DIH Strategy and Strategy Resources Workshop
"Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change."
Change can be an unpleasant experience. Nonetheless, sometimes it is vital for the sake of business sustainability and continuity. The COVID-19 pandemic tested a lot of businesses in terms of their strategies and sustainability. The businesses that could not hold up to the test collapsed. Those businesses needed to have changed the way they looked at things by altering their business strategies or building new strategies that would have stood the test. That is why the DIH Strategy and Strategy Resources Workshop organized by hapaSpace as part of the AfriConEU project was timely seeing that businesses are still struggling due to the aftermath of the pandemic and the plundering economic situation today.?
The workshop held on 9th June 2022 at hapaSpace, Danyame, Ghana and online via zoom, Facebook and Youtube live achieved its objective which was to assist DIHs and entrepreneurs build new strategies or strengthen their existing ones to ensure business continuity. Participants both virtual and in-person were put into small groups to map out their strategies with the aid of the following tools: SWOT analysis, Balanced scorecard and PEST analysis. In the end, they all walked away with solid strategies they were going to implement to change the faces of their DIHs. Nothing tells a success story more than the beneficiaries of that story telling you themselves. Below you will find compelling stories of two participants who took part in the workshop.
A participant named Roberta from SOS NBU hub had the opportunity to represent her in-person group. She reiterated a point we hear all so often. She said? ‘We can’t go with the same strategy or do the same things and expect different results.’ From her presentation on her hub’s strategy we got to know that she was representing a hub that had once been extremely vibrant in the Asokore Mampong Municipality in the Ashanti Region of Ghana and she hoped to revive that vibrance with a renewed strategy for the hub. Using the SWOT analysis template she outlined a strategy for her hub that could be a game changer. Looking at their strengths, such as good relations with the stakeholders and target group, experience from previous projects and working with donor agencies etc. Their? weaknesses like the ties to the parent organisation which slows down certain processes, their opportunity which again has to do with their parent hub. Their threat has to do with restrictions that come with funding amongst others. After her presentation on the swot analysis, she conceded that the same strategy used in the past was not going to work so there needs to be a change. In the end she was very glad she participated in the workshop and declared she was going to implement the solutions and knowledge she gleaned from the workshop.
Another participant from Mozambique, Ebel Diogo, representing his virtual group presented a strategy based on the swot analysis. In his presentation, he made it clear that innovation hubs were not a common thing where he resides, and he intends to start one so the workshop greatly benefitted him as he acquired knowledge on how to start right with critical strategies that work. He has since been in communication with Gideon, the CEO of hapaSpace. He keeps Gideon in the loop about his business idea of starting a digital innovation hub. He has created a WhatsApp group to organize the tech community in his area.
How bad was your business affected by the covid 19 pandemic? Would your business have done much better if you had a strong strategy?? Pandemics can spring up when we least expect. In short, unforeseen occurrences can befall all, so it is crucial we analyze, restructure or build new strategies that can weather any storm. To enable you to do this, you can watch the recorded version of the DIH Strategy and Strategy Resources Workshop on the hapaSpace Facebook page. Do not be afraid to make a great change. After all, Winston Churchill once said, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”