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Prince Sunduzani, Business Reporter
BUSINESSES should embrace innovation and adopt new production models for them to remain relevant in the modern market, the National University of Zimbabwe (Nust) Technopark director, Dr Eli Mtetwa, has said.
Speaking during a business meeting in Bulawayo on Friday, he urged business leaders to work closely with tertiary institutions as they are innovation hubs that provide services at reasonable cost.
“Our companies in Zimbabwe need to embrace innovation for them to survive. Lack of involvement of innovation is what is going to render the country uncompetitive because we are in a competition,” said Dr Mtetwa.
“The most potent tool to use in competition is innovation, which is in universities. A study of SMES in India established that SMES that have linkages with universities survived most and SMES that had no linkage were highly prone to failure and closure.
“I know companies in our country operate in survival mode because of the shortage of operating capital, short term credit lines, high interest rates and high cost of labour. So they cannot afford to invest in innovation but let me assure that these institutions of higher learning provide you with easy and affordable lines of innovation.”
A number of companies in the country have folded in the last decade due to a number of constraints key among them; outdated technology, high production costs, lack of capital finance and loss of critical markets.
Dr Mtetwa said it was a basic fact that innovation essentially resides in young people, the bulk of whom are students in tertiary institutions.
The innovation capacity in students, he said, was very easy to tap into and with very small sums of seed money ranging from $500 to $5 000.
“Students are not afraid to destroy the status quo and as companies, you need to dismantle the status quo constructively through innovations,” said Dr Mtetwa.
Speaking at the same event economic consultant, Dr Nqobizitha Dube, urged business leaders to take a fresh approach in the Bulawayo revitalisation initiatives.
He implored leaders to identify and capacitate individuals who have innovative ideas that can help in reviving the city.
“We have to understand the differences in time. We are living in a very different time.
“The ideal of revitalising the city, which touches on nostalgic moments to think that what worked in the 1960s will work today, will not work. So as we discuss the revitalisation of the city I want to implore those responsible for this to consider clinical dimension of developing the city,” said Dr Dube.
“We need to understand the change which has occurred overtime particularly the conversion engines, which are those aspects that convert the capital capacity into income. So we need to focus on remapping those conversion engines so that we expose those value chains that are likely to give us immediate results and will help our city to rise.”
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