We only have 3 forum objectives and they are (1) Access to investment and business information (2) Access to Markets and (3) Access to Capital for our members. Three simple objectives for all of our members who are mostly based in Southern Africa and beyond.

We have done well in Objective 1 –Access to investment and business information. We have been  giving you information on business trends, new investment ideas and general business information for the past 2 years. Our Facebook page has a lot of useful business discussions, our Whatsapp groups have active business discussions from our members. In terms of information provision, we believe that we have done fairly well. There is room for improvement in terms of quality and we hope to recruit interns who will assist with market researches so that our members can make informed investment decisions using information that is evidence based. We also hope to improve in terms of coverage because we have concentrated on Harare only and not covered the rest of Zimbabwe and  the region.

Objective 2–Access to Markets. This is an area of weakness because we have not done enough to enable our members to sell their goods and services. The good thing is that we are aware of this area of weakness and are taking corrective measures with a number of initiatives lined up for the rest of the year.

I did spend the greater part of Saturday last week talking to some of our members during a meeting that we held in Harare. We brainstormed on the Poultry Market Challenges, as you may be aware-access to markets for our poultry members is a big challenge which is hampering the growth of the sector by our members. We came up with various business models that should help solve the challenge. One of the model is the formation of a company that buys poultry from members and sell in bulk to retailers. So one company that specialises in market identification and selling chickens. Farmers would concentrate on what they do best and that is producing chickens and not have to worry about the marketing side.

We also have an Online Car Boot Sale which is looking at the creation of one regional market for goods and services in Southern Africa. This should help members in selling goods and services beyond the borders. We are initially targetting Malawi, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia because these are the countries that follow ZBIN closely. We are going to invest a lot of resources inorder to tap into the opportunities that abound in the region.

Objective No 3: Access to Capital: Perhaps the bigggest hurdle in the ZBIN community-Money an other resources inorder to start businesses. Where is the Money ZBIN? We have not done much in terms of enabling our members to access capital. On objective 1-Access to Information, we have covered business plans, crowdfunding and listed ZBIN members looking for investment partners. This is not enough because we have few success stories of members who managed to access funding through the forum.

We are aware of this greatest weakness to date and the good thing is that we have a number of initiatives and innovations that are coming up.  The first one is the development of an investors database where our members will list their business plans. A typical business plan should contain the name of the organisation, history,capital structure,detail of goods and services,name of industry and level of competition, competitive edge, current and proposed financial information and the proposed investment that require funding. You can refer to our post on business plans for reference. So we hope to ensure that all members requiring capital have this information in our database. This should help potential investors to invest if they are interested. Last week, we did share a list of members looking for investors-this is not enough as it barely covered the basics described above.

So we will prepare our members for investment with ready business plans to submit to banks or any other lenders. We are also going to carry out some test cases where we will choose the best business plans for partnerships with Diasporans. Your company will have to under go some tests such as verification of your company existence, verification whether you are registered and comply with all local laws and regulations. We will also check whether you have a clean Police Record because we would not like to put our reputation at risk by asking investors to partner with someone who has high risk of default. You should provide evidence of handling funds from others such as banks before we shortlist you. We should be done by June 2017 so that we can publish the database for the benefit of our members.

We will be sharing more information on funds availability and this includes researches on loans that are available to the Small to Medium Scale (SME) sector. We will advise you on which funders to approach and why. We will do advocacy in this area so as to help push for favourable terms for our members. We will explore innovative solutions in the area of funding such Crowdfunding.

More work

As you can see, there is more work to be done by your favourite forum.We are going to require more people to achieve the 3 objectives listed above. We will invite volunteers from across the region and the Diaspora community. Volunteers to compile lists, volunteers to write business articles and contribute to objective 1. We are going to require volunteers to come forward and share their success stories so that they can inspire others. The objective being to see the success of our members because a ZBIN member should be well informed in terms of business. A ZBIN member should have access to Markets and Capital. Together lets work together to make it a success!

ZBIN Board composition

We have set up a team of board members to drive forward our 3 objectives. We happy with the impressive skills they possess. These are people who are already successful in their respective  fields and simply volunteered because they believe in the vision of the organisation. A gender balanced organisation, ZBIN is chaired by Sis Martha, a leading NGO field personality who has won several international awards in the field of HIV and Aids. She also holds various board membership in Zimbabwe and the region. She will be leading a team composed of the following board members.

2.Farai, MBA, CPA,CGMA- a qualified Accountant who is based in USA. Currently working as a Finance Manager, He will bring in business leadership and management skills to the board. Farai will be the Deputy Chairperson of the ZBIN board.

3.Laureen– Based in USA, Laureen has a strong background in the medical field and brings a lot of networking expertise to the board.

4.Tavaziva, CA- a qualified Accountant (Chartered Accountants South Africa) Tavaziva  brings to the board leadership,financial and risk management expertise to the group. He is based in the United Kingdom where he works as an Internal Audit Manager. He is currently pursuing Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA) studies.

5.Rudo-Rudo is based in the United Kingdom, a former teacher in Zimbabwe and a medical field professional, she brings a lot of networking and  capacity building skills to the group.

6.Farai– Farai based in South Africa is from the Engineering field and holds  a Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.), Civil and Water Engineering (Hons) a Master’s degree, Water Resources Management and a Masters in Business Administration. She brings to the board a lot of engineering,innovation and business management skills.

7.Polite– MBA-Polite brings in a lot of capacity building, enterpreneurship and consulting skills to the board. He is currently based in Plumtree.

8.Victor– ACMA,CGMA, Based in Harare, He brings a lot of experience and skills in Entreprenership, Innovation, Capacity  Building, Risk and Financial Management.

9.Rutendo-Rutendo is a lawyer by profession and is currently based in Harare. She brings in entrepreneurship and legal skills.

10.Maggie-Maggie comes from the Marketing and Human Resources Management field, a holder of a Marketing Degree, she is finalising MBA studies with the National University of Science and Technology. Currently employed as a civil servant, Maggie is the secretary of the board.

Board Statistics

Term Limits and Handover

The team has been in existence from the start of the forum in February 2015. Our official term begins in March 2017 and ends in March 2027. Serving  a  maximum term limit of 2 terms, we have  to develop one of the best regional business forum that helps in business and investment in Southern Africa. Starting with a capital of  less than $1,000-we hope to leave a balancesheet with 7 digit figures in value  when we leave. Hope to have assisted hundreds of thousands of Southern Africa citizens with information, access to markets and capital. We will handover a thriving business forum to the next generation of business leaders who will carry on with founding vision.

We will distribute the constitution of the forum to our members in future. Please note that a bigger council is going to be in place that has a total of 30 members. This will ensure that we cover some of the regions that have not been covered on the board such as Australia, Namibia, Mozambique, Malawi and Cape Town.

Formal membership Registration

The board is not going to be responsible for member registration, we will recruit a secretariat in the next 3 months. The secretariat will be responsible for formal registration and we are  looking at recruiting an initial 5,000 members and most members to come from those already on our Facebook and Whatsapp forums.

So in summary, your forum is here for Business and Investment Information, Access to Markets and Capital. Your forum as already demonstrated during the past 2 years, will be anchored on transparency, innovation and intergrity.

Please note that we are not an investment authority, so do not approach us with  money for investment.

Wishing you a Blessed Weekend

We have a good case study this week from Kodak, a famous American Company that is well known for its photographic films. Kodak was founded by George Eastman and Henry A. Strong on September 4, 1888. During most of the 20th century, Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film. The company’s ubiquity was such that its “Kodak moment” tagline entered the common lexicon to describe a personal event that was demanded to be recorded for posterity. Kodak began to struggle financially in the late 1990s, as a result of the decline in sales of photographic film and its slowness in transitioning to digital technology.

So why have we chosen Kodak? We have chosen it because it provides a classic case of a company that failed to adjust to the fast changing world of digital technology. They had the some of best engineers and other professionals at the time but still failed! Kodak got caught looking backward when it should have been looking forward and taking risks to reinvent the company.

The company had very talented executives along with the best engineers and chemists. But all its smart people focused on Walmart gaining market share with its single-use film camera when wireless operators were enabling consumers to send digital photos over mobile devices, which reinvented what consumers could do and wanted to do with photography. As a result, while Apple was reinventing the mobile phone with multimedia capabilities that matched what was going on in the big picture, the world’s best brand in photography spent billions expanding its investment in an old technology.

We thought that you could also benefit by studying the analysis below. Try and apply this to your company or business, are you in the same boat? Are you adjusting quickly to the changes in the external environment?

By Nitin Pangarkar

“You press the button, we do the rest.”

So went the advertising slogan coined by Kodak in the late 19th century.

It was a motto that opened the door to mass-market consumer photography – a popular culture pioneered by Kodak, but which its recent sorry decline has shown it failed to keep pace with.

The habit of button-pressing is of course more popular then ever – see Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr et al. But for Kodak, recently forced to file for bankruptcy protection, the company’s failure to reinvent itself to the instant gratification realities of the digital era meant there was increasingly little of “the rest” for it to do.

Founded by inventor and philanthropist George Eastman, Kodak’s little yellow film packages became one of the world’s most recognised brands. Indeed for much of the twentieth century Kodak was an American industrial icon – at one point enjoying a similar status as tech giant Apple does today.

Since the turn of the century however, the fortunes of the once mighty photographic firm have plummeted. By early 2012 Kodak’s shares were trading at around 40 cents, down from $40-45 just seven years earlier. The NYSE even went as far as to warn the company that it risked being delisted.

So where did it go wrong?

One common explanation about Kodak’s demise is that it missed the digital revolution – or simply that the ubiquity of digital cameras made photographic film redundant while Kodak bosses buried their heads in the sand. While that explanation has some merits, it is far from the full picture. In fact Kodak was a pioneer in the development of digital cameras, producing the first prototype megapixel digital camera in 1975.

Presented to sceptical Kodak executives, the bulky device was powered by no less than 16 batteries and took a full 23 seconds to record a single image, using a cassette tape as the equivalent of today’s memory card. (You can see a picture of the camera on this Kodak blog, the title of which is a story in itself: “We had no idea”)

Even when digital cameras reached the consumer market in the mid- to late-1990s, some of Kodak’s early models vied with models from Olympus and Sony for top-selling spots.  In fact, the early cameras made by Canon, the current global leader in digital cameras, lagged well behind those of Kodak in terms of consumer acceptance as well as critical reviews.

Kodak didn’t lack technical expertise either and, even today, has considerable intellectual property in the digital imaging space with its thousands of patents worth several billion dollars.  Why then is Kodak struggling to survive despite a strong start in the promising – and still rapidly growing – arena of digital imaging?

Bridging the gap

In my recent book High Performance Companies: Successful Strategies from the World’s Top Achievers I suggest that successful innovators must be able to integrate (as in combine) external and internal knowledge.  An excellent example of this is the case of Fanuc, the Japanese maker of machine tool controls.

Based near the foot of Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji, Fanuc used to make mechanical and hydraulic controls in the 1970s. But after the first oil shock in 1973, operating costs of those controls became prohibitive because they consumed a lot of oil.

In response, Fanuc began a huge effort to shift to computer controls.  It overcame gaps in its own knowledge by partnering with diverse sources including the University of Tokyo, its customers, end-users and sometimes even existing as well as potential competitors, such as GE and Siemens which had their own aspirations in this industry.

The external knowledge from these partnerships was combined with a number of other elements including its own internal knowledge, some bold strategic bets (being the first to use an Intel microprocessor in a dusty, dirty and hot factory environment) and a far-sighted leadership which had the vision of global leadership.

Not only did Fanuc manage to successfully adopt new electronic technology, it also became a dominant leader. Indeed a recent Bloomberg article recently called it “The Microsoft of machine tools” – a company whose products effectively run the world’s factories.

Kodak’s failure to adapt to the new technology stands in stark contrast to Fanuc’s case because Kodak had greater resources in terms of its brand reputation, its finances and its technological prowess in digital imaging. Kodak’s failure lay in its strongly inward focus.

Although it was a pioneer in the technical aspects of digital imaging, it lacked skills in areas such as lens making and manufacturing (making efficient and reliable electronic devices) to successfully commercialise products based on its innovations in digital imaging.

Critical integration

While  Kodak did make efforts to outsource its camera manufacturing (and thus fill some gaps in expertise), the outsourcing arrangement did not achieve the integration of external knowledge with Kodak’s own internal knowledge that was so critical to continued innovation. As a result, Kodak remained stuck in the lower end of the digital camera spectrum and could never compete in the high end of the spectrum, which is where the bulk of the profits are.

That all begs the question: Why did Kodak fail to achieve the integration of external and internal knowledge?  After all, Kodak was for decades a greatly admired company which owned an iconic brand.  It had mastered all aspects of the film business including R&D, manufacturing, marketing and worldwide distribution.

The answer lies in the quality of management. Unlike Fanuc which had the towering figure of Dr Inaba, a key scientist in his field of robotics and numerical controls; in its effort to provide the visions needed to adapt to the new technologies and then lead the world market, Kodak went through a number of CEOs – it is on its fourth CEO since 1990.

The short tenure of each CEO made working towards a distant goal of industry leadership in the fast evolving technology of digital imaging rather difficult.

Very often, when CEOs change, they bring new priorities and the pursuit of a distant goal can be easily ‘misplaced’ in these reshuffles, or, worse yet, the goals themselves may be changed.  Kodak also went through numerous restructurings which were traumatic for the employees and sometimes also taking it into unfamiliar and hypercompetitive markets such as printers, again diluting its focus.

The key stumbling block was its inability to convert its technical expertise into tangible products that could be sold profitably

Complacency also played its part. Kodak is based in Rochester, New York, where it was the largest employer and has a towering influence. It has helped many local causes – in fact of one of the premier music schools in the world (the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester) bears the name of Kodak’s founder.

Possibly, in its efforts to continue to be good to the local community, Kodak let its costs get out of control.  Like many corporate peers such as GM, legacy costs (funding generous retirement packages) became a huge burden, especially when revenues started to decline.

So what lessons do Kodak’s problems hold for others?

From my perspective, the key stumbling block was its inability to convert its technical expertise into tangible products that could be sold profitably (in other words a sustainable business model). Kodak had several gaps in its expertise to design a complete business model but lacked the clarity of vision or the continuity of leadership to acquire the resources in a systematic fashion, let alone integrate them with its considerable internal knowledge of digital imaging.

Other companies facing similar technological discontinuities would do well to remember the critical role of integration of internal and external knowledge to achieve innovation, which would, in turn, improve their chances of successful adaptation.