Open Innovation: Unlocking Economic & Social Change in Africa - Essay Sample

Introduction

Open innovation is the use of technology to solve pressing economic and social issues in the community. Open innovation involves a set of processes and engagements with virtual and physical networks to discover and implement innovative ideas, technologies, products and capabilities to accelerate internal innovation and expand markets for external use of change Koma, 2011 pp. 110). South Africa and Nigeria are the top two ICT markets in Africa and have been seen to employ a lot of technological advancements to increase growth. The City of Tshwane is an example of the municipalities in South Africa which has partnered with the Innovation Hub through the Research Institute for Innovation and Sustainability (RIIS) which pioneers innovation in South Africa.

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South Africa has termed this innovation, with the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), that shares, celebrates and profiles municipal innovations, excellence and partnerships. The change aims to accelerate knowledge-sharing and to learn to allow for replication of good practices and innovative solutions in line with SALGA's mandate of Profiling, Knowledge and Information Sharing (Gillwald et al., 2018 pp. 12). Innovation can spark new thinking in metropolitan municipalities and is about creating new ideas, further improvements, and making a difference in the everyday lives of ordinary people. South Africa significantly celebrates those who excel in establishing best practices in Local Government and encourage all municipalities to seek their centres of excellence. Creating innovative solutions for everyday problems requires the ability to embrace change and adapt to new cultures. Tshwane has taken a step to join the journey towards an innovative Local government.

Tshwane is a metropolitan municipality that faces many challenges the primary ones being water, sanitation, electricity and housing. The City of Tshwane Utility Services Department seeks to incorporate open innovation to solve the infrastructure problems to provide quality services to its communities. Open innovation secures a bright and new future for the people and even future municipalities (Chanda et al., 2017 pp. 230). Open Innovation is set to make Tshwane a world-class knowledge capital and has involved the youth significantly since Tshwane believes that youth involvement is a critical element of Tshwane Vision 2055 since they make 66% of the population. The reason being youth will be the front runners and will reap the benefits of the city's future. Open Innovation has its positive impacts and any challenges in its execution, aside from the fact that it requires municipalities to have sustainable strategies and full-time frame.

Problem

The case study focuses its interest in the impacts of open innovation in municipalities using The City of Tshwane. These collaborative hubs bring together government, business, researchers, service providers, universities, think tanks and anyone else who can assist do what ecosystems do best - build and nurture organic growth that serves not only organizations but also wider communities, particularly in terms of service delivery. Innovation pushes the metropolitan municipalities to use new ideas and technologies to keep up with the accelerated pace of change when traditional systems grapple with adapting. In South Africa, it's crucial to get the most out of what we have to build new systems and ways of doing things for generations to come. With this approach, a better and bright future secured for our municipalities.

The open innovation in Tshwane has increased internet access in the city. Over 25 % of South African households have internet access and Tshwane being a youthful city has the highest number of institutions of higher; learning, Open Innovation in the City of Tshwane has improved the education sector. Education is the primary beneficiary of the free Wi-Fi initiative. Internet access speed in the city is 15 MBps, making the city a competitive internet institution in the world, (Enrico Calandro, 2016) The City of Tshwane has won numerous awards since the open innovation onset as being the most massive government-funded free Wi-Fi project where the residents enjoy access to 500 MB of data on each of their devices per day.

In addition to that is the STEM program that was launched in Tshwane in 2014 and has primarily been of help to students pursuing engineering, mathematics and other health sciences, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. STEM education has accelerated provision of vocational skills, nurtured entrepreneurship and led to maximum participation of The City of Tshwane in the mainstream economy in South Africa. The Tshwane Interactive Digital Centre provides access to state of the art Virtual Reality equipment, a development lab and 3D learning platforms. It has led to the Health Department of Tshwane attending international seminars on Virtual Reality and participating in the discussions.

Open innovation in municipalities also builds a foundation for encouraging entrepreneurship and skills development because it gives entrepreneurs both young and even old access to equipment to test their products and ideas. Furthermore, through open innovation, local innovators and entrepreneurs are connected to potential investors who would fund their projects and ideas and see to it that they push through.

Employment opportunities availed to the residents and local businesses. Open Innovation provides the chance to establish virtual platforms where stakeholders can access the Tshwane Innovation Zone via internet portals to share and exchange meaningful ideas. Through the projects invented in the process of Open Innovation, the residents get to participate as workers, thereby reducing idleness and lack of jobs.

Open Innovation also makes the municipalities more responsive to its residents and the community at large. The Major and top management of Tshwane, for example, once a month avails themselves in technology platforms for a minimum of two hours to engage citizens through social media, Twitter and even Facebook. The community members can ask pressing questions in real time and also air out their grievances. The municipality leaders respond to these queries in 48 hours to encourage the residents about their excellent management. The nature of issues mostly reported by the community is electricity, housing, billing, water and sanitation and other general inquiries. This approach has improved service delivery because the government can do what the residents claim to be more of a problem to them and even prioritize the services.

Open Innovation improves relations with the rest of the globe due to an interaction when coming up with ideas. It has also ensured compliance with legal and ethical standards for business operations. Electronically managing supply chain documents enabled proper monitoring of performance and ensured all processes are fairly done and in transparency. Open Innovation enhances fair opportunities to suppliers since it integrates a National (Municipal) Treasury Database providing supplier verification. All these economic measures secure sizeable economic growth in municipalities. Open Innovation has also made monitoring user engagement experiences throughout service delivery possible, making it easier to identify those who may need more time to adapt to the new technology.

Methodology

These are some of the open innovation methodology steps in The City of Tshwane. Moreover, to get access to data, strategic research undertaken. Some of the ways achieved are by convening Tshwane Research Symposium, coordinating the research projects with strategic partners who share the same opinions and facilitating graduate research programs. Thematic seminars, benchmarking exercises and documentation management are approaches which Open Innovation takes in its enforcement; furthermore, awareness sessions about the importance and benefits in municipalities to ensure knowledge management.

The Open C4 Methodology was used in The City of Tshwane to achieve success in their innovation projects. Challenge definition, identify the needs and create a list of specific challenges and their positions. The second C stands for Connect, promoting connections through networking and sourcing solutions for the problems faced. Consider; proposed solutions are evaluated and shortlisted; feedback from each answer selected and placed into consideration. The final stage of the methodology is the Commit stage where the solution seeker and provider brought together, an agreement settled upon, and a contract is signed.

The methodologies used by the municipalities have to ensure they lobby, advocate, protect and represent the interest of local government at relevant structures and platforms. It is mandatory that the methodologies represent the municipality as an employer body representing all municipal members and, by agreement, associate members, build the capacity of the city as an institution as well as leadership and technical ability of both councillors and officials. During the proposal for the Open Innovation initiative, the innovators support and advise members on a range of issues to assist effective execution of their mandate, build the profile and image of local government within South Africa as well as outside the country.The members serve as the custodians of local government intelligence and the knowledge hub and centre of local government intelligence for the sector.

Therefore, the SALGA strategic agenda, in Tshwane focuses on a few key priority areas which should contribute to the quality of life, human dignity, social cohesion, spatial justice and an inclusive economic reality for all South Africans. The methodology has to be conversant with these goals to be attained, and these innovation ecosystems can be equally applicable to all municipalities regardless of their particular challenges. Generally, any chosen methodology has to satisfy a 3P approach, Problem, People and Problem-solving making the best way to begin an innovation ecosystem to be identifying a problem. The government already has to implement a people-centred approach that engages, addresses and serves the public. The simplest way to identify municipal issues is to identify citizens' issues, a process that can and should work both ways. The citizens are encouraged to report local problems and incidents to their municipality, but also to propose solutions for improvement, and to request progress on any developments that are happening. For the residents of Tshwane, a digital imbizo, Tshwane Wi-Fi chat, is already being implemented.

Literature Review

The proposal mostly relies on secondary sources such as books and magazines from where the information obtained. These are the South African journals and magazines about Open innovation, written by several authors, for example, Dion Chang, who has expressed himself in the SALGA Innovation Magazine that is produced annually in South Africa. The data obtained from the Salga Innovation Magazine is very reliable because it gives the examples of innovations that are evidence-based, having received the knowledge through personal interactions and interviews. Another primary source of data for the proposal is South Africa's Global Gateway Magazine which explains the impacts of most innovative projects in Tshwane and gives us an economic stand of the City, its contribution to South Africa's GDP (Joseph Parilla Jesus Leal Trujillo et al., 2016).

Moreover, these articles also provide a future outlook and predicaments of studies that may be done even in the later times in Tshwane and other municipalities in South Africa. The Open Innovation plan provides a framework in which to realize Sou...