Co-founder & CEO of @Cc_HUB. Fueled by my quest for a more competitive Nigeria through knowledge application. Participant - THNK. Amsterdam School of Creative LeadershipNigerians Co-created Social Tools in 48hrs – harnessing the power of ‘US’
Creative minds are undoubtedly in abundance in Nigeria but many will argue the lack of enabling environment thwart their ability to harness their knowledge for the benefit of the country. However, Nigeria is not exempted from the surge in innovation being experienced across the continent with boundaries and barriers now being crushed to allow creativity and entrepreneurship flourish.
With a growing army of social and tech entrepreneurs, little is however known about how the line between collaboration and competition can be explored for value creation in this fierce market.
To test its approach, Co-creation Hub Nigeria recently adopted the Social Innovation Camp to engage Nigerians in an experiment for the creation of new ventures and social tools. With 6 ideas selected from an open call, 60 professionals from different walks of life were engaged in teams to demonstrate how collaborative problem solving can be used in creating home grown solutions.
In 48hrs, prototypes were developed and business & sustainability plans initiated. 6 highly competitive solutions were created and 3 came out of the camp as winners with cash prizes and a range of business supports services. The winner, “i-watch live” is an idea to use web and mobile to keep governments at all levels in Nigeria accountable to their mandate by tracking their activities. 2nd prize went to “my123Health“, a web and mobile based health information service while 3rd prize went to “mWanted“, a mobile based crime reporting and tracking service, supporting the Nigerian police.
Social Innovation Camp Nigeria was an eye opener and together with researchers from ENVIU – innovators in sustainability (Netherlands), a thorough analysis is being carried out on data gathered from the event to help improve our knowledge on what motivate Nigerians to participate in a Co-creation process. I’ll do an update on our findings shortly.
Also watch out for news on Tech-In Series – a quarterly unusual event aimed at harnessing the power of technology for economic development in Nigeria. Tech-In will adopt the Social Innovation Camp model to encourage tech innovation and application in select sectors in Nigeria.
See the following links for more information on Social Innovation Camp Nigeria; http://sicampnigeria.org/ and Facebook Page