Author Archive | Jane Notten

In February, the UCT GSB and the MTN Group announced a major new partnership to boost sustainable innovation in Africa. MTN will invest R15 million over the next three years in the MTN Solution Space, an innovation hub at the heart of the UCT GSB.

The partnership is built on a solid platform of shared values of integrity, leadership, learning and a commitment to innovation with real-world impact.

“Each partner has complementary expertise and skills, so together, their impact on African innovation will be greater, and the solutions emerging as a result of their collaboration will reach further,” said Professor Walter Baets, director of the UCT GSB. “We are delighted that MTN has decided to make a commitment of this kind. It is an investment in solutions for Africa, by Africa, in Africa,” Baets said.
The collaboration will combine the actionlearning and research strengths of the UCT GSB with MTN’s technological expertise and resources to create, among others, mobile apps and programmes for educational, medical and economic empowerment, as well as to promote entrepreneurship and small business growth.

Paul Norman, chief human resources and corporate affairs officer: MTN Group said: “As Africa’s leading telecommunications brand, MTN is committed to leading the delivery of a bold new digital world, a world where technological development and mobile integration allow for new possibilities, not just for our own customers, but for people and communities across Africa.”

Sarah-Anne Arnold, manager of the MTN Solution Space said the partnership represents a truly symbiotic and purposeful venture into the future.

“MTN already has an extensive footprint in Africa and the GSB has a strong representation of African students at the business school, combined with a reputation for research and academic excellence. So we are combining our strengths for a common purpose – finding solutions to the biggest challenges facing our continent,” she said.

“We foresee Africa’s brightest and most innovative minds collaborating to find new solutions that grow from test environments into new markets. We look forward to elevating the profile of cutting-edge African innovators and entrepreneurs,” Norman added.

The MTN Solution Space has already had successes in helping start-ups gain a foothold in the business world. It is home to social innovators like former UCT GSB MPhil student Francois Petousis, who founded Lumkani, a proactive, early-warning fire detection system designed for shack dwellers. The concept won the People’s Choice Award at the 2014 Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) and scooped second place in two separate categories at South Africa’s innovation summit.

Professor Baets said partnerships like these enable real innovation that can make a difference to communities, adding value on many different levels, while helping to establish new ventures that contribute to economic growth. He said as a founding sponsor of the MTN Solution Space, MTN understands that innovation is essential for achieving competitive advantage in today’s high-pressure business environment.

“The UCT GSB is dedicated to developing a new paradigm for learning and research with an emphasis on building African solutions and innovations. In collaboration with MTN, we will be able to create better outcomes. Our combined networks – civil society partners, industry experts, policy makers and practitioners – create a collaborative innovation landscape like no other,” Baets said.

It is said that when cell phones first came to Nigeria, the traffic in Lagos improved overnight. The reason: people no longer had to drive across town to speak to their friends or conclude a business deal. In a country with no comprehensive fixed-line communications network, the advent of mobile was liberating. It quite literally, had the power to change the dynamic of an entire city.

The story illustrates what we often hear and say: technology has the potential to change things – dramatically and for the better. MIT senior lecturer and influential thinker, Otto Scharmer puts technology as one of eight ‘acupuncture points’ for institutional innovation, with the power to update the economic system so that it can operate more intelligently and for the benefit of more people.

But he is not talking about technology ‘as usual’. More than two decades of technology hype and one technology bubble have taught us that technology in and of itself has limitations. And despite its pervasiveness, many are still waiting for the life-changing impact of technology to reach them.

In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the fact that nearly two-thirds (65%) of households in 23 countries had at least one mobile phone in 2013, as estimated by Gallup, has not yet liberated these countries from poverty and inequality. According to recent data from the Afrobarometer, which is based on the views and experiences of ordinary citizens, roughly half of all Africans experience at least occasional shortages of basic needs such as clean water, food and medical care, and 44% experience regular shortages of cash.

The truth is, we have a tendency to overestimate technology in the short term and underestimate it in the long term – the dotcom bubble of 2000/2001 taught us that lesson rather viscerally. But despite that short-term correction, the long-term reality is inescapable: computers have permeated our lives and mobiles have saturated our day-to-day. Now the convergence of these two technologies is set to propel us into a new era of technology innovation where everything – the way we learn, the way we collect data, the way we interact, check on our politicians, even the way we sleep and eat – are up for renegotiation.

The next wave of technology development will no longer be about building a telecommunications network or computing industry – but building on these to create whole new industries and sectors. The innovators of the future will be shaping value-adding services, which use these resources to truly transform lives and experiences, and what Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA) calls the “dawn of a new mobile ecosystem.”

This presents us with an unprecedented opportunity to craft a new and better future. In Africa, where a booming economy and expanding middle class are luring more investors – including many of the technology giants – to our shores, the opportunities are profound.

To capitalise on these, however, we need, as Scharmer says, “to reinvent how we develop technologies and empower all people to be makers and creators, rather than passive recipients.” Social inclusion and economic equity must be the watchwords for the next wave of technology innovation on this continent. Whether it is financial inclusion or access to education – impact on the end user; the people and communities who benefit from these services, must be top of mind.

Technology companies then – especially those who are looking to expand into emerging markets – need to find the business models that support the mass rollout of effective technology solutions to markets at the bottom of the pyramid. And it is not about just giving consumers what the companies think they might need. The failure of Intel’s YOLO trial, a cheap smartphone running Android, which proposed to bring cheap devices to the ‘masses’, is a case in point.

In developing the right products and services, local knowledge will be key; the leaders in the field recognise that not everyone in Africa needs or wants to play Angry Birds or Candy Crush.

This is why IBM invested heavily in a research centre in Nairobi in 2013. They know that research for Africa, solving Africa’s ‘grand challenges’ and delivering commercially viable products that also impact on people’s lives, has to be done ‘on the ground, in Africa’.

Microsoft – another key tech investor in Africa – speaks a similar language. Its 4Afrika initiative is seeking, says Fernando de Sousa who heads the initiative, to prove the value of technology as the enabler for development. “This is about being on the ground and creating consumers. There’s no debate about the fact that our objective is enabling economic development.”

Companies with their roots in Africa will have an advantage in the coming technology boom, and the rise of technology innovators in Africa – from Sterio.me, a young startup that is rolling out a trial of its mobile e-learning service to 75 schools in Nigeria, to Aweza, a South African translation app that uses crowdsourcing translations to weed out inaccuracies and aims to leverage the growing mobile arena and encourage cultures to interact across their defined lines – are a testament to this.

From these, we see that the kind of people driving this innovation are also different. It is no longer enough just to have technology skills, the new tech entrepreneurs will be those who are eager to explore the world, who are able to work in future uncertainty and complexity and are young and savvy enough to understand technology, but businessminded enough to know how to turn this into a value-adding service or product.

Investing in and developing this generation of entrepreneurs to create these industries in Africa will become a focus of the new era of technology for business and training institutions alike. They will be looking to identify the right people, and then capacitating and supporting them. Partnerships will be key here. The 2014 SEED SA Symposium, a multistakeholder forum to foster social and green entrepreneurship in Africa, warns that one of the key challenges for African entrepreneurs is securing partnerships with technical experts, and research institutions in particular, to ensure cross-fertilisation.

Complex challenges demand people and organisations who can see and work across silos and boundaries, and the simple truth is that collaboration opens up networks and shares skills, ideas and human capital for the benefit of more people. Working together, especially when the collaborators bring different skills to the table, can create stronger outcomes. When different areas of expertise collide, magic can happen.

Into this space, exciting hybrids are already emerging. Novel partnerships, such as those recently concluded between the UCT GSB and the MTN Group, as well as Silicone Cape and FNB, which are exploring new forms of business innovation and challenging traditional roles of business in society to unlock greater value for everyday Africans.

What these partnerships have in common is the conviction that in Africa, there is no shortage of ideas and talent – from high-tech research institutions to grassroots entrepreneurs who are finding novel applications for existing technology to tackle local challenges. Their power is that they can ensure that these bright minds are given the right support and investment to marry this capacity with appropriate execution strategies.

There are increasing examples around the world, from MIT’s Media Lab to Canada’s Mitacs, that demonstrate that deliberate collaboration for innovation can be hugely significant. Africa needs to build more such initiatives, so that technology hype can be turned into reality for significant numbers of African citizens.

John Kelly, IBM’s head of research, goes one step further. He believes that there is an opportunity here “for Africa to move, and move first, to this new era”. In the same way that mobile penetration leapfrogged over traditional telecommunications infrastructure, Africa can jump straight to the tech frontier, without worrying about adapting old systems to cope with the data it creates.

These are exciting times. No one knows where these developments might take us. When mobile first broke on the African continent 20 years ago – some predictions pegged market penetration at two million customers. Today, some 635 million Africans are dialled, according to some estimates, with predictions of one billion by 2019. What greater value will come when the disruptive force of technology is given structure and purpose, and is properly informed by context?

In one of his first public appearances since retiring from public office, former finance minister Trevor Manuel told an audience at the UCT Graduate School of Business that South Africans should not assign blame for what is wrong in the country, but should instead try to focus on solving problems.

The biggest challenge for South Africans right now is to solve the problems that are afflicting the country; issues like poverty, inequality, unemployment and the lack of skills says Manuel.

In a rare appearance at the school’s Distinguished Speaker Programme, Manuel told friends and alumni of the school that there is no silver bullet for the country’s problems but that criticising from the sidelines was not the best way to tackle the issues.

Manuel, who was one of the country’s longest-running members of public office with a career that spanned over 20 years in senior positions in government, described the passion and zeal that public officials had during the early days of the new democracy, acknowledging that the same enthusiasm for the job appeared to have waned in the years that followed. He said the anti-apartheid struggle had reared many of the first ANC government officials, exposing them to poverty and suffering. “So the question we focused on every day was whether we could build a democracy that advanced the interests of the poorest of our people. The Constitution provided a framework for this.”

But many of these public servants have since left government and have not been replaced by people of the same calibre, he said. “Parliament perhaps doesn’t carry the same status any longer, so it does not attract people as much. These are issues that we need to talk about.”

Manuel said that business schools have a key role to play in creating a new generation of leaders in business and government with the same passion for fixing some of the country’s problems.

“My main concern for business schools like this is that we don’t do enough to hone policy development skills of people. Mainly, we aren’t generating nearly sufficient numbers of people who understand the policy process.” He also said that there was a strong correlation between administration and policy and that people needed to know how to implement policy – it wasn’t enough to have wonderful documents and plans like the Constitution or the RDP (Reconstruction and Development Programme) or NDP (National Development Plan) if officials were unable to put those into practice.

Manuel has been alternatively lambasted and praised in the media over the years for the country’s economic gains and losses.

“Some tough decisions were left to me and we thought things would work out differently. We thought we could stimulate growth and everything pointed in that direction, but part of what we didn’t understand well enough then was how crises elsewhere in the world would affect us. We lived through the Russian crisis, the Asian crisis and the Brazilian crisis before our own crisis hit us.”

Manuel is currently with Rothschild’s as deputy chairman and senior advisor and still does a lot of community work, especially with the youth in areas like Mitchells Plain. He says that the timing was right to leave public office. “If people stay in whatever they do for too long, they become stale and defensive. In a position like that, the personality and portfolio become conflated. I don’t think the political environment is designed to deal with this. So perhaps I overstayed my welcome in the Ministry of Finance.”

He called for people to become more involved and active in their communities, to become more empowered in bringing about change. “The engine room for development starts with active citizens,” he said, adding that maintaining such initiatives was equally important.

“We are a nation, a generation of people who solved problems of a political order but it’s incomplete for as long as people feel they are not included in the outcome of the democracy.”

He continued, touching on the hot topic of corruption in public service, which many of the questions from the floor alluded to: “We have to root out corruption. We can’t have a little bit. It never steals from wealthy people; it always steals from the poor. The fact that people get into public office to feather their own nest is wrong. No corruption should be tolerated in any society.”

Manuel concluded that he hopes to continue to be of service to South Africans. “Hopefully I’m still in a position to advise and help with problemsolving and to help others find a career in public service, because it is important that we create opportunities for South Africans. We need the brightest and the best to ensure that we can get the streams of ideas that help us to make the right decisions.”

“It’s not what you know, but who you know!” Phrases like this suggest that the value of relationships has long been appreciated. Relationships are particularly vital in successful business ventures and operations.

But, more than a year on from the gruelling platinum strike – the longest and most costly in SA’s history, it is doubtful that SA business has learned this lesson well enough.

The platinum strike that shut down roughly 40% of the world’s platinum supply and cost the SA economy a bewildering R24 billion, is a textbook example of how eroding social capital can cause business breakdown.

In particular, there are at least two kinds of relationships that deteriorated systematically in the lead-up to this unrest and the earlier tragic killing of 44 people at Marikana in August 2012, which may have been identified and addressed earlier through a systematic approach to social capital.

First, management’s relationship with workers, particularly the rock-drillers, had become less and less direct because of a reliance on intermediaries in the form of union representatives or contractors. As a result, middle and senior managers became increasingly isolated from the grievances and growing institutional distrust among these workers.

This also contributed to managers’ general lack of knowledge of workers’ increasingly precarious financial situation, premised in large part on their exposure to emolument orders. A social capital analysis might have indicated earlier on that there were ‘holes’ in managers’ network relationships with workers and that these holes contributed to a lack of pertinent knowledge and necessary trust.

Second, managers arguably paid insufficient attention to the relationship between workers and the dominant union, the National Union of Mineworkers, as well as to conflicts between rival factions within communities and relationships, with third parties such as municipalities and traditional authorities.

A social capital analysis could have focused attention on these third party relationships and highlighted ways in which the company could seek to support more conducive network dynamics.

The value of such relationships has been foregrounded in the integrated reporting movement. South Africa is the first country in which listed companies are required to publish such an integrated report. The guidance provided by the International Integrated Reporting Council suggests that a company’s public report should include information about six forms of ‘capital’ as inputs and outputs of the value generation process. One of these is social capital, which focuses on ‘institutions and relationships’.

However, despite this focus, it is remarkable how little explicit, structured attention is often given to assessing and improving relationships in business. There is still much uncertainty about what social capital actually means and why and how it should be measured.

A new report commissioned by the Network for Business Sustainability (NBS) South Africa has gone some way towards addressing this uncertainty. Based on this review of 314 studies, the report defines social capital as the ability to secure or obtain resources, knowledge and information through relationships with and among individuals and groups. These relationships can be among internal stakeholders of an organisation (e.g., among employees) and between an organisation and its external stakeholders (e.g., consumers and regulators). Social capital has three dimensions: the shape and structure of networks of relationships; the quality of these relationships in terms of trust and reciprocity; and shared norms and values.

Firms derive value from both internal and external social capital. Relationships among internal stakeholders give rise to enhanced efficiency and reliability in managing operations, projects and innovation. This is because of improved sharing and dissemination of information and knowledge, and enhanced commitment and retention of employees.

Building external social capital contributes to competitive advantage and cost reductions, because it enhances access to firm-external information and knowledge, and it builds the firm’s reputation among key stakeholders, such as customers, regulators and prospective employees.

Firms also benefit from the positive impacts of social capital on social development and a conducive business environment, for instance in local communities surrounding a firm’s operations.

The intangible nature of a firm’s social capital makes it a powerful strategic asset, but it also makes it a difficult thing to measure. Yet such measurement can enhance proactive efforts to grow this asset, and it is also necessary to respond effectively to integrated reporting guidelines.

Each of the three dimensions of social capital is associated with particular measures. Hence, for instance, we may measure the size, diversity and density of individuals’ or organisations’ networks, and we can identify possible ‘holes’ in the shape of such networks.

Different forms of trust can be assessed, including interpersonal trust among people who know each other, such as employees working in particular teams or departments. This trust is particularly salient for the effectiveness of operations, as well as organisational change or innovation initiatives. Institutional trust, meanwhile, relates to individuals’ trust of authority structures, including employees’ perceptions of management.

Trust obviously also plays a role in firms’ interactions with external stakeholders, and companies are beginning to apply more systematic means for assessing and improving trust. For example, Transnet has recently conducted a successful pilot study investigating the quality of relationships between key managers and customers or regulators. Over and above providing a useful diagnostic, it has also provided a platform for fruitful conversations to improve these relationships.

Of course, managers’ efforts to measure and report on social capital will not necessarily avoid problems such as those plaguing the platinum mines, but they may provide managers and other stakeholders with vital warning signs, as well as incentives and tools to proactively shape mutually beneficial relationships.

The cost of not doing so is high. As Implats executive, Johan Theron remarked in the wake of the strike: “This strike has been enormously damaging. It has destroyed the relationships we have with employees, communities, the union and government. It will take years to restore. It has resulted in us taking an untold financial impact. The money and resources we had to finish our projects are gone, and it could substantially influence the shape of the future business.”

This article is based on a report commissioned by NBS-SA and prepared by Moses Acquaah, Kwasi Amoako-Gyampah and Nceku Q. Nyathi. For the full systematic review and an executive report, please visit http://www.nbs.net.

Renowned American psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “One can choose to go back toward safety, or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”

In the world of business, it can be very challenging to overcome fear. Too often, the response to uncertainty is a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to fix the problem, patch up the hole, fire the scapegoat; anything but sit with the problem and see what novel solutions emerge. In times of crisis, organisations do not want to take risks; they want to stay safe and comfortable.

Take national air carrier, South African Airlines (SAA). In its 80-year existence it has stared down the barrel of a massive funding shortfall more than once, but on each occasion, the response to this has come in the form of a financial bailout or loan. It is a familiar refrain that was repeated in Minster Nene’s budget speech in February, where he confirmed an additional R6.488 billion guarantee for the cashstrapped airline.

Eskom, similarly, is set to receive R23 billion in this financial year, to be paid out in three instalments beginning in June 2015. It will also benefit from an additional electricity levy.

While undoubtedly our ailing state-owned enterprises (SOEs) need these financial bailouts in the short term – they are not ever going to be part of the long-term solution.

Minister Nene said that the guarantees will not be ‘automatic’ and will depend on SOEs demonstrating sound business plans, strong internal governance and greater efficiencies. I would add that they should also depend on their ability to be open to changing the way they operate on a daily basis.

What the leaders in struggling organisations need to understand is that no expensive policy, consultant or big bailout can replace the incredible power of shifting an organisation’s thinking from problem-solving to solution-finding mode. And the best time to do this is when the organisation is in crisis. The raw material for innovation is the experience of disharmony or anomaly that a crisis creates. To make productive use of these experiences, however, leaders need a degree of mastery in design thinking, integrative thinking and systems thinking.

One of the most effective ways of helping a business in crisis is through a process of business model innovation; a tried-and-tested mechanism that integrates these techniques to obtain optimal results. Business model innovation looks at the various components that make up a business and reinvents these to deliver value in a new way. It is a practical and powerful mechanism for establishing a culture of change in a company. By combining theory and practical application, individuals in the organisation are guided towards coming up with new solutions for their unique business environment.

It sounds simple, but it is a process that takes courage and vision, which needs to come from the top. There are many examples of companies that have innovated their business model to make the company more profitable and geared toward growth and success. One of these is Naspers – currently one of the biggest media companies in the world – which started out as a book publisher in 1919. First it added pay-TV to its business model, with the profitable M-Net and later DSTV services. In 2001, Naspers innovated its business model again, this time with the internet and its acquisition of a 46.5% interest in Tencent Holdings Limited, the operator of an instant messaging platform in China. This investment, as well as other internet business acquisitions, have resulted in Naspers now deriving 54% of its profit from online, with a healthy share price to show for it.

How did a company that was once the mouthpiece of apartheid and a publisher of traditional newspapers transform itself into a cutting-edge, tech-savvy multinational? It would not have been possible without the visionary leadership of former CEO Koos Bekker, who enabled a process of innovation to thrive.

By contrast, the legacy of poor leadership in parastatals has had much publicity of late. In March, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgraded the struggling Eskom to junk following the suspension of the utility’s chief executive officer and three other senior executives. Without strong and inspiring leadership, no company can be expected to do well, much less implement innovative strategies.

But we can’t also always blame poor leadership. The truth is that companies don’t need a hero at the helm. They just need someone who is intellectually honest and willing to explore new avenues and steer the ship in a different direction, preferably away from the rocks.

Instead of expediently choosing among the least-worst choices, a focus on creating new options is required. And it starts with opening the mind to new ways of thinking, exploring alternative options previously discounted and employing established techniques of testing alternative options, which can deliver surprising results.

Of course, not just SAA and Eskom need to do this. Too many companies are not set up for innovation and growth and find themselves unable to get out of a rut. When the problems are manifold and complex this may make finding a solution tough, but it doesn’t mean the solutions aren’t out there. As Maslow pointed out, when it is most uncomfortable and appears very risky, this is the time to choose change and to move forward – with vision and courage.

Whichever side of the fence you were on during the ultimately successful student campaign for the removal of Cecil John Rhodes’ statue from UCT’s upper campus, the issue raised important questions – such as the limits to freedom of expression, what are acceptable forms of protest in a democracy and how best to acknowledge our troubled history – in addition to those that made the newspaper headlines.

One of those questions is whether we are seeing a long overdue revival of student activism on South African university campuses, which seemed to enter an extended state of hibernation after the demise of the apartheid system.

If the presence of Rhodes’ statue bothered UCT students in the past, they did not do much about it until one man’s controversial ‘poo protest’ recently raised temperatures and forced people on and off campus to confront the issues involved and choose a side. The question that arises now is whether this is a one-off event, or whether other pressing political, economic and social concerns that confront the country have the capacity to arouse similar passion among students, especially those issues whose scope extends beyond university life.

Will rising government corruption, the collapse of basic services such as the provision of housing, electricity and water in parts of the country, or the dysfunctional state of many of the democratic institutions mandated by the constitution, provoke the kind of coordinated student response to violations of basic human rights that saw sustained protest action on campuses when supporters of apartheid were taking their last stand? And what about the ‘soft’ issues, such as the environment and social transformation? Could SA students, as their counterparts in Europe and the US have done, start to channel their activism towards the investment policies of the institution?

According to human rights and environmental journalist David le Page, who is leading the South African chapter of the international fossil fuel divestment movement, there are definite signs of light at the end of the tunnel, not only with respect to student support for the issue but also university management’s response.

This is in line with the trend worldwide – more than 30 universities have now committed to divest their endowments from fossil fuel companies, as have a number of countries’ sovereign wealth funds. Le Page says UCT has finally agreed to begin a process of reexamining its ethical position with regard to its investment portfolio, and the campaign has been asked to participate in a structure that will be set up with this end in mind.

“In the process of considering a fossil fuel divestment strategy, we would hope the university will also look at the direct impacts of mining in places such as Mpumalanga, where there has been widespread destruction of arable land and human rights abuses as a consequence of the complete free-for-all that is happening in that region,” he says. “Coal mining permits are being handed out that should never be granted, with enormous consequences for the communities there.” He would also like UCT to work towards ‘decarbonising’ its operations, specifically services such as the Jammie Shuttle student transport facility.

“Besides the principled arguments for the need to stop climate change and respect the human rights that are so often abused by the fossil fuel extractive industries, there are very compelling financial reasons now why companies and individuals should start withdrawing their funds from the industry,” Le Page says. “Coal consumption in China has already peaked, for instance, while in the UK carbon emissions have dropped 8% in the last year as wind and solar get stronger and stronger. There are a lot of signs that carbon-based fuels are being phased out.”

Stephanie Giamporcaro, the research director at the UCT GSB who has conducted extensive research into the evolution of sustainable and responsible investing (SRI) in South Africa and has therefore followed the roll-out of Le Page’s UCT campaign closely, says that UCT, along with other educational organisations around the world, needs to become a proactive sustainable and responsible investor regarding its pension funds and endowment money. She is encouraged by recent developments around the climate change disinvestment campaign, but would also like to see UCT become a signatory of the Principle for Responsible Investment (PRI) initiative that was signed last year by Harvard, for example. The PRI could lead the institution to adopt a more holistic overview of how to integrate environmental, social and governance opportunities and challenges in its investment policies and decisions.

While 2011 amendments to Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act have made the ‘responsible management of fund assets’ – including sustainability issues that may materially affect the long-term performance of the investment, whether environmental, social or governance by nature – a fiduciary duty of trustees, both they and fund managers have been slow to act on the changes.

And so has UCT: Dr Giamporcaro points out that despite working for one of the most dynamic and enlightened educational institutions on the continent, as an employee she is still not offered the option of aligning her retirement investment choices with her personal and professional values around social and environmental sustainability.

Most large fund managers have adopted the Code for Responsible Investing in South Africa (CRISA), which encourages institutional investors to integrate sustainability issues such as environment, society and governance (ESG) into their investment decision-making processes. The King III principle of integrated reporting has also impelled JSE-listed companies to report on ESG issues, which has in turn put pressure on fund managers to take compliance with the preamble to Regulation 28 more seriously.

Yet the widespread perception among fund managers and investment consultants has been that SRI is still not top-of-mind for the average pension fund member or trustee, and there is therefore not much point in developing and marketing such investment products.

Le Page confirms that one of the challenges faced by the local fossil fuel divestment movement is the dearth of fossil-free alternative investments or managed funds that apply ESG principles.

However, Dr Giamporcaro says research by Stellenbosch University finance professor, Suzette Viviers has demonstrated that, if asked directly, final beneficiaries of retirement funds in this country do care whether ESG factors are considered in the investment decisions that are taken on their behalf by investment professionals, and her own research involving the employees of a large multinational company, a leading SA fund manager and the staff at the UCT GSB itself, returned similar findings.

In addition, there is now a compelling body of evidence confirming that SRI does not compromise sustainable long-term results. In addition to the lessons learned as a result of the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, when the drive to maximise returns in the short-term led to asset managers making investment decisions that were the antithesis of SRI, a number of academic studies have shown that ESG considerations reduce risk and enhance returns in the long run.

The most celebrated study is one published by Harvard Business School in 2011, which compared the performance metrics of 180 companies, half of which set high ESG goals and the other half low or no ESG goals. It found that the high ESG group’s returns on both equity and assets grew significantly more over a period of almost two decades than those of the low ESG group.

Dr Giamporcaro says, “One of the problems in South Africa is that few pension fund trustees are either knowledgeable or assertive enough to put pressure on asset managers and investment consultants to actively implement SRI principles, although this is relatively simple to achieve by incorporating ESG targets into asset managers’ mandate and reporting requirements.”

SRI in SA also suffered a setback with the suspension of the Government Employees Pension Fund’s head of investments, John Oliphant, who chaired the CRISA implementation committee. Oliphant and a number of other fund officials have been accused of inflating tenders, but are yet to be charged. Whatever the outcome, Dr Giamporcaro says the effect has been a public loss of momentum for the SRI movement in SA, despite the best intentions of Regulation 28.

A momentum she hopes will now – in part – be kickstarted by the new energy coming from the UCT campus.

Monday morning, 7.30: The executive of a global mining company steps into his London office. With mineworker unrest in South Africa still fresh in the collective memory and frequent strike action commonplace in news headlines, the sector is grappling with the challenge of how to communicate effectively with a large, distributed and politicised workforce, creating a more motivated and engaged staff.

He’s quietly confident. That morning, the South African region of his company launched a survey campaign, asking workers if they had the right tools to complete their underground shiftwork safely. The previous Friday, it informed workers of a new homeowners’ scheme. Earlier that week, it sent out important health and safety information. All this in addition to the regular emergency notifications that are sent, including loadshedding, production and safety critical messages.

He logs onto the dashboard of his company’s enterprise social network, navigates to the South African region campaign pages and is pleased to see the steady flow of results coming in, as expected. With a response rate of 86%, tens of thousands of workers have stated their preference for Brand A safety gear. A slightly less impressive turnout (78%) updated their personal details – still beating all previous campaigns of that nature. As for the communiqué, it was read by 98% of the workers.

The impossible made possible

How is this possible? One would need very sophisticated technology to reach respondents that quickly and to measure and collate results with that degree of certainty. Email is out of the question, since PC and smartphone penetration is virtually nil. And a traditional poster campaign or mass gathering would have been expensive and slow to execute, to say nothing of the process involved in capturing responses.

The answer is innovative mobile technology relevant to Africa and other emerging markets and an enterprise social software solution called Wyzetalk. The Wyzetalk Enterprise platform interfaces with any technology device, including feature phones via SMS, to broadcast information, get feedback from the workforce and enable them to access business critical and social content via USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) interactive menus. All at no cost to the worker and accessed on an opt-in basis.

The software behind this mobile interface was created in 2011 by technologists at a Cape Town-based technology firm. A meeting of the minds at the UCT Graduate School of Business between Wyzetalk cofounders Gerhard Pretorius and Gys Kappers (facilitated by Stuart Phillips, who was a student with Kappers on the Executive MBA programme), led to the commercialisation of the software and paved the way for the emergence of a highly innovative, locally developed African success story that is gearing up to take on global emerging markets.

Three years on, Wyzetalk is cutting a swathe through all industries as an open communication, collaboration and innovation platform, changing the way companies communicate and engage. It is delivered in the form of a software-as-a-service offering (hosted in the cloud), on desktops and mobile phones and – luckily for the mining, manufacturing, retail and construction firms – the platform can also be accessed on feature phones. Research shows there are 22 million feature phones in South Africa, and, as yet, only 13 million smartphones.

Kappers says the communications breakdown between company executives and their workforce has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.

UCT professor Ralph Hamann writing in Business Day cited a breakdown in communication as one of the primary reasons for the Marikana tragedy and subsequent platinum strike. It highlights a long-standing issue that has been ignored for too long.

“Wyzetalk allows mine management to remedy their problem by going directly to workers, with an immediacy and transparency that pleases management, as well as shop stewards, unions and workers alike,” he says.

“It takes communication and engagement to a whole new level. For this particular target group, Wyzetalk on mobile offers far greater engagement than email or PC-based collaboration tools. It is one thing to ask for information on email, but people never speak up in numbers when that happens, and it’s difficult to act on the data, as it first needs to be collated and analysed. Wyzetalk, by comparison, is immediate, measurable, and feeds data into the Wyzetalk platform while also integrating with enterprise systems including SAP, Oracle and Microsoft.”

The effect, he says, is that of a self-reinforcing feedback loop that enables continuous improvement in working conditions. “Wyzetalk helps executives gain insight into worker issues, which enables them to put interventions in place that improve matters. It makes for a steadily more positive relationship over time,” says Kappers. “It doesn’t disintermediate the unions in any way either, but allows companies to empower themselves by re-entering the dialogue.”

From another perspective, Wyzetalk offers a way for mining groups to enlist expertise outside the company while keeping consultant payments to a minimum.

According to a recent Deloitte Digital survey, Tracking the Trends 2015, the top 10 issues mining companies will face this year – a common enterprise social platform (such as Wyzetalk) that connects management, head office, suppliers and consultants could be used to bring global best-in-class advice together. This allows a faster response to issues and needs, but also enables the company to share advice across regions and operations, so each operation doesn’t need to contract consultants individually.

Breakthrough openness

Kappers says the big breakthrough idea of Wyzetalk is to use web, social and mobile technologies to break the shackles of normal collaborative tools.

“Looking at the two mining house scenarios, this convergence of technologies allows the enterprise to overcome application silos and network borders, distance and cultural gaps, as well as budget and knowledge shortfalls. It is a textbook illustration of the power of the new digital technologies working in concert,” he says.

“Instead of software, you get a browser-fronted service with less restricted functionality, because it doesn’t have the network or systemic barriers of normal applications. It all happens out there on a secure web-hosted platform,” Kappers says.

“This means enterprise social software platforms are available to any stakeholder who is given authorisation to access the platform,” he explains. “It allows the business to engage more deeply with staff, partners, suppliers, customers and social audiences, really opening the enterprise up to a much broader ecosystem, internally and externally.

“Reaching internal stakeholders can be just as big a challenge as external ones for traditional software,” Kappers continues. “You’re faced with the challenge of reaching on-site, but divisionally segregated staff, physically separate entities, such as other branches and off-site functions and roaming staff. Cloud plays a role here too, but in this case, mobility is the secret sauce.”

Kappers says that in three years, the company has seen significant uptake. And in 2014 it was listed by CNN as one of the top 10 African start-ups that rocked 2014, and by CB Insights as one of the top 13 tech companies to watch in Africa in 2015.

The SA market is showing big promise, but still lags uptake in the developed world, he adds. This is ironic, as the challenges in local market are, if anything, more pronounced because of social inequalities. But he believes that Wyzetalk has significant potential to redefine the way the top levels communicate with the other end of the organisational spectrum in the country.

“South African companies still tend to be quite hierarchical. This stops them from being as competitive and innovative as they can be. Open business platforms like Wyzetalk can take South African companies to the next level because they break down the barriers between management and staff, and between companies and their ecosystems, to draw on much broader inspiration.”

Pretorius met Kappers, then an Executive MBA student at UCT GSB, during the institution’s
implementation of Wyzetalk to host its student community’s online interactions. The platform, combined with open innovation and systems thinking, inspired Kappers to write his thesis on it, and he joined the newly unbundled Wyzetalk as CEO in 2011, taking the product to market for the first time.

The rest (as they say) is history. Wyzetalk is now the resident collaboration, communication, ideation, survey and broadcasting tool at many leading South African companies, including EOH, Cash Crusaders, Altron, Telesure and Deli Spices. It has 30 000 paying users, with AngloGold Ashanti its largest customer.

The company was listed by CNN as one of the top 10 African start-ups that rocked 2014, and by CB Insights as one of the top 13 tech companies to watch in Africa in 2015.

The word innovation has come to mean many things to many people. It has become meaningless to some, a chant for significant operational improvement to others, a means to add a grandiose sense of drastic improvement focus to shareholder statements or a manner to motivate employees to think ‘outside the box’. In a certain sense becoming everything to everyone, the view of innovation as the focused ability to deploy strategic differentiation in the market has been diluted. And ultimately, the gap between the perceived view of innovation and the organisational capability to sustainably deliver practical and pragmatic innovations has widened.

If we relate organisations to national teams competing in the Olympic Games, then it would be as if many of the teams spend more time talking about how to improve and what is expected to be the best in each of their events, rather than getting out there to train, experiment, learn and, in the long term, build world-class muscle memory. This may be one of the reasons that, even with the wealth of knowledge available about purposeful innovation and how to cultivate a true culture of innovation, there are few examples of companies that have been able to establish and leverage those aspects successfully.

There are many reasons why pursuing true innovation may sound like a daunting task for organisations. These include a fear of letting employees act in a loosely regulated manner, approving work with an emerging focus without an exact view of what the outcome may be, finding time for innovation with looming deadlines and, in general, anticipating that the organisational change implications of truly pursuing a culture of innovation stretch far and wide.

So, why should anyone push through the pain to pursue of a culture of true innovation? There are many reasons, however the three most important are: to build a culture that attracts the best talent; to provide an environment that will stimulate employees and nurture a high-performance, forward-thinking culture; and lastly, to make sure that the organisation plans and prepares to win instead of doing some work and hoping it’s enough. The pursuit of true innovation is a long-term, continuous improvement initiative that becomes ingrained in the organisational DNA in the longer term. It’s not a light switch that can be turned on and off as required.

Bridging the gap

The gap between what organisations perceive as being required to establish a true culture of innovation and what actually needs to be in place may be vast, however, with a structured purposeful approach, it is much less daunting and more achievable than many organisations may expect. The essential elements required to build a foundation that may enable organisations to bridge the gap can be seen as a three-legged stool. The success of the stool lies in all three legs being present and in support of each other. The three elements are: an idea management system to translate ideas into value adding innovations, a relevant innovation leadership style and a proactive approach to cultivate the required organisational culture to drive sustainable innovation.

Identifying and capturing ideas

The first element may be seen as the backbone of the innovation system. An idea management system ensures that effort put into innovation is transformed into organisational and personal value. An idea management system has to deliver two primary elements. Firstly, the system needs to enable an organisation-wide effort to identify, capture, evaluate and execute innovation opportunities. Ideas can be captured individually or through innovation labs, ensuring cross-functional interaction and a culture of experimentation. Secondly, the innovation system has to provide ways for employees to develop their innovation capabilities through continuous learning. This can be done by communicating current information, running workshops on forward-thinking techniques and sending individuals on relevant training courses – including exposure to external innovation experiences and possible collaborations with other organisations. Establishing an idea management system with effective measurement and reward mechanisms will already start to cultivate the next two critical elements – innovation leadership and the relevant organisational culture.

From the top

From an innovation leadership perspective people need to be challenged – consistently – with the right questions that guide individuals to open their minds when investigating possible solutions. Instead of only using business goals, a clearly defined BHAG (big hairy audacious goal, as proposed by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in Built to Last: Successful habits of visionary companies) and supporting network of challenges posed as questions will motivate employees to be forward thinking and curious about the future. People need challenges; it helps them to feel a sense of accomplishment and often acts as the kernel for the growth of intrinsic motivation.

Not everyone will take to the innovation system with great enthusiasm, however, innovation champions will emerge – each with influence in their relevant environments. A key part of innovation leadership is to empower and reward these innovation champions – the strength of the innovation champion network can ultimately be one of the key success factors to drive sustainable innovation.

Culture is the game

In terms of the culture, the most important aspect is to remove the fear of failure and instil enthusiasm for forward-thinking solutions. There is a wealth of information about the importance of a relevant organisational culture with guidelines to establish the winning formula. However, by putting a few key elements in motion the required culture may come to life faster than expected. Spinosa et al state that the style of an organisation consists of three core aspects, namely defining which activities and outcomes are seen to matter in the organisation, how work is organised and what the organisation does to cultivate a specific DNA within employees. All three of these aspects can be purposefully designed, communicated and celebrated. There’s a good reason why former chairman and CEO of IBM, Louis Gerstner was quoted in Business Week saying that, “I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organisation is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.”

The bigger picture

Establishing the idea management system, relevant leadership style and culture may act as the key drivers to deliver sustainable innovations. Further to this, understanding the dependencies between these drivers will unlock a deeper insight that few companies have been able to leverage.

Figure 2 highlights the causal relationships between the three core aspects. Only positive variable relationships are depicted, i.e., as one variable increases, the other will too. As an example, when looking at the whole, it becomes apparent that a clearly defined organisational purpose grounds any form of true innovation. This may seem obvious; however, many organisations miss such insight because the big picture isn’t taken into account. Each of these variables have been broken down one level further, providing a blueprint of the various aspects that can be focused on and the probable outcomes that may be expected.

The path to cross the innovation gap will never be clear and having a clear-cut path shouldn’t be the goal either. Instead, with a clear purpose in mind and a good understanding of the components that make up the bigger picture, organisations should aim to build the innovation system one component at a time. In the end, an organisation’s ability to innovate will be strongly correlated to the maturity and purpose driven interplay between the relevant innovation leadership style, organisational culture and idea management system.

Establishing a culture of innovation will take employees on a disruptive journey that is filled with uncertainty and discomfort. However, the rewards of focusing on the right aspects to breach the innovation gap are huge, as can be seen in the likes of what companies such as Apple, Google, 3M, Salesforce.com and Proctor & Gamble have been able to accomplish.

According to a 2013 survey of 1 500 chief executives conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value, CEOs unanimously identify creativity as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future. It is our greatest chance of figuring out a way to achieve sustainable growth in a world of constrained resources and economic instability.

But in fact, this is only part of the truth.

Successful, long-lasting businesses also have to be able to hold a line – to organise and structure – in short, to establish the systems and processes to ensure that the good ideas take root and add the value they are meant to. Carrol Boyes, one of South Africa’s most successful creative entrepreneurs, for example, is first and foremost a sculptor and an artist, but she was also able to turn her innovative designs into a commercial success and grow this into a business that now exports South African design to over 30 countries around the world.

In fact, in creating the innovation powerhouses of the future, it is the tension between these two poles that matters. Pure innovation can go nowhere – there are plenty of great ideas that never get off the drawing board – but on the other hand, pure structure leads to bureaucratic hell.

Dr Hilary Austen, author of Artistry Unleashed, says organisations have been struggling with this tension since the beginning of time. “You see it as they reorganise to get more efficiency, and then again to get more innovation, and then again to regain efficiency, and so on. It is not something organisations are going to solve once and for all. Rather, it’s an ongoing tension they’ll need to recognise and manage,” she says.

So, if you want to be the next Steve Jobs, the most important thing that you have to learn is to manage this tension well – and the second is to let that ethos permeate throughout your organisation.

The code for innovation is embedded in an organisation’s people, processes and philosophies, say innovation thinkers Jeff Dyer (PhD, University of California, Los Angeles) and Hal Gregersen (PhD, University of California, Irvine).

So while innovation, they say, has to start at the top – Tesla Motors would not be the first successful car company start-up in America in 90 years without Elon Musk’s personal vision and passion – it is those leaders who manage to create organisational processes “that mirror their individual discovery behaviours” that will succeed in turning their companies into something truly and enduringly great.

Of course, not all CEOs are lucky enough to have Boyes’ creativity or the engineering genius of Musk, but we don’t all have to be creative geniuses to be successful innovation leaders. What’s important is that innovation leaders have the ability to think differently and act differently to generate creative ideas for new products, services, processes and businesses – and that they create the conditions in their organisations for everyone (not just the research and development department) to do the same.

Without question, sustainable growth is not going to come out of old ways of working, leading and managing. Existing standards will keep us in the past. Business clearly needs the creative thinkers and the crazy mavericks to come up with new ways of doing things.

Innovation leaders need to allow these thinkers free rein – and, somewhat paradoxically, give them structure. They need to fight the institutional urge for stability, and allow the disruptive forces of surprise, uncertainty, ambiguity and change – things that we typically avoid or fear – to simmer throughout their organisations, and to harness this effectively.

To do this takes a combination of deeply held values, vision and conviction, combined with the application of good, old-fashioned business savvy. Creativity is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for successful innovation. It’s what you do with it that counts.

Last October, a new business initiative to improve socio-economic development and service delivery in the province was launched. Its advent is bound to make some people wonder if we really need another initiative like this. Will it not merely mean more meetings with cool agendas, great buzzwords and terrific goals, but no results?

Dubbed the Business Leadership Platform (BLP), the initiative seeks to give business in the Western Cape a much-needed voice in the provincial government and in that alone, it offers something new. Currently, there is no organisation or association in the country that explicitly enables business participation in the public sector. There is also a lot of ambivalence in government towards business, as was recently pointed out in an article by veteran journalist Allister Sparks.

Writing in Business Day, Sparks said there is much diversity in the South African business world – which encompasses big, medium and small organisations – but that it is often viewed by, especially leftist branches of government, as a single entity of ruthless capitalists interested only in making money. Many business owners are loathe to challenge or criticise government officials for fear of running the risk of losing tenders or getting stuck in loads of red tape when they want to conduct business.

Sparks blames the abundance of bureaucracy in the public sector for scaring off foreign investors while hampering local entrepreneurs. He called for businesspeople to speak up – individually or in groups – to address the factors that encumber economic growth in the country, specifically calling on businesspeople to be more proactive in stating what they require to enable them to contribute more meaningfully.

This is precisely what the Business Leadership Platform sets out to achieve. More than 140 different business-related associations and organisations have been identified across various categories and groups, which include tourism bodies, industry leaders, chambers of commerce and industry, as well as business partnerships and business schools – all of which have become part of the BLP.

The BLP is an initiative of the Economic Development Partnership (EDP), in partnership with Business Western Cape, the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town and unites key actors behind a common economic vision. It has as its core mission the clearing of administrative logjams.

Not unlike household blockages, administrative blockages are messy and difficult to clear up.

The main challenge is that there is currently a ‘common-sense regime’ in the public sector that is focused too much on matching invoices to payments, compliance, and monitoring and evaluating, rather than on the goals of increasing opportunities for businesses to grow and citizens to be employable and employed.

The fact that the public sector is so administratively driven is one of the biggest obstacles to service delivery. It is too much about stamps and signatures and too little about creative thinking and problem solving. It is not so much a question of getting the hands dirty as applying minds in a different way and letting the creative juices flow.

The BLP offers a new set of organising principles that have the potential to get the public sector out of the admin trap that it finds itself in. By taking a design thinking approach – a concept that gained traction in Cape Town during 2014, during the city’s tenure as World Design Capital – it hopes to unleash creative energy to envision new solutions.

Design thinking is more inclusive and empathetic in its approach and therefore is ideally suited to solving challenging situations where the stakeholders are divergent. It also has a proven track record when it comes to incorporating conflicting opinions and broadening traditional ways of thinking. It is especially helpful in breaking down communication barriers and helping creative solutions emerge in previously deadlocked situations.

It helps people to really question the fundamental assumptions ingrained in institutional processes that drive delivery to affect social and economic conditions. It also provides a robust framework with which to think about how to change conditions and start to address complex problems.

Perhaps the essential value of design thinking lies in its ability to change mindsets and behaviour – which is fundamental in changing systems.

The BLP will create an inclusive regional forum that will strengthen the voice of business and sustain a structured relationship between government and business. It will keep business leaders and associations connected and informed and will convene a regular business leadership-government engagement forum. It will focus on common strategic agendas and conduct surveys of business opinion to enhance public policy processes.

At its root, the BLP is an innovative structure that has the potential to transform the current model of organising that our public sector is using in its efforts to deliver socio-economic growth. One could argue that its chief achievement will be to get public servants to see ‘what could be true’ rather than being paralysed by what is currently held to be true.

AllLife co-founder and Group CEO, Ross Beerman, is usually met with disbelief when he reveals that his company is in the business of offering life insurance to HIV-positive people. But the company’s 50% growth year-on-year over the last five years proves the sound strategic thinking behind this industry innovation. It all began with a conversation over a cup of coffee.

Beerman and Avron Urison’s discussion was about the dismal HIV/ AIDS situation that existed in the country in 2002 and, specifically, the unfortunate fact that a staggering 17% of South Africa’s employed adult population, infected with HIV, were unable to access life cover. This meant they were less likely to be able to buy a house, start a business or get an education. For the non-wealthy, it could mean a steady slide into poverty.

Beerman says, “Working in private equity for a while meant it was my habit to keep an eye out for commercial opportunities. I believe entrepreneurs should look at the spaces in which people specifically think there are no opportunities. Urison and I realised there was a real need for an insurance product for a manageable, chronic disease like HIV/AIDS. We began to talk about how it might be possible to deliver to that need.”

Beerman, like Dr Urison, was an MBA graduate of UCT’s Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB), which he credits with having a massive impact on his ability to change career paths from engineering to investment banking. He had done a stint with a United States investment bank and worked in private equity on his return to South Africa. Urison had practiced as a medical doctor, been the CEO of MRI South Africa, and worked as a healthcare business consultant with a particular focus on HIV/AIDS clinical and management programmes. They were later joined in the venture by a third UCT GSB graduate out of McKinsey and Company, Paul Stanley.

The trio’s track record in the corporate world spoke for their reputation and allowed them the opportunity to interact with investors. Their greatest hurdle was convincing those investors that their business strategy – which flew in the face of insurance industry norms – was the result of sound business judgement and that they intended offering a full-profit insurance product to a particularly high-risk clientele.

“Everyone thought we were insane,” Beerman says. “We had to fight against industry norms that drove most of the behaviours in the industry at the time. The message to potential clients up until then had been that HIV-positive people were not expected to live long enough for insurers to make a profit. We began to tell clients that they could manage their health correctly, live a very long life and have the opportunity to undertake long-term projects.”

Since AllLife opened its doors in 2004, their clients have committed to regular medical visits and to following treatment protocols. The company has agreements with the majority of medical providers and has created new computer systems to track clients’ medical improvements (a key cost driver). Reminders of blood tests and visits to the doctor are sent out, and staff members, who can always be contacted, speak to each client an average of once a month. This has meant that new systems had to be created to deliver this feature at low cost to a mass market.

Clients now average a 15% improvement in their CD4 count – an immune system marker – six months after being insured, whether or not they are taking antiretrovirals. The company even receives applications from people living with HIV/AIDS in the USA, Europe and Asia who can’t access life insurance. Beerman says, “We’re operating in an emerging market using first-world infrastructure to deliver our business model. We’ve even had to change the standard insurance industry distribution model – AllLife sells directly to HIV-positive clients because intermediaries just weren’t comfortable discussing the issues with them.”

AllLife now offers a similar product for people living with diabetes, since this chronic disease requires a similar management process to that of HIV/AIDS.

Beerman uses this analogy to describe his business: “If you’re an Average Joe, you can buy a suit anywhere, but if your size is non-standard you have to go through a bespoke, time-consuming, tailored process. In insurance this means medical tests, screening, committing the time and effort to showing a track record of managing your disease in order to get insurance. We’re the ‘big-and-tall’ store where diabetic and HIV-positive people can get a mass retail experience otherwise denied to them. This means clients can get cover when they want and need it, which makes us dramatically different in the insurance space.”

South Africa is an emerging market – in the process of finding its feet in a fast-changing global economic environment – with more than its fair share of challenges. But it is exactly this environment that presents opportunities to those who are willing to innovate, Beerman says. “Absenteeism in South Africa has risen tenfold in two decades, due largely to the impact of HIV/ AIDS on individuals’ health. The rate of absenteeism organisations face – higher than their competitors elsewhere in the world – has a significant impact on productivity. A negative, yes, but also an opportunity for AllLife to take an innovative product to market that minimises the impact of HIV/ AIDS on an individual’s ability to earn by helping them to manage their disease and stay as healthy as possible.

“We have a massive market to grow into,” Beerman says. “We can reach far more people, but the rate at which we grow will depend partly on the amount of capital we are able to raise.” And this remains AllLife’s greatest challenge going into the future. As a direct marketer, the company uses television, the internet and mobile technology to advertise its services. Of course, this generates leads and leads become paying clients, but first it must fund its high marketing costs; in order to do this, it will need access to capital.

Beerman believes that South Africa offers both obstacles and possible boons to its entrepreneurs. “It’s a tough market in which to be an entrepreneur. Capital is difficult to access and industries can be highly regulated. But if you get your innovation past these challenges, you’ll likely find yourself in a space all of your own with competitors trailing far behind.”

There are not many people who can say they have been a part of the UCT Graduate School of Business for almost three decades – having known the school both when it was small and situated in Rondebosch with only MBA students on campus – to the hive of activity it is today, boasting multiple accreditations including a listing on the Financial Times Top 100 business schools in the world.

“I have seen the school go through incredible changes,” says alumni relations legend, Linda Fasham, who retired at the end of last year. “Back then, the students used to come to class in suits and ties, in line with the thinking that you had to dress business-like if you wanted to think business-like. In the early years, there were no black people and very few women. All that has changed and it is wonderful to see that diversity on the campus now.

“Life was easier then, goodness, that makes me sound so old,” she laughs, looking back at the early years. “There was no email, when we sent out a notice it went out in bulk mail. I used to carry these bulk mails in envelopes to the post office!”

In December 2014, Fasham retired as the GSB’s alumni relations manager, a position she held both part-time and full-time for 27 years. News of her retirement shook many alumni, who remember her kind and compassionate support during their years as a student and have come to associate her with the school’s alumni association. They say they cannot imagine the school without her.

“I knew Linda for 15 years when I worked at the GSB and she was outstanding, ethical, humorous and really represented the true soul of the GSB,” said Jon Foster-Pedley, former UCT GSB faculty member and now Dean and Director of Henley Business School, Africa, in a message of tribute.

Emeritus Professor Frank Horwitz, former director of the UCT GSB and Cranfield School of Management, UK, compiled this tribute to her: “In developing its alumni relations, thousands of alumni will remember Linda’s warmth, friendliness and her helpfulness and passionate commitment to ensuring that the close connection between them and the school continues over many decades.

“I recall the 40th year reunion of the MBA class of ’66 and their very special bond and bonhomie that endured over the decades. Linda had so much to do with ensuring that these special relationships and networks were continued. She will be missed and remembered not only by present staff and faculty of the GSB, but by thousands of people who studied and worked at this wonderful institution over the years.”

Linda Fasham came to the business school in 1981. With a background in computer programming and marketing, her first role was in the executive education department. After a year-and-a-half, she left to have her daughter Nicole. She laughingly recalls how former director, Professor Paul Sulcas, then called her to ask her help in setting up the alumni association. She said she told him she would do it only if she could have school holidays off, be involved in her daughter’s life and do lift clubs and school outings. He did not hesitate before replying,“Fine.”

The alumni association initially was a separate entity from the school and had chapters in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban with a national committee that met regularly. Over the years, a powerful and dynamic network of more than 23 000 alumni has been built up in over 68 countries and it has been integrated as a department within the Business Development Unit on campus.

At one of the four farewell functions held for her in Somerset West towards the end of 2014, close friend and alumni chairperson, Ian Reid said, “Linda enabled the alumni to become a significant force in the GSB. She has set up a platform on which we depend as a school and an alumni body. It is so effective that we are now the top business school in Africa and one of the top 50 in the world.”

Few people know that Fasham has a serious heart condition that has affected many aspects of her life, which meant that she had to sometimes change her working conditions to look after her health. But in 2001 she came back to the job full-time. “I have always loved the job. I love the people, I love listening to them, talking to them and helping, watching them growing during their studies. It was an easy decision to carry on growing with the alumni association.”

Apart from the personal pleasure she took in looking after the students, there was a professional reason as well. “It is critical for students to have a happy experience at the UCT GSB as when they leave, they become alumni and ambassadors for the school,” she says.

“It has been a very interesting journey, a challenging one, at times very stressful, but really the enjoyment has been what has kept me going,” she says. Highlights have been the class reunions and travel overseas, meeting up with alumni and colleagues. “I get such a thrill out of watching them network, it is amazing just to see them engage with each other and network at a function. To see how they have this common thread, that is the GSB. And they will talk about how the GSB changed their life.”

Fasham has worked with four directors and was part of the recent restructuring of the school, and while she says change is good, she feels history is important too. “You can’t put 27 years of experience into a box and just hand it over to someone else.” Perhaps this is why the GSB has asked her to continue working with the business school part-time, helping to set up the Alumni Challenge Fund, which is part of the GSB endowment, proceeds from which are to be put towards scholarships and world-class faculty procurement. She will also be involved in collating a commemorative book to celebrate the UCT GSB’s half century in 2016.

One of the things she will be looking forward to after her retirement, is no longer having to sit in traffic for hours each day and spending more time with her family … and working part-time for the GSB, of course.

The John Molson International Case Competition, founded in 1981, is the oldest and largest event of its kind. Known as the MBA Olympics, the competition is open to top business schools worldwide, of which 36 are selected to participate in Montreal each year. The 2015 competition welcomed MBA students from a total of six continents and 14 countries. Among them was South Africa, once again represented by the UCT Graduate School of Business – making its third appearance at this prestigious competition.

The purpose of the week-long competition is to bridge the gap between corporate and business school environments and to connect students from different MBA programmes around the world. According to GSB coach and senior lecturer at the school, Johannes Schüler, the event provides an excellent platform for students to hone the skills they learn in their respective MBA programmes and showcase their ability and agility – as well as their school’s areas of expertise.

GSB teams have always left a positive impression and in their three years have brought healthy disruption to the competition, says Schüler. Here are the 2015 team’s top tips for what it takes to stand out at the MBA Olympics.

1. Approach every case from the owner’s point of view

Schüler’s catch phrase for 2015 was OC or ‘owner’s conundrum’. The idea was for the team to stamp out ‘consulting think’ and ‘consulting speak’ and approach cases from the owner’s point of view (founder, shareholder or otherwise). Team member Robyn Moore agrees that committing to this approach, while not always the easiest option, forces the group to dig deep, critically evaluate why decisions are being made and compose the best alternatives and solutions.

2. Focus on your points of difference

The GSB teams have always brought their own trademark South African senses of humour to Montreal and this has worked in the GSB’s favour. For team member Chris Human, the GSB’s emphasis on emerging market leadership and innovative thinking was also a clear advantage: “developing markets are increasingly on the radar in global business context and the ICC is no exception, our roots and understanding of environments such as South Africa’s allowed us to come forward with pragmatic and innovative solutions that often didn’t occur to other teams”. The judges see a lot of cases during that week in Montreal; if you don’t stand out, you won’t win hearts and minds.

3. Understand and play to each other’s strengths and weaknesses

The internal selection process at the GSB to choose a team to go to Montreal is continually being refined, with great emphasis placed on the synergies of the individual team members, good attitudes and a positive, natural fit. In order to do well, it’s essential that the team members understand each other’s weaknesses and intuitively leverage their strengths, all the while remaining calm under pressure to articulate the solution with confidence and clarity. There’s no room for individual egos. In the words of team member Ralph Thomas, the secret to the 2015’s team performance was a solid, balanced team with good team cohesion: “Throughout the entire process, we maintained good team spirit and enthusiasm – that was a big part of our success”.

4. Realise that you are part of a bigger picture

The John Molson International Case Competition is a unique experience, enriching the lives of not only the students, coaches and judges, but all those who will be impacted by the value they add in the future. Through the theme of this year’s competition, sustainability, the GSB team was able to contribute meaningful solutions, which may well influence the way participating firms conduct their business in future.

“This is not just a competition, it’s an incredible learning experience where you’ll be pushed beyond your limits, forge friendships with truly great people and develop leadership capacities that will allow you to make a real difference in your career,” concludes Moore.