Towards an ideas economy
Pule Mmolotsi, the chairman of Botswana Innovators Association and founder of the technology solutions company Olekard Group, has a case to make for innovation.
A 15-year veteran of the industry who has worked in countries that placed innovation at the centre of their economic activity, he believes Botswana needs to adopt innovation to solve everyday problems as well as to drive the economy.
“Developed countries put serious money in innovation,” he says. “We should get to a point where we say a certain percentage of our GDP should come from innovation. It’s been done before. The economy of Singapore, for instance, is based on innovation.” For an innovator in a country where innovation is still in its infancy, he does not have much to show for his efforts. Take the biometric telephone he developed to help companies manage their telephone bills.
The idea was to migrate from the current widely used system in which a user logs in a code number before making a call to a fingerprint, which is more secure.
The prototype, he says disappointedly, is decorating his office because the market didn’t show any appetite for the solution.
“Innovation is centred around our daily lives to solve everyday problems and challenges the society is facing. But without adequate and well-developed structures to support innovation, it’s difficult to take your idea to the market in the form of a product,” he says.
The newly appointed Technology Transfer Officer at Botswana Innovation Hub, Samuel Gaborone, points out that his office exists to assist innovators like Mmolotsi to commercialise their ideas, as well as protect such inventions by helping originators of ideas to apply for patents.
Gaborone advises inventors against going public about their innovations before securing intellectual property protection.
Any prior public disclosure, he explains, invalidates intellectual property protection because it is assumed that the idea is now in the public domain. Gaborone advises inventors to research their ideas first to establish if no-one holds a patent for what they want to do.
“If someone has already registered it, your application for IP protection is automatically invalidated,” he says. In the event protection is offered, the Technology Transfer Office would help the inventor through the process of negotiation with potential financiers and entrepreneurs to take the idea to the market.
Gaborone points out that in countries and institutions with high research output, many institutions have established spinoff companies to convert new ideas into products. He mentions Britain’s University of Cambridge as one institution that has a number of such companies.
The Cambridge experience, Gaborone states, is an illustration that ideas can create jobs and generate revenue. “In Botswana, we know that there are a lot of ideas at various institutions, especially in the area of design and technology,” he says. “We hope we can tap something from what they are doing.”
