The article she sent me (read it here) highlighted research that placed South Africa in the top ten best retirement destinations in the world. The particular slant of the article was to indicate that this would result in upward pressure on suitable house prices. But there’s more to it than that.

Companies in areas, regions and countries that are good retirement destinations should strategise about the products and services that retirees of the future will demand. This is everything from high tech setups in their homes together with technical support services, to healthcare and wellness issues. A quick moment of pondering adds so many other items to the list, including education (yes, the 65+ market is ripe for continuing education), transport, financial advice, providing the luxuries and nostalgic items from their home countries, entertainment, security and so much more.

The SA government should be marketing South Africa as an attractive retirement destination, as should the coastal cities in the country. And businesses should be gearing themselves up for this too.

What are you doing?

Maybe it’s helpful to be more specific about my issue today. My scorn is directed mainly at the large, global investment banks, or large banks with investment arms. These banks have shifted over the past decade or so from institutions that provide the oil that makes the economy run smoothly and morph into profit-making and profit-hungry players in their own right (and players that add no physical value to the economic system at that). They’ve also been the chief catalysts behind pushing executive pay into stratospheric (and catastrophic) heights, and building an unhealthy culture of excessive pay for a few individuals who are not similarly ‘punished’ for losses and the risks they take. They seem to have no sense of shame that they needed to be bailed out by the public that they no longer serve in many countries around the world. They have deliberately misled customers – and, in some cases – actively reducing client’s profits in favour of their own. The list of charges is seemingly endless.

But, then, a few days ago, Goldman Sach’s lawyers accidentally released a series of internal documents that they had been spending millions of dollars to keep private over many years. It’s easy to see why they didn’t want these communications to be made public. They show a systematic failure of ethics, a widespread disrespect for the rule of law and a fundamental disregard for delivering value to clients. These specific documents shine the spotlight on the issue of ‘naked short selling’ (often thought of as a ‘myth’ in banking circles), but they are damning and embarrassing on so many levels for Goldman (and by implication, other banks like Goldman).

Read Common Dreams’ report on these released documents. At very least, banks should “do no harm”, and yet it seems they’re actively and deliberately causing damage to our world.

This story really just makes me sad. And I feel kind of helpless. If there was another industry so roundly screwing the planet, there’d be an outcry and pressure groups pushing for change. With all due respect to the “Occupy” and the 99% movements, we need more than a few hippies camping out somewhere – we need high level economists, politicians and business leaders to take a stand here. But, as Goldman’s documents show, these people are often bent by the money and power at play in the system. We also need those good people who work for banks to stop being either defensive or ignoring the issue and start to fix their industry from inside.

Banking is in trouble, and the system is rotten. Change must come.

For those inside banking right now, you must realise, surely, that each time banking as a whole gets hit with another jaw dropping issue like this, another nail goes into your industry’s coffin. All around the world, non-banking competitors are gearing up to ambush your industry: mobile phone operators, Google, Amazon, retailers, technology companies and governments are all eagerly seeking ways to replace you. Don’t be fooled: your industry is not bullet proof and it is not unassailable. Change will come, but meanwhile bankers are sleep walking into an agonising, slow death in which they do serious harm to all around them.

What can we do? What can we do if we do it together? How can we get the rich and powerful to join us?

On this channel, we feature a selection of short video clips from business experts to get you thinking further about various aspects of the new world of work. The experts featured on this business tv channel are from a diverse range of specialist fields and are at the leading edge of the industry they’re in – either at the forefront of change, or driving it into their industries.

The channel will feature regularly updated content, including contributions from our own panel of experts and the TomorrowToday team.

Bookmark TomorrowToday Business TV now, and visit us regularly!

For even more insights, specifically on the role of digital in the new world of work, see my contribution which is being featured on yBC’s Digital Transformation TV channel.

The world we live and work in has become increasingly complex in the past two decades. Rapid advances in technology, together with globalization and fast growth all combined to rewrite the rules of success, failure and organizational design. The result is that in most multinationals we now have very complex matrix reporting structures, a proliferation of geographically dispersed teams, managers who would not be able to complete the work of absent team members, and more stress and pressure than ever before.

In this environment, we have no choice but to rely on others for our success. This is raising the premium on at least three aspects of this new world of work: computers, connections and collaboration. A high tech world is still high touch, and demands high trust.

High Tech

It’s almost impossible to imagine that a little over two decades ago we had no mobile phones, no Internet, no email and no 24-hour TV news channels. In less then one generation we have revolutionised communication and initiated significant change in every aspect of our lives. Initially it seemed that the revolution was simply to speed up everything we had been doing, but increasingly we’re discovering that advances in computing power, processing speed and bandwidth, also allow us to do different things and to do what we do in entirely different ways.

Companies are only just beginning to discover the benefits of this high tech world. Many organisations still fear it, banning Facebook, YouTube and Skype, and limiting access to the digital world during office hours. Some have begun to experiment with using technology to enhance what they do already, including video meetings, in-house instant messaging and document management.

But only a very few are truly stepping into this high tech world and trying to take advantage of issues like “big data” (our ability to harvest, process and utilize hundreds of thousands of data points, and use algorithms and intelligent systems to look for patterns in the data that can influence our decision making), social business (using the concepts underpinning social media to devise entirely new approaches to all aspects and functions of business), BYOD (bring your own device, as companies stop insisting on specific hardware or uniform platforms for staff) or truly mobile, cloud-based, digital communications (that will free people up from needing to be in any specific location).

High Touch

One of the key reasons the high tech world is not being properly embraced is because of the fear that especially senior leaders have about losing control. Most of these leaders grew up in a world where control was imposed by being physically present. “Super-vision” was exactly that: over-sight of people physically present. There is, of course, a negative side to this approach to control and management.

The positive side is that most people need some form of human contact in order to function effectively anyway. In a high tech world, we need to find ways to continue to be high touch.

And this, paradoxically, is what the last few years of computing advances have begun to enable. For example, consider the rapid uptake of social media. Facebook is closing in on one billion users. This is not because Facebook is a brilliant piece of software. Facebook does not exist because some nerdy software programmers got the coding just right. Facebook exists because it is the best tool we’ve ever invented to get people to do what people want to do naturally: to connect. The most successful technology companies these days are successful precisely because they enable connection, belonging and “high touch”.

In the business world, the recent global economic crisis has caused companies to pull back on travel and shift towards more virtual meetings and conference calls. Many people are discovering that these do in fact create a connection, and that technology – properly used – can enable “high touch”. It might not be as good as being in the room with someone, but it’s better than we’ve ever had before.

In addition, we’ve also just recently brought the technology to a point where it is both useful and painless to use. This can probably be most attributed to the Apple iPad. The first iPad was only launched in April 2010 (I wonder how old you thought iPads were?), and has been followed by a host of copycats. These handheld, mobile, smart devices are not just easy to use, they are delightful to use. In April 2012, mobile devices accounted for 10% of all Internet traffic – a doubling from the same time the year before. By 2020, mobile Internet will be by far the dominant form of online usage, with online communication being the now.

And so, possibly, the confluence of rapidly advancing technology and an economic downturn have ushered in a new world of work.

High Trust

In this new world of work outlined above, the most important currency is trust. This is true for anyone trying to sell anything. It is also true for teamwork, management and leadership. And it is absolutely essential for almost any business activity these days. The higher the complexity of a task or function, the more we need to rely on others and to collaborate, and this requires trust. High trust!

Unfortunately it seems that the transparency, immediacy and openness of this new digital age has led to a dramatic decrease in trust. Trust is even more scarce than attention, and that’s saying something these days. For teams to be successful, they therefore need to use a combination of high tech and high touch to develop high trust. This needs to be a conscious and deliberate team focus.

Trust is tricky to define. There are two parts to it: there’s a “feeling” part that indicates trust exists and a “performance” part based on one’s track record that confirms the trust. Trust is built and maintained by many small actions over time: it takes a long time to build, and can be shattered in an instant.

There are many practical steps a team or group of people can take to develop trust, but the first and most important of these is to make every effort to see the world through other people’s eyes. Every one sees the world through a series of “lenses” conditioned by their own set of circumstances. These lenses include the viewpoints of different cultures, genders, religions, personalities, generations and learning styles. In a business environment, we can also add the lenses of different regions, functions, job outcomes and seniority.

There are no quick solutions here. Teams need to take the time to identify and become comfortable naming and accepting each other’s lenses. We must each firstly acknowledge our own lenses, and accept that we may have blind spots and biases that influence how we feel and perform (the two aspects of trust). This can be done using profiles. Our team has enjoyed using the Enneagram as a personality profile, Belbin’s model of team functioning and a model of cultural diversity developed by our Asia team member, Professor Nick Barker. You can find insights into these aspects of diversity and difference at our blog.

But, of course, there are many other models that can be used to achieve the same result. However your team does it, this is the starting point: to identify your key lenses and be comfortable owning how these lenses affect you and your reactions.

This allows you to then move to the second step, which is to accept other people’s lenses, or to see the world through other people’s eyes. In our team, we have a simple rule at this stage: we do not question motive. When someone else does something we don’t understand or agree with, we may not (initially) question their motives. We have to assume that we do not understand, but that they had the team’s best interests at heart. We then connect with that person to discover why they did what they did, and, in the words of Steven Covey in his best-selling book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” (this is Habit 5 in his list).

The third step is to decide what adjustments need to be made. In some instances, one or other of the parties involved in a disagreement will need to change. Sometimes both parties need to make adjustments. But interestingly, quite often, neither party needs to change. Each one has an aspect of the whole picture, and in a complex world we are often faced with paradoxes that cannot be easily resolved in one-size-fits-all solutions. This is the real value of true diversity – not that we all end up agreeing, but rather that we end up in a position where we can hold different viewpoints in harmonious tension with each other. This is when trust is most in evidence in a team. And most needed too.

Trust emerges over time in a team that is committed to relying on each other, working together to achieve a common purpose, and insistent on dealing honestly, openly and immediately with misunderstandings and concerns.

Working together in a new world of work

In a high tech world, driven by unprecedented computing power, we need to learn how to connect and collaborate more effectively. Our old ways of working, and outdated approaches to teamwork are proving ineffective and counterproductive in this new world. We need to take some time as teams to develop our abilities to “touch” and “trust”.

There are no short cuts available to achieving this, but the benefits when it is done are enormous. Teams will be more effective and more resilient, and will be able to better retain and engage their members. This is everything that businesses and leaders everywhere want. High touch and high trust in a high tech world are the only ways to achieve this, and leaders need to make these a priority.

Dr Graeme Codrington is an international partner of the strategic insights firm, TomorrowToday. He his a researcher, author, presenter and expert on the disruptive forces shaping the world of work. He can be contacted at graeme@tomorrowtoday.uk.com

The press over the last few days have reported that he has apologised to Yahoo staff. This is not really the case. He has apologised to them for how the issue is affecting the company and their ability to focus on their jobs, but he has not admitted any error (although there clearly is one), nor any wrongdoing (again, that seems clear). Read ComputerWorld UK’s reporting of this here.

What should be done now? Well, it depends really on how this happened. I agree with the sentiments in this report from the Washington Post, which suggest that his knowledge of the error is a vital factor.

But my own advice is simpler still. He should resign or be fired. Yes, he should do so because he lied. That would be enough reason. But I suggest that there is an even better – and bigger – reason to do so.

As the head of an Internet search and information company, the fact that he thought he could get away with a falsification of this nature is an indication of a gross misunderstanding of the new rules of the new world of work. Transparency, openness of data, and the power of the small people to uncover injustice and untruth, are all ubiquitous and part of the new operating system of the world we’re busy constructing. To ignore this, or worse, to think that you can outplay it, is indication of a person unfit to make be making leadership decisions in this type of company.

How long is it going to take big companies and big men to realise that we live in a wikileaks world?

Yes, he lied on his CV, and so Scott Thompson should go. But he also clearly doesn’t understand the world he was supposed to be shaping. And for that reason alone, Yahoo should say goodbye.

Dear Mike,

Congratulations on the birth of your new baby. You’ve probably already made this decision, but you have a few days before it becomes official, so I hope you don’t mind me making a suggestion about the name of your new child. Simple, really: make it unique.

In the Internet age, a unique name is a HUGE advantage. You should know. Are you “Mike Saunders“, the rock critic and the singer of the Californian punk band Angry Samoans? No. You must be one of the 26 professionals called Michael Saunders on LinkedIn? But which one?

So, as a digitally savvy, new world of work enabled Dad, please do your homework before choosing a name for your new son. A quick search tells me you shouldn’t choose Floyd, Steve, David, or… well you get the point.

Really, a unique name that cannot be confused with someone else, is a real and genuine asset in our connected world.

Parents, take note: the name you give your child makes more of a difference now than it ever has.

Just one of many significant – and NEW – parenting decisions you need to know about.

All the best, from (the one and only) Graeme Codrington (not the Graham Codrington who works in England in the insurance industry ).

MOL have a similar problem to many companies around the world who need to attract young people (often called Generation Y) to join their companies, especially those that need to recruit young people with skills and qualifications in natural sciences. MOL is in the oil industry, and needs significant numbers of engineers and scientists.

They identified that there were not enough science students qualifying from universities in Hungary, their primary country, but also across the whole region they work in. This cannot be fixed with better recruitment strategies or poaching from competitors. So MOL decided to do something about the source, and get involved in high schools and universities. They wanted to promote sciences as a viable and exciting choice for young people.

They did this by engaging with teachers, parents and students. They created resources for schools to use in the teaching of science (called Junior Freshhh), and made this freely available to use.

They then created an online competition in the form of a simulation game aimed at university students. See Freshhh EDU (http://www.freshhh.net). 35 universities entered in 2007, growing to over 200 in 2011 (the 2012 version is ongoing), with over 600 different 3 member teams participating in 2011. The competition is based on real oil and gas industry issues, and can be used as teaching tools by the universities. It is fully integrated with social media, and uses high quality videos throughout. Those videos and the game scenarios become available to educators after each year’s competition is over.

Is this just fun?

No! Over the lifetime of this graduate game, MOL has employed more than 900 of the participants in the game from 2007-2011, and these students have a 90% retention rate in the business (it’s worth reading that sentence again! MOL have won awards for recruitment and retention because of this!). Some of the people (close to 5%) who were employed in 2008 are already in managerial positions.

This is gaining momentum, with 200% growth per year for 2010 and 2011, and this expected to increase further. They have saved over € 500,000 in recruiting costs. And the cost of game has been € 65,000 so far. An unbelievable ROI.

The big lesson though is that it took four years to see any value from the investment. And it will take the rest of this decade to discover whether the long term objective of getting young people into engineering will bear fruit. At this stage, all the signs are good. MOL’s Facebook page has huge activity, and parents, teachers and young people are all actively engaged.

This is the type of long term thinking more companies need to engage in.

South Africa has a long history of clever TV advertising, with some outstanding brands and campaigns. Probably the stand out brand, though, is Nando’s, the chicken restaurant, who have a reputation for pushing the boundaries (sometimes too far).

Recently, Nando’s spoofed one of South Africa’s oldest and most conservative insurance companies’ TV adverts. Just yesterday, Santam hit back with a very clever, superbly positioned advert that links the two brands together and has a lot of fun at the same time. I can’t wait to see how Nando’s responds – because they definitely will.

In the process, both these brands are demonstrating huge public appeal, wonderful personality, a lot of fun, and are gaining great brand recognition and value. This is everything that advertising can be in a new world where conversation, community, engagement, interaction and fun are all taken for granted by the younger generation. To follow the whole story watch the videos below in order:

1. Santam released their Real McCoy ad (“Its easy to miss things right in front of you”)

2. Nando’s spoofed it

3. Santam releases “Back at Ya” ad, and lays down the gauntlet… deliver or “Are you Chicken?”

As expected, Nando’s responded by delivering on the challenge – but upped the ante. They will not just deliver meals for the Johannesburg Children’s Home once this week, but also once every month for a full year. Well done to them. Read the story here.

And here is the advert:

By the way, the cost of delivering this food will come to about R 60,000. The price of the advertising and exposure they’re getting from this must be at least 20 times that – except they’re getting it all for free.

Nice work, everyone involved in this! Nando’s and Santam, take a bow.

I was watching some women’s sport last weekend, and then followed the controversy around women in the heart of golf at the Masters this weekend. There were a number of stories that intertwined to remind me again of how unequal our world remains. And I was encouraged once more to continue doing something about it. I need to declare an interest in this topic right at the start: I am the father of three daughters. Helping my daughters take their rightful place in the world, and being involved in changing the world so that it is more ready for them and their girl friends is very personal for me. It’s not a theoretical exercise or a nice thought experiment – it’s about the future for my family. It’s important.

My point is simple, but vital: women have made many strides in equality in the workplace over the last few decades, with as many women in work now as men in many countries. But there are three vital issues that need to take priority now: (1) the number of women in senior leadership positions (and their influence on corporate culture), (2) the remuneration women receive for the same work as their male counterparts, and (3) society’s attitude towards and valuing of women’s contributions.

The world of sport helps to make my point. As I write this, I am watching the final round of a remarkable Masters golf tournament at Augusta, one of the most prestigious golf clubs in the world. But the biggest story of the week was taking place off of the hallowed green fairways. Augusta does not allow women members. They only allowed black members in 1990, a mere 7 years before Tiger Woods first donned their famous green jacket. But they still have no female members. This year, that is interesting. Traditionally, the CEO of their major sponsor, IBM has been given honorary membership. This year, the CEO is a woman, Ginni Rometty. And she won’t be offered a membership (here’s the best article on the news conference where they refused to even offer an explanation). One can only hope that IBM soon show Augusta and the Masters what they think of that.

A weekend or so ago, I was watching the finals of the World Women’s Rugby 7s competition in Hong Kong. It was a brilliant game, with all of the tactics, speed, fitness, physicality (one of the biggest hits of the weekend in the last minute if you get to see the replays), skills and endurance (and nerves, both good and bad) evidenced by the men’s game. And just last week, I was alerted to the most remarkable sporting personality. Can you name the sportsperson who has played in World Cups for their country in two different sports, and made the decisive play in the championship games of both competitions, and is the youngest person to have represented their country (only aged 16) in two sports? No, I didn’t think so. I am a total cricket nut, but only discovered Ellyse Perry yesterday. How is that possible? She is remarkable!

It’s possible because we value men’s sporting achievements more than women’s. I know there are complex arguments about prize money in tennis majors, for example, but my point is about how much each of us (you and me, and everyone else) actually values women as sportspersons – as competitors, rather than eye candy (the top paid women sports stars are almost without exception the “good looking” ones who earn most of their money in sponsorships, rather than because of performance. Just think ‘Anna Kournikova’ for the extreme example of this). How much do we value women as competitors? Not as much as men. Two sports where this is not true (I think), are beach volleyball and athletics. Probably the reason volleyball gets attention is because the FIVB made a rule change a few years ago that enforces a MAXIMUM clothing coverage – a shame that women’s sport gets attention as it is sexualised. Why has Ellyse Perry not been featured on the covers of sports magazines around the world? Why can you find no details or even get the score of the women’s IRB Rugby 7′s matches on the official IRB Rugby 7′s website? And why no highlights on YouTube? We just don’t value women as much as men.

I don’t have quick fix solutions to the three issues I raised above. But I am sure the solution starts with a change of mindset. It’s a choice, really, that starts the changes needed.

This is not a women’s issue. Men need to get involved too. I wonder how we’d react if Augusta gold club continued to exclude blacks, or didn’t allow Jews to join, or discriminated against Catholics? We’d all refuse to watch, we’d target advertisers, we’d see protestors making their point on the course. In short, we’d force them to change pretty quickly. But, when it comes to women, we tut-tut a bit, and say how quaint and old fashioned it is, and say we hope they’ll change soon. And then? Nothing.

Until men get involved in this issue, it will be all too easy to maintain status quo. So, as in the sporting world, so too in the world of work. Men and women need to do at least three things:

1. Actively seek opportunities to identify, deliberately raise the profile of, and value the contribution of women. I don’t know if I am talking about some form of “affirmative action” here. I don’t know if this needs to be a short, sharp, temporary step, or something more long term. Whatever it is, no-one can really argue that women don’t need this. The playing field is NOT level, and it will take deliberate, conscious efforts to make it so.
   
2. Pay women the same for the same work. Simple. Do it.
   
3. Learn from the women in your life. See the world through their eyes, and where possible, remove the obstacles to their success. Definitely make sure that they have membership rights to whatever your “clubs” are, and invite their contributions.

Oh, and one other thing you can do right now, is spend some time reading through the excellent feature section on women leaders put together by McKinsey.

I still think, though, that it starts with an attitude shift. Not in everyone else – in me. And in you.

Thanks to the world of women’s sport for this reminder.

10 April update: I really enjoyed this post by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox. You can read it online here, or an extract below:

Here are a few basic suggestions to adapt corporate balancing initiatives to the reality of the times:

1. Make it strategic. Make it a business issue, not a women’s issue or a diversity issue.

2. Make it balanced. Focus on the ratio of women AND men, not just the percentage of women in all metrics and KPIs.

3. Make targets neutral. Aim for an acceptable ratio for both genders, not just women, e.g. a minimum of 40 percent of EITHER gender across ALL functions.

4. Make managers gender bilingual. Train ALL managers, men and women, to be skilled in managing across genders (just as you equip them to be competent across cultures).

5. Make managers accountable. Shift accountability for progress on gender balancing to managers of teams, rather than on individuals.

6. Celebrate “bilingual” competence. Most companies make a lot of noise about the women they promote. Also celebrate the managers who identified, developed and promoted them — that’s where the skills are lacking today.

7. Embed flexibility. Measure output, not input. Let high performers work where and when they want, as long as they deliver. Forget work/ life for women; create flexibility for all and help managers manage flexible, virtual teams.

8. Make careers flexible, too. Adapt linear, unbroken, up or out career patterns to recognize multiple career paths. If you identify all your high-potential talent between 30 and 35, you are likely excluding women and a growing number of men.

9. Never say the word “women.” dump the old language and become truly bilingual and inclusive of both men and women. Replace the common “women in leadership,” “assertiveness training for women,” “coaching and mentoring for women” with a focus on balance, talent or customers — and ensure that all your development programs are balanced within your target range now.

10. Stop accusing men. Stop running workshops called “unconscious bias,” “discrimination” or “stereotyping.” Position gender balancing as a business opportunity; you’ll find both men and women enthusiastically getting on board.

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox is CEO of gender consultancy 20-first as well as author of HOW Women Mean Business.

Africa’s Chance to Leapfrog the West

HBR Blog Network, February 10, 2012
by Bright B. Simons

You’ve heard about the African Renaissance, right? The Aid Bosses, once the unquestioned successors in Africa to the joint heirloom of Mother Teresa and Lord Clive of Chennai, are finding it harder and harder to get face time with the political grandees in our wheeling and dealing capitals. The Chinese are fawning all over our oil and copper, forcing once-aloof Westerners to write treatises about why China’s engagement with the continent isn’t all marshmallow candy. These concerns get polite nods here and there but, mostly, serious Africans ignore them and firmly redirect the conversation back to private equity, or franchise deals, or something along those lines. Bottom line: Are you game or are you out? And have you heard that we have more mobile phones than any other continent besides Asia?

The curious thing, though, is that Africans aren’t basking in a perpetual high. The fact that the continent is tired of being lectured to and treated as a curiosity to sate the intellectual pretensions of Westerners doesn’t mean that Africans are blind to the challenges they perceive as obstructing every aspect of their continent’s development.
Take any newspaper printed in Africa any day. Whether you are in Dakar or Asmara, the wailing and ranting brims over; doomsayers and purveyors of gloom compete for the prize of most pessimistic outlook all morning, noon and dusk on local radio, Facebook and — where such media has been cordoned off by overzealous political police — in the backseats of tightly packed mini-buses.

Most savvy Africa-watchers reconcile these two divergent narratives like this: The prospects are brilliant, but the infrastructure is lagging. They affirm the imminence of socioeconomic transformation, but express doubt that the physical carrying capacity is strong enough to support equitable growth, job creation, and social harmony.

But there’s a new, alternative narrative out there that can be summarized in one word: leapfrogging. The leapfrogging argument takes off where the stalemate between the infrastructure pessimists and the entrepreneurial optimists ends. It is rooted in the notion that infrastructure can be hacked.

In much the same way that Africa’s lack of significant telecom capacity was a boon rather than a hindrance to the emergence of mobile telephony, its lack of legacy infrastructure for everything ranging from waste management to energy utilities could provide the appetite — non-existent in the West — for genuinely transformative, future-friendly reconceptualization of the very notion of infrastructure.

Technology and new concepts of living, as well as progressive notions of urbanization, industrial capitalism, consumerism, ecotourism, and renewable systems, could meld to fashion a new shared-growth paradigm. Such a paradigm, proponents argue, can easily bypass the clunky, wasteful, inequitable, and socially non-scalable physical infrastructure legacy of the West, propelling Africa, uniquely among continents, into a true 21st Century style of civilization.

This is a concept way ahead of the crawling pace of empirical evidence. No wonder its exponents often sound and look more like New Age sages than Jeffrey Sachs. But it is possible to begin a preliminary examination by focusing on the narrow confines of one’s trade or cause.

I run a multinational enterprise with multiple partners and super-demanding clients. The technology systems that undergird this effort are far-flung. I am expected to integrate my tools into complex global supply chains of international drug producers to solve the local problem of counterfeiting. I have had to run worldwide social marketing campaigns in the past in order to attract attention to our work in what could be dismissed as obscure backwaters of the global system. I still spend much of my time traveling from conference to conference in the West to meet people who can help my work succeed (I started thinking about this blog post on a train bound for Davos).

I am required to do all this on a shoestring budget and a super-lean staff. And I do it from Africa. I have a dozen friends in rather similar situations.

Leapfrogging is the umbrella name for the systems available to us today that make all this possible. Cloud computing, social media, new professional paradigms such as social entrepreneurship, below-the-line marketing and a host of novel realities have transformed the global context for Africans with their eyes set on continental and beyond-continental scale.

Secondly, beyond opportunity and flexibility, the level of productivity possible in the operations I describe above has been boosted several-fold by the growing proliferation of next generational models in finance, banking, and logistics. The people whose activities I have described in the preceding paragraph are actually more efficient in their use of resources due to a fundamental change in the notion of value. They are indeed achieving more with less compared to their Western counterparts. This is genuinely world-changing in its potential.

So case closed then: Leapfrogging rocks, and once its full bloom encapsulates Africa the world is our oyster. Sadly, it isn’t that simple.

Let me give you an example. State-run lotteries are among the most moribund industries in Africa. In Ghana, the government tried to address the despicable mess its lottery found itself in by banning private lotteries. That, predictably, did not stem the decline.

Some new entrants smelled opportunity and moved in to carve a niche in mobile-based lotteries. The sweet spot was of course they needed no unwieldy agent network or cash redemption facilities. But just when the new system was on the verge of take-off it was quickly discovered that the entire legal and regulatory system as set up does not in fact allow mobile lotteries to function.

Despite the opportunity being so glaring, not a single mobile-driven lottery infrastructure has emerged in any African country. If this is the case with lotteries, think of the even more regulated sectors of health and education, or more politically charged sectors such as agriculture.

Quite clearly, while leapfrogging might contribute powerfully to hacking physical infrastructure, it is less useful when it comes to soft (cultural, social, regulatory etc.) infrastructure. Therein lies its limitation in driving the African Renaissance.

So what is my one big idea?

Leapfrogging is a set of tools and techniques, not a conceptual or ideological description of the socioeconomic evolution of Africa now or in the near future. What matters is how entrepreneurs and innovators, especially social innovators, employ this set of tools within prevailing constraints. That, and not the poetic power of a renaissance motif, will transform Africa, one entrepreneurial triumph after another.

Source: HBR