Learnings from Shenzhen's Innovation Ecosystem | Lessons For Kenya and African

An article by Professor of International Business and Strategy and Associate Dean (MBA) Shameen at China Europe International Business School ( CEIBS) titled? Shenzhen: Fostering entrepreneurial, collaborative and global innovation posits four factors that have been instrumental in driving innovation in Shenzhen being? policy, people, possibilities and partnerships.

These factors are not unique by themselves but it's how they are coherently applied at Shenzhen that is unique and? there are a couple of lessons stakeholders in Kenya and Africa can pick up in their quest of leapfrogging the country and continent to the proverbial? 4th Industrial revolution .

First i think we must accept the reality that Kenya as a country is light years behind the global north countries in terms of having the basic infrastructure, education system, research funding? and policy environment among others that can allow? Kenya and Africa play in the big league hence the need for stakeholders to focus on the building blocks rather than being swayed into discourses that add little to no value such as? issues around ethics in AI cognizant that Kenya and Africa generally is a net consumer of AI at least for now.?

Not diminishing the importance of the other factors , what drew my attention in the? article was partnerships, cognizant that Kenya’s innovation ecosystem greatly suffers from ‘silo’ and ‘king of the hill’ mentality where stakeholder groups operate within a mini ecosystem with little to no collaboration taking place.?

For example in Kenyan academia and public research institutions within plant and seed innovation hold over 70 percent of IP that has not seen the light of commercialization, corporate Kenya is risk averse stuck with incremental innovation of changing product packages with little to no investment in RnD, CSOs pivoting strategies to ‘’digital’ spending millions of dollars reinventing? the wheel through hackathons with a lot of fanfare yet local ESOs have cracked the code and need funding and last but not least uncoordinated national innovation policy environment with no clear ethos or theory of change.

Key lessons Kenya and Africa can pick from the Shenhzen ecosystem are ; Shenzhen has a clear focus on hardware generally which makes it stand out hence signals specific stakeholders such as startups, investors among others to make informed decisions and take advantage of potential synergies .?

This reaffirms that cluster models are the most optimal way of building an ecosystem especially in hardware based innovations? due to the high cost of establishing, prototyping and running? similar to what we see in SME clusters in Kariobangi Light Industries, Kariokor Leather and Uhuru textile markets.?

Kenya’s innovation ecosystem is currently dominated by ICT, software based startups especially in fintech as evidenced by successful fundraising trend hence the need for diversification in order to sustain the upward growth trajectory and reap the full socio economic benefit of innovation as seen for example? during COVID 19 where host countries with vaccines got early access as the rest had to wait.?

In my time at Nairobi city county government in charge of digital economy and startups, I was visited by many startups in need of procurement opportunities to supply innovations that was and continues to be direly needed in the county.?

The challenge was that the opportunities were few? but over 20 startups were offering either similar solutions or part solutions to the bigger challenge and to make matters worse they were competing with big tech multinational companies.?

My suggestion to them then and is validated by the shenzhen model was for startups offering complimentary solutions to partners and offer end to end solutions to either county governments or local corporations.

One startup-corporate collaboration? model that we explored was mandating local corporates pitching to offer? digital solutions to the county to collaborate with local startups within the county’s database or getting startups to get some form of backing or guarantee from local corporations.?

Unfortunately we never got to implementation but either way national and county governments can support startups by offering commercial opportunities to startups as well as incentives corporates to follow suit through fiscal and non fiscal incentives .?

Cognisant of sub optimal performance by? government in establishing a conducive policy and legislative environment in supporting the innovation ecosystem , its high time that Kenya’s innovation ecosystem stakeholders? stop lip service and collaborate else the country will always be on the prolonged? runway ready to take off but remain stuck?