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Key Theme: 10 Years

Reflecting on the last 10 years, and looking forwards to the next 10 years of innovations in technology, business models, investing and the business environment, Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford 2010 shall explore the disruptive technologies and business innovations of the past 10 years, reflecting on the demise of old industries, old economic models and old perspectives.

Sub-theme 1: Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction

The advancement of the Internet is arguably the greatest computer science innovation. Its overwhelmingly pervasive power has led to the disruption of established knowledge and cultural industries, sectors which represent the core of our very existence in terms of recording, reporting, reflecting and questioning our society and its culture.

Sub-theme 2: Could Silicon Valley exist anywhere in the world?

The tenth anniversary provides an opportunity to ask whether Silicon Valley could evolve into a generic term or metaphor for an entrepreneurial cluster anywhere in the world. What is the secret of Silicon Valley? Why has Europe never managed to create an equivalent (note that Oxfordshire is recognised as one of the most successful entrepreneurial ecosystems in Europe.) At SVCO 08, investor, Saul Klein questioned whether the richness of European history, its architecture and long established institutions present an impediment. Contrast with Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv. How does national culture, history, geography and policies impact or fuel the formation of entrepreneurial clusters? Is the next Silicon Valley likely to be in Shanghai or the already burgeoning Hyderabad or Bangalore?

A devotion to the obsessive pursuit of knowledge within a narrow and sharply defined area is one way to view academic research endeavours; in ‘The Bottom Billion’ Paul Collier describes research as an intense but very narrow beam of light. From my perspective the ‘who, what, when, where, why and how’ of the medical, life and physical sciences is clear cut. The ‘why and how’ in terms of certain aspects of the social sciences is less accessible to me, providing me with new and interesting challenges and novel perspectives. As the Oxford Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (OxCEI) grows its research base from its origins as a practical entrepreneurship centre, I no longer want to only understand the ‘who’ and ‘what’ in terms of business school ’social sciences’ research; ‘how’ and more importantly ‘why’ has become my pre-occupation.

 Anthropologist, Catherine Dolan, Said Business School Lecturer in Marketing presented her research around ‘Avon in Africa: Poverty Reduction through Entrepreneurship’ at a forum organised by our Centre to showcase and network entrepreneurship and innovation researchers across the University of Oxford. In line with CK Prahalad’s innovative and provocative ’bottom of the pyramid’ ethos, Avon has expanded its network of ‘Avon ladies’ to South Africa. The role of the Avon sales rep, once the preserve of middle class suburban house wives across the UK and US (keen to enhance their housekeeping budgets) is now globalised and available to the homemakers of the emerging markets! Dolan gave an account of the considerable empowerment felt by South African Avon sales representatives selling cosmetics: lipsticks, perfumes, make up and so on for Avon on a commission-only basis. Dolan informed that involvement with Avon, as sales representatives, provides a small but important number of black South African women with financial empowerment, self esteem and independence. The UN confirms in various reports that an empowered woman leads to a better quality of life, an empowered household and essentially (or arguably) poverty reduction; the prospect of Avon expanding into Africa, viewing the continent as a potential market, is commendable.

Dr Dolan referred to the ‘Avon ladies’ as ‘entrepreneurs’ and positioned her (and Dr Linda Scott’s) research as one perspective on ‘Women’s Entrepreneurship in Africa’ – this leaves me with a number questions. From a descriptive perspective, the South African women she describes are indeed ‘entrepreneurs.’ The African entrepreneur, Mo Ibrahim, founder of Cel-tel controversially pushed the boundaries further at the 2006 Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship by arguing that entrepreneurial character traits are an inherent part of the African mindset, (he also unequivocally stated that he isn’t a ’social’ entrepreneur and that rather, he is an entrepreneur who founded a company in Africa.) I agree on both counts, just visit the food markets of Accra or Lagos and you will see women ‘entrepreneurs’ everywhere – from a descriptive perspective – objectively they are traders or business women. My grandmother, fluent in five West African languages: Ashanti Twi, Ewe, Ga, Hausa and English, before reaching her current ripe old age was an entrepreneurial market trader and the prospect of access to micro finance or supplementary commission-based sales income would have enabled her to flourish realizing her entrepreneurial instincts. I applaud the use of the word ‘entrepreneur’ to describe entrepreneurial or enterprising Avon cosmetics sales representatives, but…I worry when it is used in an academic setting (where, I gather, precise definitions and semantics are ever so important.) I worry about its use in any arena where an objective definition of the ‘entrepreneur’ could be useful. I think that the women at the centre of the Avon study are enterprising sales women, entrepreneurial women traders and indeed cosmetics representatives working on a commission-only basis. Are they entrepreneurs? I think not. Are they intrapreneurs? I doubt working for Avon extends to this remit.

For me, entrepreneurship pushes the boundaries and leads to innovation, sustainable wealth creation and jobs; it impacts positively (one hopes) on economies spanning the local, regional or national levels and impacts beyond micro-level improvements in the finances of an individual.  I became personally inspired to enter university technology transfer (and now knowledge transfer) ten years ago because the thought of wealth creation – creating wealth by transferring the fruits of university research to the public domain fascinated me – my mantra being, ’spread the intellect around as widely as possible’ harnessing the markets, if necessary.

Google’s entrepreneur-in-residence, Harvard graduate and woman entrepreneur, Monique Maddy (of Liberian descent) founded a telecommunications company in Tanzania in 1993. Maddy’s entrepreneurial African venture is depicted in a Harvard Business School case study. Nubian Sudanese and Egyptian-born Mo Ibrahim, metaphorically described as the godfather of Africa’s mobile phone industry, founded Cel-tel in 1998. The venture has operations across Africa including Zambia, Chad, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. Cel-tel’s innovation epitomises the technology concept of leap frogging the 20^th century straight into the 21^st Century. Bypassing the slow development of landlines in Africa, Cel-tel noted the lack of basic telephone infrastructure and they grasped a market opportunity. Former academic, Dr Ibrahim made more than £363M when Cel-tel was sold to a Kuwaiti company; he has given away more than £57M for African philanthropic causes and donated another £64M for the establishment of a fund to invest responsibly in the continent. He is the founder of the African leadership prize to reward good governance and his observations reflect a very African champion: “Clearly there is a big gap between perception and reality when it comes to Africa…When you ask people what they think of Africa, they think Aids, genocide, disasters, famine. Yes, Africa has its fair share of tragedies. But Africa has 53 countries. There are really peaceful parts of the continent; there are quite reasonable governments in many countries.”

The Africa enthusiast, Mark Davies, moved to Ghana in order to recapture the excitement of the frontier days of Silicon Alley (Metrobeat) and London’s 1990s dotcom boom (co-founder of First Tuesday.) He founded sub-Saharan Africa’s largest technology centre, BusyInternet, a social investment which has evolved into Africa’s largest privately-held technology centre and incubator for SMEs. The centre, based in Accra, was established as a cluster concept to bring together entrepreneurs in ICT-enabled businesses to share ideas, new technologies and market opportunities. Subsequently, he has founded a couple of software houses – and the management teams and techies are all West African software developers. Aside from Mark’s entrepreneurial pursuits, he has given lectures and practical classes at a major university in Ghana where Ghanaian student computer scientists determined to experiment, resort to hand written code due to a lack of computers. The supply-led nature of university research means that we will infrequently hear about these aspects of African entrepreneurship and innovation in an academic forum.

(Note: when I refer to individual entrepreneurs, I am actually referring to their brilliant management and technical teams – the employees as well as the founding individual, duo or team…I agree with the entrepreneurs who emphasise that entrepreneurship is far from being a heroic endeavour by a single individual. According to Jonathan Bond of Actis Investments, beyond Ibrahim, Cel-tel created a number of African millionaires – I very much hope that they will invest in the next wave of innovative African entrepreneurs)

A couple of weeks ago, I met with a group of Said Business School African MBA students planning an Africa Business Conference; an Executive Education student of Nigerian descent who simultaneously works for Goldman Sachs also joined the meeting. The Africa Business theme was originally and only recently pioneered in the Said Business School in 2006 at a conference entitled ‘Demystifying the African Economy’ led by the student society, Oxford Entrepreneurs and championed by the Oxford Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The African MBA students (former accountants, investment professionals and scientists) are keen to inform their peers, their academic lecturers and the wider university about investment and general business opportunities in Africa. The Goldman Sachs Executive Education student wanted to stage an infrastructure conference. Like the previous anti and post colonial generations who studied overseas, they had high hopes and ambitions and were keen to contribute to making Africa (the poorest continent) a region to be reckoned with: unlike previous generations of African overseas students who were political thinkers and activists, today’s aspiring African students are business practitioners or investment professionals consolidating their knowledge at top flight business schools. They note the universal pre-occupation with micro finance and micro-pursuits, and with urgency choose to focus their interests on the venture capital void experienced by African-based small and medium sized enterprises, and further along the scale private equity and infrastructure funding for roads, water, energy and telecoms.

In contrast, some of the Africa-linked research interests of the PhD or Dphil community remains naturally esoteric and, maybe, sometimes arguably a little exotic. Worryingly, bottom of the pyramid sales projects, micro-financial endeavours and social enterprises are overwhelmingly positioned as offering ‘development’ solutions by a number of players for the African continent when the trajectory of the Asian economic tigers proves otherwise.