One late afternoon, I was mindlessly fooling around on the micro blogging site, Twitter, when I came across an advertisement from one of the largest life assurance companies in Zimbabwe looking for a digital manager. It caught my eye. They were looking for a person who was “passionate about technology and global best practise, super agile in monitoring what works, and changing direction quickly if necessary…”
The job advertisement instructed interested candidates to apply on the company’s careers portal, and provided a webpage link. Clicking on the provided link transferred me to the careers page on the company’s website, but the promised position was not there. There was no job description or a clear way of how to apply. In fact, there was a notice in bold which read “no current positions available”.
I thought it was odd and a bit clumsy. There was another link prompting me to Register or Login, as well as another link with instructions on how to register for a job. In an unbelievable fashion, embedded under the “How to Register” link was a confusing 12-page PDF document, with very detailed instructions on how to apply for a job. At that point I just lost interest and moved on.
However, this clumsy negative experience kept coming back to me. How was this even possible? How could such a venerated brand with deep pockets and such an illustrious history operate like this? For me it was a sign of complacency. They were getting too comfortable and it was a sign that the industry is ripe for a massive disruption, and someone is about to eat their lunch!
It reminded me of Nokia and Blackberry who were at one time dominant players in the mobile phone market. They were behemoths who could do no wrong and were celebrated everywhere for being innovative and year-after-year they unveiled winning products like the 3310 feature phone and the Blackberry 8210. Even the then US President, Barack Obama, insisted on keeping his Blackberry when he got into the Oval Office much to the distress of his Secret Service minders.
However, as they celebrated their own success they were blind to the emerging threat from Steve Jobs’ iPhone at Apple in Palo Alto. When the iPhone was released to the world on June 29, 2007, it was revelation! When the then co-CEO of Research in Motion (the company which owned the Blackberry brand) saw the webcast launch of the iPhone – he apparently said “we’ll be fine”. Well, what we now know is that they never recovered from that day.
For our younger readers, before the iPhone came out, smartphones were chunky devices – half screen and half keyboard. Websites did not run properly on these smartphones and companies had to have watered-down versions of their websites for these smartphones. The iPhone did away with the QWERTY keyboard and introduced a touch screen. It was a phone and a computer rolled into one which could download music and videos. And in rapid fire succession, Apple released even better, brighter and even more aesthetically pleasing versions of the iPhone. The customers loved it and they lapped it up. The iPhone simply worked, it was intuitive, you did not need a manual to operate one and it became a cult product which appealed directly to the heart. Apple literally ate Blackberry and Nokia’s lunch.
The combined market shares of Blackberry and Nokia dropped from over 50 percent to less than 1 percent in 5 years. Today I am not sure if Nokia still exists and Blackberry is still in turnaround mode 12 years later, apparently, as its current CEO tries to sell enterprise security products to governments and corporates. But what happened? What went wrong for Blackberry and Nokia? Turns out this a common phenomenon. Companies that get complacent and don’t innovate will lose their lunch to some snotty geek working out his parents’ garage. In this five-part series, I will write articles about how companies can drive digital transformation and be innovation leaders within their respective sectors.
Business books are full of horror stories of companies that failed to innovate and were upstaged by smaller nimbler rivals. The internet and digital technology have changed the rules of engagement, and landscape means competition can come from any corner. Digitally native organisations like Amazon, Google and Apple can quickly unveil a new product which can go live in almost every country within a few hours and within a few months, they can cull your customer base leaving you gasping for your breath. In recent years, we witnessed Netflix seemingly coming out of nowhere and disrupting MultiChoice’s business model in South Africa. Another example is Airbnb which is giving hotel owners and managers sleepless nights.
So, coming back to home, the insurance, medical aid and banking sectors in Zimbabwe are ripe for another disruption. They survived the emergence of mobile payment platforms like Ecocash but the big one is coming. It’s either they innovate or they will be swept away in the emerging new wave of intelligent digital technologies driven by AI, machine learning and blockchain.
Already Facebook is looking at introducing a new crypto currency called Libra. Imagine what this will do to the banking sector in Zimbabwe where trust levels are at an all-time low. Imagine, how easy it will be for Libra to also enter the insurance sector once it gains a foothold in the banking sector. Imagine what that will mean for mobile payment platforms like EcoCash when people will potentially be able send, store and receive value on Facebook? Imagine what will happen when Elon Musk’s project to provide internet broadband from space comes into fruition? What will it mean for some of our largest companies like NetOne and Econet?
Like I said, the big one is coming. If I was an executive sitting in some air-conditioned office in Harare, I would be worried. Really worried!
Next week, I will write about how companies can drive digital transformation and prepare their businesses to compete in this new age.
You can contact Tongai Muroyiwa on e-mail: @tongaim. Twitter: @tongaim
