This is too deep. Move it to the Thinkers Room first.

Ooops @Elder, I humbly accept I put my foot in my mouth! I just thought to share on the origin of innovation - new ideas, but alas, I speak to only myself.


Hope the Discpline of Innovation was some help to my fellow Wazuans and may one day help someone find a breakthrough idea. To close, I thought to share on the Classic Innovation Traps by Elizabeth Moss Kanter.

The Idea in Brief
Most companies fuel growth by creating new products and services. Yet too many firms repeat the same growth-sapping mistakes in their efforts to innovate.

For example, some companies adopt the wrong strategy: investing only in ideas they think will become blockbusters. Result? Small ideas that could have generated big profits get rejected. For years, Time, Inc. didn't develop new publications: managers wanted any start-up to succeed on the same scale as the enormously popular People magazine. Only after Time decided to gamble on a large number of new publications did revenues rise.

Other companies err on the side of process-strangling innovations by subjecting them to the strict performance criteria their existing businesses must follow. At AlliedSignal, new Internet-based products and services had to satisfy the same financial metrics as established businesses. Budgets contained no funds for investment--so managers working on innovations had to find their own funding. The consequences? Retrofitted versions of old ideas.

To avoid such traps, Kanter advocates applying lessons from past failures to your innovation efforts. For instance, augment potential "big bets" with promising midrange ideas and incremental innovations. And add flexibility to your innovation planning, budgeting, and reviews.

Your reward? Better odds that the new ideas percolating in your company today will score profitable successes in the market tomorrow.


1. Strategy Mistakes
• Rejecting opportunities that at first glance appear too small.
• Assuming that only new products count--not new services or improved processes.
• Launching too many minor product extensions that confuse customers and increase internal complexity.

2. Process Mistakes
• Strangling innovation with the same tight planning, budgeting, and reviews applied to existing businesses.
• Rewarding managers for doing only what they committed to do--and discouraging them from making changes as circumstances warrant.

3. Structure Mistakes
• Isolating fledgling and established enterprises in separate silos.
• Creating two classes of corporate citizens--those who have all the fun (innovators) and those who must make the money (mainstream business managers).

4. Skills Mistakes
• Allowing innovators to rotate out of teams so quickly that team chemistry can't gel.
• Assuming that innovation teams should be led by the best technical people.

why do I believe Alvaro's introduction in the market was more experimental than strategic really - it was never meant to be launched in the Kenyan market initially only that EABL's G.Mahinda took the bull by the horns and said he was ready for the challenge of selling it successfully in kenya. it nonetheless went ahead to become a runaway success, kudos to a well-orchestrated marketing campaign that saw it leave non-alcoholic drinks like PICANA far behind. To me the main success story about Alvaro is its aggressive marketing such that within so short a period it was the talk of the each joint.

Uchumi had a hypermart ages ago! It was known as Uchumi Hypermart!

@ Muganda & All!
Lovely thread, people! Really changamsha'd the old oblangata, and delivered some valuable lessons for 2011!

My ka-small contribution to the discussion:

Considering Kenya is the largest non-mineral rich economy in Sub-Saharan Africa, innovation should be our blueprint for development.

Kenya's economy is about 70% agrarian - we happily ship out raw materials for a song to charlatans and sharks up north.
Perhaps if we were to turn the innovation spotlight onto this sector, we would realise humongous gains that would silence that militant midget Rannenburger, and his motley crew of nay-saying diplomatic blabbermouths!

All the innovation examples given are MME/SME', with the exception of Suraya and Montezuma. Perhaps the spotlight should be shone further down the food chain to the Micro and Small Enterprises, the dudes who faithfully deliver approximately 390,000 new jobs per year to the Kenyan Economy.