Quote from Emmanuel Awopetu on July 20, 2021, 6:34 PM

The First Mover Advantage Verse the Blessing of Backwardness.

In business, largely it madness than methods!

Who would believe that giving people the opportunity to post their pictures would usher a new age? However, notably Instagram broke that logic. Then Onlyfans (When a Christian brother heard I searched this word up the internet he questioned me. To the glory of God and shame of the devil, I just knew about it that week during a conversation and had to do a research) went far and changed the ordinance of business hitting a unicorn- 1 billion USD- state in less than five (5) years. A milestone Flutterwave achieved in struggles, she attained effortlessly. My point is this; many things defy conventional logic. If you doubt remember tick tok.

This madness can be further seen in business although in various form;

One leads to what is called the first mover advantage. The idea of this can be simply explained using the naming of a street. At most time whoever comes to that region as the first get the opportunity to name it after himself. Take for example Illamoye were my parent stay in Lagos. It named after the person that came to the street. I know, you may say how does this trivial thing have to do with money coming into ones account?

That the whole madness about it. Human are largely sentimental- most of our decision are emotionally driven, very few people act on logic. So, knowing that I would be doing business with someone who has a street named after him even if he is not the wealthiest on that street gives me a sense of confidence in what that person can do!

Further, aside from that stated above, when you get into a new terrain, it give you the opportunity to tap into the value in that place, hence you can dictate the tune of the place. That explains why America is still world power. A little history would help here:

In the Nineteen centaury, America was envious of what Britain had done. Britain were the first to industrialize, so America thought of what they could do for their rise. And although they were rich in minerals, however, they had one major problem, scarcity of labour. Manufacturing (Industrialization) in that time was labour intensive, and since Britain was pushing in their production thy utilized all the human resource they could. So, to compensate for their shortcoming, The American when for Technological advancement. They understood quickly that the human brain could generate much output than human muscles. They made machine need little human input, thus automating many laborious works- it led to the birth of what has evolved to modern Automation.

So, with all this, the United States rose above Britain because they moved first into Technological advancement.

The other could be seen from the blessing of backwardness. I like using things that many can relate to.

Many would understand that feeling of doing so much to get a job done, then another man taking/sharing the credit with us- In this case am not referring to a team works. To simplify, I would put in this way: You are struggling to pour out your thought in an exam, then somebody effortlessly copies you work- That is months of Hard work stolen, right!

Well that it why it’s called a blessing- “Omo iya o mo bo shey lo na”. By the way, a hug after the exam would neutralize all hard feeling!

Although this backward strategy has downsides o! But if you are “ibile”, as in, “omo ope” it would be very dynamic for you. In the industrial race many country did it which includes Germany Russia and Japan. In modern time Apple, is the master of this strategy. Take a walk down through all their product, they wait for others to work, putting in all the effort- including resource, which most times usher the existing company to go into bankruptcy- before they redefine and sell it at scale. They have a market capitalization that makes everybody feel like fools. Just few come close- Saudi AMERCO and recently Microsoft.

Why am I writing this?

In May, it made news that Heirs holding acquired 45 percent of assets in certain oil firms. One may ask, why now?

Well, those company are going green, and the leadership of Heirs know clearly that even if the world want Africa to onboard in Green economy it would struggles, so they want to stay around so they can finance the Carbon economy before Africa is ready to join the world. Last last, someone like Bill gate if he is still alive by then, would act like the good father he is of charitable course and fund the removal of the extra carbon emitted into the atmosphere by us.

So, acquiring that huge chuck of assets at the cheap price makes it easy for the Legendary Tony lead firm to make enough profit, so when the need to pivot comes they have the cash, then find a way around local policies so they move into the green economy effortless.

All this said, each of this models have their advantage and their disadvantage.

So, like a mad man, he blesses and amuse many- there was a time many people go to mad men for baba Ijebu number- nevertheless he is out of touch with reality.