Nurture graduates with a bias for innovation

Over 50 years ago, celebrated management guru Peter Drucker remarked that innovation is what differentiates businesses from one another. This insight is quite relevant today with the intense competition as businesses outdo each other to win the hearts and minds of consumers. Factors like quality and pricing are certainly important. But even more vital is innovation across the business value chain.

Around the time Drucker made this observation, the quality movement was in vogue. Emphasis at that time was on ensuring products had as little variations as possible from the set quality norm or standard. So, manufacturers focused on correcting problems with products or goods. Quality control, as the practice was called, slowly evolved into quality assurance movement, whose goal was preventing potential problems with products.

CONSUMER NEEDS

Over time, businesses realised that quality was not an end in itself since consumer needs kept shifting. With rapid technological advancement, it was easy to develop advanced product quality processes. The challenge lay in ensuring products kept up with ever-changing consumer tastes and preferences. This is how innovation as a competitive driving force came into the picture.

One of the challenges facing innovation in manufacturing is not necessarily in building a team with diverse skills but getting people to see innovation through the prism of the business and consumers. A firm may recruit the best marketers or commercial experts but who may not be familiar with the nuances of engineering innovation. A company may boast technical geniuses when it comes to systems and processes but if they do not understand what consumers want, therein lies a big problem.

Nor is it easy to find the kind of talent with both technical skills in their areas of competence matched by a passion for innovation and ability to see the big picture of where business and consumer interests intersect and even clash. Innovation requires the intuitive capacity to spot unmet consumer needs and act on them before a competitor comes up with a solution. What makes this process even more complex is the fact that consumer needs keep shifting.

MULTI-DISCIPLINARY

Most of our tertiary learning institutions have traditionally focused on equipping graduates with core job skills for the market. Although Kenya produces some of the best graduates in the world in various disciplines, their ability to navigate the increasingly competitive global market has been limited by lack of emphasis on innovation. Fortunately, this is changing given that many Kenyan companies are seeing the need to reach out to universities especially in this age of rapid technological change. On the other hand, tertiary institutions are turning to industry for practical exposure and to fund research.

Our universities and institutions of higher learning are the ideal hub for nurturing a multi-disciplinary approach to innovation. To grow Kenya’s manufacturing sector in line with the Big Four Agenda, our colleges should strive to produce graduates with a holistic view of the marketplace and the role of innovation. This will not only give them an edge as employees and entrepreneurs but also enhance the overall competitiveness of Kenya’s economy.

In fostering innovation, local universities should develop linkages with manufacturers and industries. Learning institutions boast research knowledge and experience while businesses they partner with have considerable practical insights to offer in terms of dynamics shaping the consumer landscape. Collaborative platforms of this nature would tremendously boost the quality of learning and prepare graduates to face a tough and competitive market environment.

HUMAN CAPITAL

To achieve the Big Four Agenda of a competitive manufacturing sector, innovation will be the game-changer. We must not only invest in the infrastructure and manufacturing capacity required to sustain growth but also build an innovative human capital base as the catapult to a competitive industrial economy.

In summary, what we need are techno-commercial graduates who are attuned to the changing needs of consumers and the market. While specialisation is good as it makes one an expert in a certain field, developing a cross-cutting view of business gives one a unique ability to innovate to meet consumer needs.

Mr Malde is the Commercial Director, Pwani Oil; [email protected]