“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye,” said Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Is it true that “The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows” as Greek shipping magnet Aristotle Onassis said? Does business success revolve around a mindset of addressing problems – and even giving away tangible value for free? Why do global market leaders work in ecosystems? Is AI just a tool, or is it an agent that can soon out-think humans?
What is often not visible is; the bigger the problem the business solves, the bigger and more successful the enterprise. Look at some of the most successful companies in Kenya today, say Safaricom and Equity Bank. What problems do they solve? Betting apps have boomed – addressing the hope of getting rich quick.
When you go out to a club on Saturday night with friends to have a few drinks — thanks to a few cool White Caps and a Johnnie Walker, for just a few hours you are in a confident ‘master of the universe’ state. That irritating nagging boss to be confronted on Monday morning is far from your consciousness.
If Sarah has spotted an aggravating problem in Busia, that customers are ready to pay for, she has solved the problem development economists fret about, by increasing her household income, stimulating demand in the local economy.
Mindset is the flame
Development partners have long believed that training and access to capital will produce entrepreneurs, with profitable establishments creating jobs. But what is missing is that invisible spark. That spark that turns the cool liquid propane and butane molecules under pressure in the gas cylinder into a flame.
Knowledge, skills and mindset – are the triangle of elements. Knowledge has become abundant, almost free in our digital AI age, thanks to the computer in your pocket.
Trick is to apply the knowledge and turn that into specialised skills. Mindset is the flame, the almost invisible scarce rare earth element – that lecturing and preaching won’t uncover. You can train for knowledge and skills, but that ‘batteries included’ mindset is tougher to find and ignite.
Create free value upfront
Business will continue to change radically; it is almost as though every two years one needs to do a drastic rethink. ‘Sweet nothings’ saying all those nice things, accompanied with heavenly mission statements, catchy taglines and promises of delighted customers – was the past unspoken operating principle.
Now one has to create tangible product – service value upfront, and give it away for free. ‘People don’t buy what others want to sell, they buy what others want to buy,’ observes Daniel Priestly.
What may be invisible is that just about every enterprise is interacting, ‘doing business’ with a wide range of organisations, where in reality, the business is part of an ecosystem.
Days of lone ranger competition are over. There is a need to recognise that today, leading corporations across sectors have concluded that they can no longer play it alone as they contemplate ways for their organiastion to have greater impact, expand, and innovate.
The solution for each partner to address the problems faced, lies in the ability to partner within an ecosystem of cross sector players that work together to define, and even disrupt stale old thinking. By 2 pm, your 9 am ‘competitor’ may become your ecosystem business partner.
No reward for just a good job – create an ecosystem
‘Every business leader must acknowledge that building a successful business requires them to make a complex ecosystem seem congruent and effortless. They must turn chaos into order and do it with style. Entrepreneurs and leaders can no longer simply deliver value and then get fairly paid. That model died a long time ago.
Today’s high-performing businesses are ecosystems of people, products, media, software and services all working in harmony. They are complex, paradoxical and hard to mimic. You cannot expect to be highly rewarded for doing a good job.
Rather, you can expect to be rewarded when you’ve built a high-performing ecosystem that delivers value in a multitude of ways,’ advises Daniel Priestly.
Good morning agent AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a wonder, much more than a tool. AI firms that dominate the industry are overwhelmingly based in the United States, hosting 42 of the top 50 AI companies with a heavy concentration in California’s Silicon Valley, followed by significant hubs in China and select locations in Europe, like London where Google DeepMind is based.
‘The most important thing to know about AI is that it is not just another tool. It is an agent. It can learn and change by itself and make decisions by itself. A knife is a tool. You can use a knife to cut salad or to murder someone, but it is your decision what to do with the knife. AI is a knife that can decide by itself whether to cut salad or to commit murder.
The second thing to know about AI is that it can be a very creative agent. AI is a knife that can invent new kinds of knives as well as new kinds of music, medicine, and money. The third thing to know about AI is that it can lie and manipulate.
Four billion years of evolution have demonstrated that anything that wants to survive learns to lie and manipulate. The last four years have demonstrated that AI agents can acquire the will to survive and that AIs have already learned how to lie,’ said Yuval Noah Harari recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
‘Now, one big open question about AI is whether it can think. Modern philosophy began in the 17th century when Rene Descartes proclaimed, ‘I think therefore I am’.
We humans defined ourselves by our capacity to think. We believe we rule the world because we can think better than anyone else on this planet. Will AI challenge our supremacy in the field of thinking?’ Asks Harari.
‘Yes’ is the not so invisible answer, AI will soon think better than human beings, and in some areas already does. Question is – what does this mean for you and your business? What does your heart say?