@selah good point. I think I'd recognize CapitalFM and its young crew. And a mention to Equity Bank and countless products for the masses.

It is true that most companies in Kenya just copy and never innovate.

In short, many companies in Kenya do not do any research and development to understand their clientile and so will not innovate coz they have no info. That should be the niche for Synnovate not running political opinion polls only.

Could be that most companies are more for survival than growth. Or we have the wrong people appointed CEOs who are more of farmers than hunters.

The other day the ICT board using family bank as a lending partner launched a grant That is supposed to benefit ICT wouldbe entrepreneurs in 164 constituencies.I was expecting Thousands of business plans to be submitted by the 'technology savvy' kenyans but I was surprised to find out only 400 plans were submitted.

I know most of these plans will come from Nairobi,if this trend continues we shall be boasting of being well advanced in terms of technology but in real sense we are nt benefiting economically from this resource. Just like our Farmers.

Good article Thiong'o. I always get a chill when I hear someone saying 'best practice'. It has become too common a word and consultants (me included) tend to use it far too often. The question that keeps ringing in my head is, 'Best practice according to who?'.

Fact is we cannot completely dispense with the idea of 'best practice'. My problem with that term is that it limits the posibilities to best-expected-worst case scenarios! To me that is very lazy. Why would I want to do something that another company is doing (especially if we are in the same industry) just because they were successful? Isn't that playing within your limits? How do you gain a competitive advantage if you play within your limits?

Another fact is when 'best practice' is benchmarked from across industry, it sometimes leads to very strong cash cow! That is until someone kills that cash cow for you and you're left wondering what next. In this evolving market, maintaining a competitive advantage for long enough (whenever this is) is as hard as getting a weave off Belinda Obura!

Time to kill that cash cow you have been milking before someone kills it for you and runs away with the milk & meat. Start thinking of 'next practices' rather than 'best practices'!

@Sasha 'Best practice is a subjective term / benchmark and trying to define such will obtain divergent opinions; my take is having a set of specific parameters that define 'Best practice’- Successes and Failures can then measured against the set parameters. To stay competitive companies need to develop own (internal) benchmarks in addition to industry benchmarks.

I agree with you that most companies’ just ‘copy paste’ successful practices across in their sectors & as noted the key is retaining competitiveness in the longterm.

I look at 'next practices' as forward looking - gaining and retaining that competitive edge over competitors and the competition (staying ahead of the competition). - It’s never easy and hence need to stay innovative.

Below article on “Next-Generation Product Development” is similar to your 'next practices' - forward looking!

http://www.strategy-busi....com/article/00076?pg=0