This week’s content series featured Kelvin Degbotse, a junior here at Ashesi. Kelvin is the founder and CEO of Obsessive Innovations, a company which works with award winning visionaries and to help them create innovative technology products and also empowers youthful talent to be innovative. He spoke about how paradigm shifts lead to innovation
“Paradigm shifts refers to fundamental changes in approach or underlying assumptions”. Kelvin, in an effort to explain this concept further, said that in order to create a paradigm shift one is supposed to think about two things, what exists and what you expect to exist. You then forget what already exists and focus on what you expect to exist. That, according to him is the difference between just selling and innovating. This is because when one sells, one is just supplying demand, but when one innovates, demand is created. He then gave examples of Amazon and Uber, who thought about their various markets in a different way, and are enjoy huge demands for their services. “When demand is created through innovation, then other competitors will supply your demand” was another statement he made.
After the demand is created through innovation, the innovator then has to create a team of like-minded individuals who share his or her passion buys into the vision. These attributes are important because, the beginning will be tough. And when the product is finally built, be market driven, and not product driven. So, embrace paradigm shifts and build for the market.
This has been another week of content series.