By XN Iraki
It is not clear whether Joseph Schumpeter visited Kenya before he left us more than half a century ago. By visiting this beautiful land, his spirit may have remained, influencing the founding fathers, the current generation of policy makers and even the ordinary people, the holloi polloi.
Schumpeter taught at Harvard after emigrating from Austria, once the citadel of intellectuals in Europe. He wrote prolifically on entrepreneurship and economic growth. More specifically he spoke on innovation, where people come up with a new product or idea (invention), extend the idea, duplicate it or synthesise many ideas into a novel one; the stuff chemists and writers love.
Schumpeter’s lasting influence was indemnified, after The Economist named a column after him. But he will be remembered most for coining the phrase "creative destruction."
Simply put, Schumpeter argued that by being innovative, it was possible to spawn new products or services that "destroy" the existing ones. The genius of his thinking was combining destruction and creativity.
There are many examples of creative destruction. The gramophone was destroyed by cassette player, which was replaced by CD player, and later usurped by the I-pod and I-pad. Feudalism and monarchies were destroyed by democracy.
There are other examples; the car destroyed the horse carriage, while the exercise book will some day be destroyed by the laptop.
best manifested
Fashion industry is notorious for creative destruction. New design clothes are destroyed by newer and "cooler" ones.
It is, however, in hairstyles that creative destruction is best manifested. I believe some of the most creative people must be hairstylists. How do they come up with so many hairstyles, for just one head and same hair!
What is not debatable is that though we witness creative destruction every day, Kenyans are rarely the destroyers, the innovators who make money and grow the economy.
Few Kenyans can claim patents for new ideas, and even fewer have caused any creative destruction that is anywhere close to the laptop, the car, the internet or the cellular phone.
At times, we seem to prefer real destruction to creative destruction, as 2008-post poll chaos clearly showed.
Politics is our staple diet in Kenya, but apparently with little creative destruction. Parties come and die, but their ideologies seem to remain constant,
undestroyed.
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Why else did we finally settle on the presidential system after 20 years of debates, fights and lots of money down the drain? Some observers even suggest the lack of creative destruction in the political arena is evidence by the existence of political dynasties.
How, then, can we start the gale of creative destruction?
Let us give credit where it is due. There are some gales of creative destruction, particularly in the service sector, but they have not blown hard enough to be felt beyond the shores.
threatened to destroy
Equity Bank, by being creative, threatened to destroy established banks, which had to copy her to survive. M-Pesa could one day destroy not only the banking sector as we know it, but the payment system too. It could even "destroy" the currency system, saving the Government the need to print expensive notes and coins.
There are, however, some paradoxes in the creative destruction.
How did Post Office fail to see the threat of email? How did Postbank fail to build on one of its greatest strengths, networked banking, long before computer networks allowed us to bank in any branch?
Ushindi, a software that can help us locate disaster hot spots is one of the hottest things from Kenya, from a Kenyan. It could creatively destroy other existing software and models on disaster management, but it is not being utilized.
In the core of the economy, there has not been a critical mass of creative destruction. Roundabouts have not been destroyed by interchanges. Diesel locomotives are yet to be replaced by electric trains, the Shinkanzen.
We import most of our products, and apart from repairing them, make no effort to come up with new ones, always blaming lack of capital for our complacency. Look around your home, office, and identify how many products need to be creatively destroyed.
In services, where no huge capital investments are necessary, we are yet to develop a homegrown software industry.
Where do we go from here?
Creative destruction is a culture, a way of thinking. We can teach people to be creative, but we must start early, in our schools. Incidentally, we stop creative destruction too early, by demanding order from kids, stopping them from being creative. We flood them with inert ideas, rarely letting them construct their own knowledge, preferring to lecture them. This mode of educating the next generation goes all the way to the university.
The reported cases of cheating in national exams are a clear indicator that the culture of creativity, having the urge to solve problems is waning. That is not the recipe for global competitiveness.
It is not any better in our national discourse, where politics rules the day at the expense of other issues.
Does the word innovation appear in the draft constitution? Nations that have deliberately focused on innovations can creatively destroy moribund ideas, even in politics. How do you explain the fact that Singapore owns 32 per cent of Bharti Airtel, the new owners of Zain?
Why, for example, don’t we have national prizes every year for innovations beyond science congress? How big is our national budget on research and developments, the seedbeds of creative destruction?
In Kenya, we love sharing what is created, why else is devolution so popular?
That is why corruption is so rife. We love being given, never bothering to know who created what you are getting freely.
If we must achieve Vision 2030, we must be willing to be innovative, creatively destroying the old ideas and replacing them. Innovation is engine of economic growth.
Schumpeter may be gone, lying peacefully under the sod. But his ideas have outlasted him, and may transform our young nation and its progeny.
—The writer is a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, School of Business. [email protected]
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