Everyone is talking about mobile applications and “e” or “m” enabling services. Hackathons and developer competitions are the order of the day with many looking to create the next Instagram. While these types of conversations are taking a large percentage of local tech’s share of voice, an interesting initiative is slowing taking root that is looking at a different aspect of tech that when successful will open up new opportunities for both business and learning, with its different approach to what I call “capacity as a service”.

A team of local developers with some financial backing from Google and working out of the Ihub are creating what in my books is Kenya’s first locally assembled supercomputer. The project has been a while coming and conversations around it have been interesting with a CEO of an established tech services firm quipping “ Why do we even need a super computer? ” This is expected as the majority of client facing deployments of technology services are not capacity intensive unless you are running a Facebook of sorts.

A super computer refers to a high performance computer setup, built to deliver immense processing power. While the local deployment may not rank anywhere close to the builds deployed the world over, with costs in the millions of dollars and used by military, pharmaceutical, meteorological and manufacturing outfits, it is still an important first step in what I see as a more tangible form of the outsourcing business that has proved elusive.

The opportunities

On the education front, the team is documenting the project build to allow students and other enthusiasts to learn how to build hardware infrastructure; breaking down existing hardware setups and reconfiguring them to meet specific needs and thinking through holistic platform provisioning. Academia would do well to pay attention to this or even incorporate it into a module or two; the hands on nature of this project offers rich learning.

On the commercial side, the applications are many with the predominant model as capacity sold per hour. Government can blast through tonnes of data generated by is operations daily to derive insights to guide decision making, architects can output their plans with ease, scientists can see accelerated discovery from their research work, local councils can power smart cities, process intensive software applications or mobile applications targeted for the masses can run more efficiently and with the burgeoning content industry, animators can also render their work within the shortest possible time.

High performance computing can make money by doing the heavy lifting and thereby improving efficiencies across all sectors of the economy and this initiative will be one to keep an eye on; the spin-offs may just prove to be interesting.

I happened on a great article by Dan McCarthy who writes about matters leadership, and his latest piece struck a chord. If you have been in the trenches long enough as an entrepreneur, these are learning’s that you will get on your journey, some obvious others not so much.
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Unless you are an heir to a throne, people usually don’t begin their careers leading a large organization. There’s a progression of passages, or at least there should be.

Charan, Drotter, and Noel wrote about six leadership passages in their classic book The Leadership Pipeline. However, they use the terms “leadership” and “management” interchangeably. There’s a big difference, right?

What if we took a simplified version of the Pipeline model, and mash it with a distinction between leadership and management?

We’ll call it The Great Leadership & Management Passages Model (OK, so we need a catchier name):

Here are the six passages:

Passage #1: Managing Yourself
Managing yourself means learning how to show up to work on time and dressed appropriately, get along with your co-workers, manage your time and priorities, keep your boss happy, and follow basic workplace adequate, i.e., no microwaving fish in the break room. It also means learning how to solve problems, make decisions, use good judgment, and control your emotions.

Passage #2: Leading Yourself
Leading yourself involves figuring out what really inspires you and doing whatever it is you do with a sense of purpose and passion. It includes having a clear set of values and principles that guide your day-to-day behavior and decisions, a compelling vision, and goals. It requires the ability to handle ambiguity, paradox, and change.

Passage #3: Managing Others and Teams
Managing others and teams involves learning out to hire, train, establish performance measures, reward, and punish. It’s about figuring out what and how the work needs to be done, and lining up the right resources needed to get the work done.

Passage #4: Leading Others and Teams
In other to lead others and teams, you have to learn about and tap into each individuals values, goals, hopes, dreams, and fears. It involves getting to know each team member and learning how to inspire commitment, energize, and harness the individual and collective passion of the team. At the risk of stating the obvious – to lead others and teams requires transforming yourself into a leader.

Passage #5: Managing Organizations
Managing organizations involves optimizing a number of different functions in order to create a product or service and archive measurable organizational outcomes. It requires having a solid grasp of all aspects of the organization, including strategy, sales, marketing, human resources, manufacturing, research, legal, etc….
Goals need to be set at a high level and then cascaded throughout the organization with a performance management system in place to achieve those goals. Managing organizations also means being responsive to multiple stakeholders, including employees, customers, investors, government, and the community.

Passage #6: Leading Organizations
Leading organizations requires learning how to establish a compelling vision and inspire large groups of people to act from afar. An organizational leader can no longer rely on the ability tap into each individual’s passion – they need to figure out how to manage culture and engage the entire organization in order to mobilize shared commitment.
Leading organizations requires learning how to identify and develop other leaders, because no one leader can create and sustain extraordinary performance on their own.

I believe the passages are developmentally progressive and build upon each other. An individual can technically jump right into passages #5 and #6, Managing and Leading Organizations, they won’t be successful in the long run if they haven’t learned how to lead and manage themselves, other individuals, and teams I’ve seen this happen over and over – the brilliant, young entrepreneur or the star performer who is put in charge of an organization with undeveloped emotional intelligence and no actual experience managing others. Unfortunately, sometimes they never do learn – or even try to – and it ends up being their downfall.

I realize the model is way overly simplified – we couldn’t possibly describe everything it takes to lead and manage in less than 1000 words. But then again, when it comes to models, simple is good. If you can’t explain it to a 12-year old (or a CEO), then it’s too complicated.

- Great Leadership Blog

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“Never underestimate the consumers need for information and entertainment” said one speaker recently concluded East Africa Com conference. Technology’s continuous evolution opens up more avenues for revenue generation, either by way of new market access, lower costs of production, efficient distribution and allowing for business model innovation as new market conditions are created.

One of the industries whose time is right for disruption is that of broadcast; with the costs of internet access having dropped, mobile data going mainstream and a plethora of tools that empower everyone to be a content creator.

The five players who are poised to benefit greatly in this evolving space are traditional players in the media space – think terrestrial tv and radio station, mobile network operators, independent content producers, aggregators who may also double up as platform providers and finally consumer brands looking at more effective and directly measurable engagement experiences.

However, there are a number of challenges that stand in the way of opportunity realization. For traditional players in the broadcast space, lack of agility and technical capabilities could see them loose mind share to independents who will take to digital distribution as their first option. Mobile network operators on the other hand are hesitant to move forward with differentiated business models that would support consumption on multiple screens – with the third and fourth screen being predominantly mobile. With unlimited data bundles on mobile seemingly on their death beds the world over, it remains to be seen just how the operators will adapt to this opportunity. Content producers are also faced with the challenge of continuously creating compelling content that users will pay for, or at least; view in decent numbers to make alternative revenue options such as advertising viable. Platform providers have to think through setting up content delivery networks, bandwidth and providing guaranteed up-times; a capital and technology intensive endeavor.

The solution to these challenges lies in partnerships, as all these players have something to offer. I am aware that content producers tuned into the opportunity and have already started on ambitious content aggregation. Platform providers with requisite expertise are also on the ground exploring synergies. Unfortunately, traditional players in broadcast, by all indications will play catch up due to lack of in-house innovation. The mobile network operators are the final piece, having invested deeply in infrastructure and connectivity while having access to a demanding base of users looking for increased mobile utility.

The time for truly converged multi-screen experiences is here.

Mobile payments has taken the attention of many firms globally from mobile network operators, credit card providers and others looking to benefit from the mobile lifestyles of the worlds 5 billion plus connected consumers. MasterCard, Visa, Western Union, PayPal and a host of startups are dabbling in the space with each jostling for leadership position in a billion dollar market opportunity.

Square a US based payment platform that went live with a C2B mobile payments proposition in February 2009; that marries mobile and credit card technology using custom hardware that plugs into an Iphone, Ipad or Android device, was recently reported to be processing 5 billion dollars in annual payments. However, their target markets have high credit card adoption and they face continued competition in that vertical.

Mpesa’s runaway success has seen many mobile operators including the parent company Vodafone try to replicate its success with nothing to write home about in comparison.

The next wave of innovation in mobile payments, I foresee being powered by NFC (Near Field Communication) – a contactless radio technology that can transmit data between two devices within close proximity.

Search giant Google have in their stable a service dubbed – Google Wallet,  which are positioning to replace the credit card in both form and function by layering additional services onto mobile payments. I consider it odd therefore that they would have credit card issuers  onboard with Mastercard and Citi already live and Visa, Discover and American Express slated for future inclusion onto their platform.

Africa has all the ingredients of a successful adoption of mobile payment innovation that can achieve true scale and profit. First, is the sheer number of mobile consumers whose demand for better mobile utility is remains unsatisfied, second is the wide gap in C2B payments on mobile, with the business oriented service attempts on Mpesa, Zap and other mobile money deployments in Africa barely scratching that itch; third is that there have been lessons learnt in mobile money deployments for the masses, lastly and perhaps most important is that we think different – and here I refer to the many minds that  tirelessly think outside the box and innovate for the unique African mobile consumer.

According to the GSMA, as of November 2011, 45 of the world’s leading mobile operators had committed to support and implement SIM-based NFC solutions and services with commercial services live in France, Japan, South Korea, Tanzania, Turkey and the UK.

It’s still an open game, and my bet is on an African innovation taking the world by storm yet again.

I had an interesting conversation with a manger with one of the local FMCG companies around the topic of messaging. I happened to mention that we offer enterprise level messaging platforms on sms, mobile applications –push functionality and email. The first two were an easy sell on  why they would need an enterprise solution but when it came to email, she was convinced that there is nothing like enterprise email messaging.

In the past we have seen how email powers the “social fabric” with almost all online interactions requiring the use of this important piece of identity to allow service access. With increasing utility of the email channel as powered mobile data uptake throughout Africa, governments, brands and other businesses must understand the real benefit of ensuring message delivery.

Two things happen to an email that doesn’t meet certain criteria; it either gets relegated to the spam folder that will see a swift delete by the targeted users or it gets blocked by the service provider and the user will not even have a clue that you attempted to communicate.

There are a number of things that a business must address to ensure delivery of communication sent over email.

Having a good reputation on email involves several factors such as : creating and designing communication without buggy backend code, consistent volumes when sending – it is unlikely that as a business your database will fluctuate drastically if its properly build up, low bounce back rates  and finally having low numbers of complaints – if you send unsolicited email, chances of the recipient clicking “Spam”  or “Junk” are much higher and this will dent your reputation.

Infrastructure is key in ensuring deliverability; most people erroneously believe that simply deploying messaging over smtp given by a hosting provider is sufficient to send bulk emails. We recently had a client come onboard, who had attempted to send to a modest list of ten thousand customers and ended up having their email privileges revoked by their hosting provider, which meant that  even official incoming emails could not be received and neither could they send. Different rules apply to high volume transactional type email traffic.

Authentication of the sending entity is paramount in this day and age of spam and “stolen identity”. It helps ISP and other mail service providers confirm that you are indeed who you say you are. It’s amazing the number of businesses that still don’t look into this.

Transactional email communication, whether for marketing purposes, customer retention or service alerts are important to any business, and you must seek out providers who will give a guarantee on delivery and provide advice on how to properly implement a email communication strategy, covering all the important elements some of which have gone unmentioned here.

No one wants to pay for information anymore, after all the internet is overflowing with free information that is available to me even on the move on my mobile device. This seems to be the prevailing notion for many who continue to insist that the internet is “free”; but “if you are not paying for something, you are not the consumer; you are the product being sold” and the trade off for this deceptively free access to information is your personal data.

The gears of internet commerce are greased by an intricate information exchange system that has players in the hundreds who are all angling for a piece of your data. With internet penetration in Africa rising and juggernauts like Google having set up shop; this confirms that Africa is next frontier with a large non-profiled population.The data that is collected and mined from your online journeys is used to fine tune the content that you consume with the biggest value tied to targeted advertising. Simply put, everything you do online, is of value to someone.

Facebook, a social network that has the world buzzing with talk of a $100 billion valuation as it looks at going public, employs some serious talent – think PhD level to build new models to analyze and position all the data that you so freely provide when on their platform with the sole aim of presenting businesses with a  tool to market their products and services.

The ecosystem that powers the free internet consists of buyer, seller and a host of intermediaries who are looking to either improve one process or another or provide more meaningful interpretation of data.

When free is not really free, can be seen in instances when accessing content online you get served with a notice – this content is not available in your region. What’s going on here is that there is insufficient information on you to make you a profitable consumer for the free offering. The cost vs benefit to the content provider is nil, and therefore they will not expend resources – think bandwidth , lead commissions on a prospect whom they can’t convert to paying in one way or another. They will therefore not license their inventory for viewing in region.

As we get more connected, expect even more targeted content to come your way; but remember there is nothing like a free lunch.

Developer Economics is back for a new research on some of the hottest trends of the developer ecosystem; investigating key themes, such as developer mindshare, app monetization and marketing, as well as regional app economics.

So – kindly take 10 minutes to complete the  online survey – and stand to win great prizes ( a $1,000 Amazon voucher, a new iPad, and a Kindle Fire up for grabs). The results of this survey will be published as a FREE report in Q2

Developer Economics 2012 – Key themes

This research revolves around five main themes:

•  Developer Mindshare
• App Store Fragmentation
• Making money from apps
• App Marketing
• Apps supply vs. demand per region

 Why are these themes important? Let’s take them, one at a time:

Developer Mindshare – which are the top platforms for developers?

Two previous Developer Economics reports have shown clear trends in terms of the migration of developer MindShare (i.e. the average % of developers using each platform) away from traditional platforms, such as Java, Flash Lite and BlackBerry and onto newer platforms – mainly Android and iOS. One of the biggest surprises in last year’s report was the emergence of mobile web as the third most widely used platform in mobile – as the app economy is shifting the balance of power among key players of the mobile industry, software developers flock to mobile, claiming their own piece of the pie. The increasing usage of cross-platform tools reduces the barriers to entry and allows developers of all inklings to create apps that have the potential to be downloaded thousands, if not millions, of times.

App Store Fragmentation – how many app stores do developers use concurrently?

At the same time, all and sundry are attempting to tap into the app economy, creating new app stores left and right. There are currently over 70 app stores– and that’s just for Android! Traditional players, like Telcos and handset manufacturers, have also created app stores and are allowing access behind their proverbial walled gardens, leaving developers lost in a sea of app stores. Since the choice of app stores is largely dependent on the platform used to create their apps, developers need to carefully target the stores they will use. The majority of these app stores have a limited range and scope – do take the survey and let us know which ones you think are the most important.

Revenues vs. costs – which developers are making money?

As the number of apps available in the big stores has reached immense heights, discoverability has become a thorny issue for developers. An app that has taken time and money to be developed might be lost amidst the crowd of similar apps, providing very low revenues to the developer who created it. Despite an abundance of opportunities and the fact that many companies, both from within and outside the mobile industry, view developers as an asset, there’s a long tail of developers  who don’t manage to break even.

There are many parameters that govern monetization. Choosing a revenue model is extremely important, as the trend is moving away from the traditional pay-per-download model and into in-app purchases and premium features. Moreover, choice of platform seems to be equally important, since not all platforms are created equal, at least in terms of monetization.

Monetizing a great app is more than actually creating it – it’s a mixture of several parameters, such as selecting the right audience, the right platform and the right distribution channel. Which brings us to our next theme; marketing.

App marketing – what’s the best way of marketing your apps?

It’s not enough just to create a great app; most of the time, you have to spend money in order to make money, which means developers need to invest in marketing. There are numerous of ways of marketing an app – through the usual suspects (social media, own website/blog etc.) to paying for Google AdWords, Facebook ads or even premium placement in app stores.  As with everything marketing-related it not just a matter of throwing money at your problem, but of tailoring your message to the right audience and selecting the best channel to reach them. Which means that marketing goes even further back in the app supply chain – i.e. the design board. It’s imperative that developers know whom they’re making their apps for, how large their audience is and what is the best way to reach them.

Have more ideas on app marketing? Take the survey and give us your views.

Regional vs. global demand – what is the balance between developer supply vs. app demand across regions?

The app economy has allowed players from all around the globe to join in and make a killing. China, India, Brazil and Africa have huge developer communities, of increasing importance. In previous Developer Economics reports we found that platform use varies with region – for example, there’s a large concentration of iOS developers in North America, while Asia holds a higher-than-average percentage of Java developers.

At the same time, users are looking for more localized content – local apps in their own language. China is now the second largest market in terms of app downloads – and is expected to grow even more, as China has now overtaken the US in Android and iOS activations.  As app markets are growing all around the globe, the importance of localized content becomes paramount – which is the next app heaven?

So – if you’re interested as much as we are to know the answer to all these questions and the themes presented here – Take the online survey and let us know what you think.

If you’re not a developer you can always help us spread the word!

How did we innovate? We had a department of innovation, which encouraged free thinking. People could come up with any whacky idea, it dindt matter. And we had a process called the gate process, where a committe made a decision – “ok that is too whacky”, “proceed with this lot” or “gi do some work on this lot and then come back”. And we had a process for taking new products through a quick cyle of six months gestation period or less. But in the end, only one person made the decision; and that was me. And that is how you innovate. You cannot innovate by committee; becuase there’s always someone on the commmitte who will slow things down. In the end, if you want to innovate, you need to have a single decision maker – Michael Jospeh {2011 interview}

Accion, a pioneer and leader in global microfinance, today announced the launch of Venture Lab, an initiative dedicated to providing seed capital and management support to financial inclusion start-ups worldwide.

The $10 million program will seek out companies that have completed research and development and are at the pilot/first-revenue stage.  Investments will typically be in the range of US $100,000-$300,000, invested either as convertible debt or equity.

“There is tremendous excitement and promise across the globe in efforts to deliver vital financial services to those who have traditionally lacked access,” said Michael Schlein, Accion president and CEO.  “Our new Accion Venture Lab will seek companies developing innovative technologies and disruptive business models with the potential to transform the quality and scale of services available to the financially excluded.”

Seeking approximately 20 investments over the next three years, Venture Lab will focus primarily in the following areas:

1. Mobile financial services: Mobile phone-based financial services or business models built on branchless banking platforms, delivering services that include savings accounts, remittances, credit, and micro-insurance.
2. Credit underwriting/delivery: Specialized credit assessment or delivery models to finance not only microenterprises, but also housing, education, small and medium enterprises, and energy initiatives.
3. Internet and social media: Online or social media platforms for enabling financial access (e.g., peer-to-peer lending and social media-based financial services).
4. Embedded financial services: Pay-as-you-go or lease-to-own energy products, modular housing and other ‘embedded’ financial-service models.
5. New technology for bottom-of-the-pyramid finance: Taking advantage of new technology innovations (cloud computing, Internet access, handhelds/tablets) to improve the reach, cost, or quality of financial services to underserved customers, including customer relationship management, field force management, marketing/customer education, and analytics.

Geographically, Venture Lab’s mandate is global. Preliminary research has focused largely on companies in East Africa and South Asia. In the coming months, Latin America will also be a focal point.

Venture Lab will seek to support start-ups at a vital stage when they are normally considered ‘pre-investable’ – that is, when a product or service is ready to test the market but has not yet proved its ability to generate revenue.  The Lab will provide not only patient capital, but also a dedicated team ready to assist with early-stage tasks such as analytics, financial modeling, business development and reaching scale.

Venture Lab’s assistance will leverage Accion’s technical capacity, its global network of microfinance institutions, and relationships in the global microfinance and mainstream financial industries to help build an entrepreneurial ecosystem in which portfolio companies can thrive.
The Lab will be directed by Paul Breloff out of Accion’s Washington, D.C. offices, with staff to be based in East Africa and India.
Venture Lab complements Accion’s Frontier Investments Group, which focuses on similarly disruptive but more established companies with demonstrated revenue traction.  Both investment vehicles are part of ongoing efforts by Accion to explore innovative business models that will radically improve the efficiency and enhance the quality of financial-service delivery to the under-banked.