ZBIN is an innovation driven business forum which supports all forms of innovations from our community. We are always brainstorming on new ways of solving our business problems especially in the areas of Access to Markets( Objective 2) and Access to Capital (Objective 3). Now there is a downside to innovation and it is failure! Innovation and failure goes hand in hand and at ZBIN we do not celebrate failure -we also do not hide it! After every failure of an innovation or initiative, we go to the drawing board and find out why we failed and then put the initiative on hold and retry at a later time. Sometimes enterprising youngsters from the forum do take up the failed projects and introduce amazing innovations such as the recent App on Poultry Marketing.
The good thing about these innovations is that they do no cost money, we are not sinking anyone’s funds into these projects. So what are the failures that have been recorded by ZBIN to date?
Poultry Website: In March the forum created the first ZBIN website whose address was www.zbinchickens.co.zw. What a wonderful site-the site was supposed to help our community with access to markets by hosting free poultry adverts. We also had a Market Linkage section that allowed farmers and buyers to register and negotiate prices. We profiled farmers on a weekly basis so that they could help inspire others with their success stories and tips. The site had an excellent resources center with a lot of downloadable materials and resources such as Poultry Diseases, Poultry Business Plans and other resources. We had included a Price Tracker of all Poultry Products so as to help farmers track latest prices across the country and make informed decisions. We had included a Discussion forum to help members in discussing poultry issues. We also had plans to open a Poultry Online Shop to help in marketing poultry products. Then one day the unthinkable happened-our wonderful forum disappeared! We tried to get in touch with the website developer but he was not reachable…What a Shocker! Disappointed, we discarded the concept of resuscitating the forum because we had exhausted all energy in developing the site. There simply was no energy to redo the job and up to now we have no interest in developing another poultry site. We had developed what we feel was probably the best poultry site on earth because we had done extensive researches of all the sites in the world and also took into consideration the needs of our community.
Portuguese Learning on WhatsApp Group: We formed a group so as to equip members interested in touring Mozambique with Portuguese Speaking and Writing skills. Teaching members on the forum did not work as anticipated. We realized that the best way for members to learn was through engaging paid experts of use of Portuguese Learning Apps.
Buyers and Sellers Linkage: An initiative meant to help members struggling to sell goods or services, we linked up sellers and buyers-created a group for the members but it never worked. Credit goes to the developer of the Poultry App and we hope that he will extend the app to general products and services
Car hire linkage: launched in December 2016, this initiative modelled along the Uber service was meant to help locals with cars for hire to link up with tourists and Diasporans. This would eliminate car rental firms who are often expensive. The innovation had no takers, We will relaunch this initiative in June 2017 after carrying out detailed surveys and studies.
Online Forex Trading: It started on a promising note with a lot of members showing interest. We provided free training and resources on online forex trading. Where there are profits, Fraudsters are bound to be found. The founding Admin of the group decided to open a separate account where he started trading on behalf of members which was against the Forum Policy. The scheme never worked as had his own interests of quick riches despite repeated warnings. As advertised, we will be relaunching Online Forex Trading and this time we will work with members who know the basics. We will equip our members with simple online trading tips for free and members are supposed to invest their time in researching and practice. We will weed out those who try to create separate groups that promises quick returns or online forex traders who stay in hotels. Members will start with very low sums of startup capital where they will make a $1 profit or $1 loss but learning during the process. So the initial failure has not distracted us, we will relaunch on 1 May 2017.
Mozambique Business Tours: We realized that Mozambique has a lot of untapped business opportunities and decided to tap into these opportunities. The first activity in taking advantage of these opportunities was to visit the country. In March 2016, we carried out our first tour of the city of Tete which is located about 350 kilometers from Harare. This was a successful trip that opened our eyes to a lot of opportunities that abound in Mozambique. We discovered the presence of foreign nationals such as Filipinos, Mexicans and South Africans. It did not make sense why Zimbabweans were not benefiting by setting up businesses there. Two more trips were carried out with one in April and another in November 2016. We did not want mere trips but setting up of businesses by our members in Mozambique, establishment of partnerships by Zimbabweans and Mozambicans. To date only a few have benefited and for the rest there is little to show for the investment in the 3 tours in 2016. As a follow up, we hope to create a database of opportunities and also provide information such as registrations, rentals and local bye laws. Our members should go to Mozambique with ready information on investment, ready to register, open bank accounts and start operations. This is a more efficient and effective way of using resources than just visiting Mozambique for sight-seeing. We hope to have this database by June 2017.
So we are not hiding our failures, we are not celebrating either but are highlighting them so that we can learn and improve. We are going to keep on innovating and promote innovations from our members. We are not going to be afraid of failure but will learn from them rather than hide or stopping new initiatives because ZBIN is an innovation driven organization. They say Failure is Success if you can learn from it.
