I use to think that creativity/innovation was only associated with writers, painters, engineers, musicians and similar people in artistic professions, now I know that the need for innovation has transitioned from the arts into everyday business. Creative thinking is a must-have skill that an entrepreneur must use on a daily basis if the business is to survive the chaotic nature of business development and make his entrepreneurial process a big success. While everyone knows of the need to be creative, the though in itself can be daunting for an average guy like me. Many people, myself included have the ideas, but just lack how to move from the idea stage into development and bring those ideas into life. The quest for this knowledge moved me into applying for the Innovate for Africa (IFA) Startup Readiness Training fellowship by Novustack. In the last 4 weeks, I have had to learn, re-learn and unlearn necessary tools, skills and traits to be an entrepreneur or work effectively for a start-up.
Novustack is an organization that builds innovation ecosystems across Africa by supporting aspiring and existing entrepreneurs. It consists of a team of experienced educators, entrepreneurs, and consultants passionate about building helping entrepreneurs achieve their dreams and make an impact in their communities. Our facilitators were a team of individuals with such diversity from Harvard school of education and Sloan school of management.
This program was well structured as each activity either on zoom, google classroom or slack was well tailored to reinforce Novustack’s ideology of as growth, inclusivity & diversity, grit, innovation and collaboration. I was initially intimidated & nervous when I first saw the timetable, but the structure and well-designed nature of the curriculum made it easy for me. The breakout session was a great chance to communicate with other fellows on various topics and I had the opportunity to speak with quite a number of them though out the 4-weeks program as we could be randomly paired into a group of two or three or more to discuss a topic or situation. An awkward moment came up on the day I lost connection due to network failure on zoom and logged back in 15 mins later and found myself in a breakout room of three people. I noticed a fellow was reading a story, I listened for a while and the facilitator said it’s my turn to tell my own story. It was so funny as the previous fellow read a well-throughout and very long story. In shame, I asked if I what they discussing and told my own very short, brief story. Thankfully, my colleagues understood I was confused and helped me through the situation.
One of my very first lessons as a fellow is knowing the importance of collaboration. I saw first-hand, how teamwork and collaboration can improve the speed and accuracy of decision making. This task set the ball rolling for an impactful 4-weeks training. Some of the other things I learned include:
Design thinking and Development of Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
This part of the training involved a hackathon with a team, where we collaborated in designing, creating and building a minimum viable product for an agricultural start-up called FarmEasy. We applied the principles of design thinking which are empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. I particularly interviewed a farmer in my neighbourhood in order to understand their pain point in their daily farming activity. In order to create FarmEasy, learned the use of tools such as canva, boords, Trello, and Figma. If someone had told me I could learn these tools in 6 months, I wouldn’t have believed, but I learned and used them in 2 weeks!!! Click here to check out our pitch.
Personal Branding
This involves effectively showcasing both hard and soft skills. This involves sessions on resume building, building of portfolio using wix.com and the creation of a well detailed LinkedIn profile.
Guest Speakers
Guest speakers were invited to share their story in order to inspire and push us to innovate. These people are seasoned business men/women who have experienced the travails and multi-dimensionality (being a bit of everything) involved with being an entrepreneur. Faith Adesemowo spoke about the importance of time in innovation. I recognize the importance of having a good work ethics plus the choice of co-founders and team from Luther Lawoyin, Aramide Kayode & Ikpeme Neto. I recognized the importance of mental exercises from Chibuzo Opara. Many entrepreneurs get carried away with work that they forget to take care of their mental health, and Chibuzor really emphasized the need to take some time off. It was a great time listening to their insightful story and learning the requirements of building an idea from the bottom-up. I also got to ask them questions to learn how they constantly stay motivated and they are able to raise money to fund their ideas.
Interview Preparation
As part of preparations to meet start-ups, we had mock interviews to practice our interviewing skills. I had very honest and true feedbacks from the mentors and this has helped me improve my approach to the different types of interviews and how to effectively apply the STAR technique while interviewing.
Hard skills (Data Analysis)
As an IFA fellow, I had to choose between data analysis, product management & digital marketing. Ofcourse I choose data analysis and through out the course of the training, I received training and mentorship in data wrangling & cleaning, exploratory data analysis, statistics, python and data visualization. Additionally, I had the opportunity to work for a start-up and solve their business problem using data analysis( more on this later) which gave me hands-on experience in the field of data analysis
This IFA fellowship has completely changed my mindset and ideology towards life. I have been transformed from a lone thinker into someone who now understands the need to seek collaboration and the need to Think Big (with no limits) in order to achieve my goals. “What we think, we become,” - Buddha. There are several things I look forward to achieving in my life. This fellowship is a great starting point for me. Thanks so much to the team at Novustack for this wonderful opportunity. Not forgetting my colleagues (Team Alpha), I can literally mention everyone's name, they made class fun and engaging. The sky is indeed the starting point for all of us!!
#Innovation #Data analysis #Novustack
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