Despite huge strides and trillions of dollars spent in alleviating global poverty over the past few decades, many countries continue to live in its midst, and in some cases, are seeing an increase. For nations that feel like they’re missing the boat on global development, caught in a prosperity paradox or – as seen in this video...
Despite huge strides and trillions of dollars spent in alleviating global poverty over the past few decades, many countries continue to live in its midst, and in some cases, are seeing an increase. For nations that feel like they’re missing the boat on global development, caught in a prosperity paradox or – as seen in this video presentation with Spanish translation– ensnared in a middle income trap with stagnant development, Efosa Ojomo has the solution: Innovation must be the new development strategy.
Ojomo, a research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, is an expert on the radical theory of disruptive innovation put forward by Christensen two decades ago, which forever changed the way the world’s major companies – from Apple to Amazon – view product and service development. Having seen raging poverty in his homeland of Nigeria before becoming an academic in the U.S., Ojomo has long championed the application of new thinking to economic development.
In a highly anticipated book, “The Prosperity Paradox” (Harper Collins, January 2019) – the result of years of analysis of the causal drivers of prosperity – Ojomo and his co-authors, Christensen and best-selling author Karen Dillon, will reveal how, through the lens of disruptive innovation, governments can help the innovation process and how businesses can capitalize on new opportunities.
Available for speaking and consulting the world over, Ojomo comments regularly on development issues in regions ranging from sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America and Asia, as seen in his recent TEDxGaborone talk, The Poverty Paradox: Why Most Poverty Programs Fail and How to Fix Them. His customized speeches address not only policymakers and those focused on development issues, but also leading companies in Latin America interested in creating new domestic markets, new products and new employment opportunities. “Give a person a mosquito net and she might use it; but give a person a job and she will not only buy a mosquito net, but also take care of her family,” Ojomo writes. “Our development strategy must focus on innovations that accomplish the latter.” The company that targets non-consumers now will dominate that new market in the future, and Ojomo offers data-backed insights on how business leaders and entrepreneurs can generate new demand for products and services.
For information regarding engagements in South and Central America, please contact Ania Trzepizur. Le podemos atender en español.
