses
from $60 a month
lifetime payments
Resilience dividend –
Solves challenge of
Affordable house
ownership and builds a
community that can
respond as a unit to
disruptions
Utopia 254
(In Ideation)

30. Importance to resilience
Builds people’s
capacity to respond to
disruption.
Builds networks for
mobilization of
resources
Innovation for the good
times and the bad
Fundamental Needs
In Africa a lot of social
enterprise are
engaged in areas of
fundamental needs
food sustainability |
Renewable Energy |
Education | Access
and Inclusion | Health

31. Incremental Needs
These include food
deliveries and ordering
laundry/home cleaning
| entertainment
applications | errands
and deliveries |
sharing economy (taxi
and guest rooms/office
Innovation for the good
times and the bad
Importance to resilience
Builds redundancies e.g.
sharing economy rooms
can be used for
displaced person
accommodation
Builds networks for
mobilization of resources

32. INNOVATION FOR
GOVERNMENT

33. Things
To note
Disambiguation
Startups/social enterprise are not a
cure for structural unemployment
Startups cannot be funded in the
same way as SMEs
Startups need policy, functional
systems, speed and structure that
supports adoption of innovation for it
to work and be beneficial to citizens

34. Allows citizens to own and control
their data instead of vulnerability
through ID cards – Government
creates initial data and hands
over control.
Resilience dividend – Solves
identity related challenges –
refugee status; movement and
migration; birth, death and name
registration
Self Sovereign
Identity

35. Land records,
revenue, health
history
Resilience dividend –
Solves mobility
problem and
unauthorized access.
In times of disruption
a doctor can access
your records as they
are mobile
Digitization of
records

36. Allows citizens who are sick or
recently unemployed to access
basic services through
providers
Resilience dividend – allows
citizens to be in proper frame of
mind when disruptions happen.
Can be used for relief efforts
Demand side financing
for preventive social
protection

37. Allows citizens to
influence policy and laws
for people wellbeing
Resilience dividend –
citizens can influence
policy or can call to
attention about a service
or public utility that isn’t
functional. They can do
referendums and elections
Citizen
Participation

38. Allows citizens to control data
access by tax person or the
police force (e.g. for a traffic
offence)
Resilience dividend – Solves
governance problems such as
bribery of traffic police. Gives
citizens a feeing of control as
opposed to helplessness
Enforcement
and Reporting

39. HOW GOVERNMENT CAN
SOLVE WICKED PROBLEMS
USING STARTUP
METHODOLOGIES
CASE STUDIES ON DESIGN
THINKING CONTRIBUTION TO
RESILIENCE

40. Curriculum
Reforms
Kenya
Focus on the user
Startups and social enterprise
succeed by focusing on the
user
The government could also
learn by doing the same
approach to “Wicked problems”

41. Innovating
Transport
for Nairobi
Focus on the user
Startups and social enterprise
succeed by drawing on
analogies for design inspiration
The government could also
learn by doing the same
approach to “Wicked problems”

42. Innovating for transport in Nairobi

43. SOURCES BOOKS
• Baroness Susan Greenfield Outside the Box the Neuroscience of creativity
• Elizabeth D. Hutchison, (2003) Dimensions of Human Behavior: Person and
Environment , SAGE,
• Gerard Endenburg, (1998) Sociocracy As Social Design Its Characteristics and
Course of Development, as Theoretical Design and Practical, Eburon
• Judith Rodin, (2014) The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things
Go Wrong Public,Affairs
• M Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace,(1978 1992) Arrow
Books,
• McMillan, D. W. and Chavis, D. M. (1986), Sense of community: A definition and
theory. Journal of Community Psychology Volume 14 Issue 1.
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb, (2012) Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder Random
House Publishing Group,
• Paul James, (2012) Urban Sustainability Communities, Sustainable Development:
Other Paths for Papua New Guinea University of Hawaii Press
• Steven Johnson – Where Good Ideas Come From The Natural History of Innovation

44. ONLINE COURSES/TALKS
• Penn State University Daryl, Kathryn Jablokow,
Jack Marsden
• MIND AND ITS POTENTIAL - Outside the Box
the Neuroscience of creativity, Baronness
Susan Greenfield
• University of Virginia Darden School of
Business Proffesor Jeanne Liedtka Design
Thinking
• University of Maryland – Developing innovative
ideas for companies coursera.org

45. ARTICLES
• Innovation diffusion and adoption sustainability
incentivization https://goo.gl/8xM3QR
• innovating for government the last mile and the role of
technology startups https://goo.gl/LXAWQL
• innovating on kenyan elections https://goo.gl/oE897e
• resilience - innovation in the absence of state
sponsored welfare https://goo.gl/oxExMY
• Community hubs innovation in kenyas rural towns a
tale of two women https://goo.gl/6if2Qe

46. ARTICLES
• Scale the challenges of growing up and community what it
means for founders https://goo.gl/YikFAj
• Affordable housing innovating on homes housing and
accommodation https://goo.gl/nK7pPN
• Innovating transport for nairobi models for the future
https://goo.gl/fHfk2C
• Innovating on retail efficiency in kenya https://goo.gl/SzPX3V
• Curriculum reforms kenya https://goo.gl/iRhm3T
• the future of deliveries and transport providers opportunity for
innovation https://goo.gl/BF4Qvn

47. Federation of Savannah Startups
&The Fellowship of Code
FOSS + FOC = FORCE