Most African, Asian and South America countries could be considered as developing countries. They are not as fully developed in terms of market saturation, economic development, technology innovation and industrialization like the North Americans and the Europeans. The countries within these developing economies also have the power of number.
What is an emerging market? This is the economy of a nation that is growing rapidly towards being a developed economy while frontier could be seen as a developing market but with a slow growth. Digital business is a disruptive innovative way of creating a new business from your existing business. You blur design and words together to form a new business.
Emerging markets tends to embrace the "techy" world and the use of digital innovation could be a disruptive way of expanding the business of an existing organization. In the telecommunication industry where the market is gradually moving away from voice market to data driven market, start-ups are taking advantage of data mining to create new job lines. For instance, as at 2019, the development of mobile app for online bicycle rentage in Nairobi, which is an innovation from Tonny Omwansa, is gradually changing the way the students in University of Nairobi navigate on campus. The opportunities are countless.
The conventional way of doing business may not survive in today's challenging business terrain where consumers keep demanding for improved products and services at reduced price. We are seeing Uber penetrating African countries and making good success stories. In Nigeria, Uber has more competitors like Taxify and Gocada (Bolt). Both provide cheaper services to the public and seems to be gaining more acceptability in the country.
As a frontier, you have the first opportunity of winning the market trust. PassNG is an example. The start-up, which was led by group of friends that developed an archived of solved exam questions on android platform, gained much support from telecommunication providers. Airtel even allowed users to access the app on its network at no extra cost for data. The rapid growth of PassNG in between 2015 and 2017 was a game changer for the regular classroom, especially in the urban area. Other challengers came on board after the young minds have taken the lead in this sphere.
China, which is the second largest economy in the world today is thriving on innovations. The country is exporting its ideas to almost every home in Africa. In Africa, most house-hold items are now manufactured in China and these come at reduced price. China is making life easier for the bottom of the pyramid in the frontier and emerging markets using disruptive innovation.
You can make a difference in your business if you decide to sit back and reflect on how to make things better and improve on the usual way of doing a task. Sometime, just reflecting during your getaway, on the way things are done may spark an idea. Disruptive innovation need not be a big change but just an improved way of achieving a greater result.
By Olatunbosun Obileye – Institutional Data Manager (ORCID: 0000-0002-1200-0994)
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