I have explained the simple difference between a nation like the United States and another like Nigeria. America is an innovative society, Nigerian is an inventive society. There are so many ideas in the latter but hardly enough products and services to match those ideas.
Until nations transmute from being inventive to innovative, they will remain poor. No nation has become rich without that translation. Yes, always remember that most of the pioneers of the most fundamental aspects of physics, mathematics and chemistry died poor. They were bright people – but they ended up poor. Why? They lived in societies of ideas with no products because there was no transduction from invention to innovation.
For that I mean, they had ideas on shelves but no mechanism to create products from them. Then, something happened, and a transduction took effect and poor societies evolved to become rich. Unfortunately, not all societies followed that trajectory. And all societies must go through the transduction process to emerge.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 16 (Feb 10 – May 3, 2025) opens registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
Until pioneering entrepreneurs emerge with the energy of entrepreneurial capitalism unleashed in markets, creating products and services, to fix Nigeria’s frictions, Nigeria will not advance. Yes, Nigeria will not advance until its market systems evolve. The path to the mountaintop goes through markets, not state capitals, because all the promises of politicians must be translated within the ordinance of market principles.
Nations rise when builders emerge. True political leadership will come when politicians become aware that without markets, all their actions are hopeless. And how will that leadership come? Building processes that engineer competition and efficiency, unlocking comparative advantages across states.
Imagine a nation, #believe.
---
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 10 - May 3, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.
Invention, innovation, transduction, entrepreneurial capitalism, market system, etc. Among Buhari, Osinbajo, Lawan, Gbajabiamila, Emiefele, Malami, who really understand or can make sense of those words there, in addition to having the visioning capability and courage to act on them? We are really specialists when it comes to overestimating competence and capabilities.
From the days of Obasanjo, we have been hearing ‘reforms’ and some forms of codenamed ‘vision’ or ‘operation’, but which of them ever yielded anything worthwhile? It is never about beautiful nomenclatures or organising public hearings, tours and conferences; if you lack the intellectual rigour necessary for translating abstract possibilities into practical realities, you will keep wasting your time.
We have been on PIB for how many years? Just for a sector we have been in for decades, but it remained a struggled scraping off something meaningful from that Bill. We have danced Azonto, ShakuShaku, Kurukere, from one administration to another, from one party to another, in a bid to pass a meaningful PIB!
The first thing we must learn is to understand our true level, Nigerians are nowhere near where they place themselves, to argue otherwise means you are naive.
*a struggle