A thought-leadership platform that brings together experts from both the public and private sectors to discuss strategic issues that shape Nigeria’s economy and development holds this week. Tagged ‘Innovention Series,’ with innovention, by meaning, an amalgam of invention and innovation, this year’s edition of this public service offering explores the vast possibilities that Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings to operators in the marketing communication space and other players in the economy. Assistant Editor CHIKODI OKEREOCHA reports.
The need to inspire the private sector to think outside the box and leverage their ideas and creativities to turn around the fortunes of Nigeria’s struggling economy has never been more compelling.
With the Federal Government currently battling to manage some of the unintended backlashes from its economic reforms, such as soaring inflation, high interest and foreign exchange rates, fuel price increase etc. a private sector-led push to complement its efforts, by encouraging open thinking about innovation has taken centre stage .
At the core of the strategic rethink in favour of leveraging innovation to tackle the nation’s critical economic and business challenges is the belief that much of the conversation about Nigeria’s economic and business woes has been centered on government, even when the private sector is imbued with so much ideas and creativities to help change the narrative.
Although, this open thinking about innovation is in form of a thought-leadership platform that brings together experts from both the public and private sectors to discuss strategic issues and provide actionable insights for driving change across sectors, the idea has been on for 12 years, and is tagged ‘Innovention Series.’
Powered by marketing communications group Verdant Zeal Group, Innovention Series started in 2012, during the company’s third anniversary. “We thought that rather than just doing a social event we should have something with a bit more intellectual depth. That was what gave birth to Innovention Series.
“Innovention, by meaning, is an amalgam of invention and innovation. And the question we posed to our stakeholders was how can we as Nigerians from African extraction, use our ideas and creativities to turn things around in this economy,” the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), Dipo Adesida, told The Nation, ahead of the 12th edition of the conversation holding this week Thursday.
He explained that over the years, the company has continued to push the narrative that the private sector has a role to play, because there is too much conversation about government. “We know that government should, by obligation, tackle the nation’s economic and business challenges, but we as private individuals and corporate executives and citizens have our own responsibilities as patriots to contribute to development one way or the other, which is why we have continued to do this,” he said.
Adesida explained that the Innovention Series is purely a public service “Where we said let people who have ideas, let people who are thinkers, let people who are strategic in the way they orgnaise their businesses, private and institutions, public enterprises, academic setups come and present their ideas in the public space where people can say I like the way this person is thinking, maybe I can adopt that in what I do. That really has been our contribution.”
The Nation learnt that the Series had over the years focused on topics ranging from branding, content creation, entertainment and creativity. Last year, it started with Artificial Intelligence (AI), but this year, it decided to move a notch higher into the same subject, i.e. AI.
“AI is something that we all have to understand in this present time, otherwise the prospects of human beings involved in the productive and creative economy will be threatened,” Adesida said, noting that AI in any space is something worth looking at.
He stated that AI, as the technology many people thought existed in the theoretical space, is becoming practical. For instance, what used to take practitioners in the marketing communication field to generate a lot of brain power to do such as writing press releases, writing scripts, generating pictures from Meta etc. is now possible with the assistance of AI.
“A lot of things in marketing that we have spent a lot of human efforts in doing like writing, copywriting, and art design, which are the foundations of marketing, even public relations, we have AI models that are now able to read those things even without human involvement,” the Verdant Zeal COO pointed out.
Should people be afraid of AI? “No,” Adesida said, pointing out, for instance, that “Just like everything technology, AI is meant to move human kind forward. Our understanding of it is what helps us ride that wave and even add more productivity as against being afraid or wary of it.”
Citing the discovery of crude oil for example, he said it was one of the inventions that has changed mankind despite the initial misgivings around the fact that crude oil was probably a pollutant because it was more of an agrarian society then and crude comes out of the ground that was spoiling crops and all that.
He, however, said what the society has extracted out of crude over the last 100+ years has driven aviation, automobiles, and space travels, among others. “If we, as humans, understand that these things have a lot of potential and perhaps, more importantly, extractives, what we can get out of it to create even new industries that never existed, then we are able to do a lot more,” Adesida said.
While acknowledging that some jobs will go obsolete following the advent of AI, he, however, said there will even be more kinds of jobs that people can do. He said, for instance, that today, there are content creators, a name which did not exist 15 years ago.
But, with the advent of social media platforms, the COO said the need to create content for those platforms spurred a new set of jobs like influencers who are earning a lot more than journalists, copywriters, art directors and other professionals.
Although, a lot of these content creators are doing big things, their money goes into private savings accounts, and not captured as part of the economy because the government hasn’t found a way to recognize what they are doing, even though they are trying to shield themselves because they don’t want to pay taxes.
“So, there are a lot of invisible loses that is going on and you can’t really blame people because nobody wants to work so hard and pay tax when you know that the government is not going to use the money to do anything,” Adesida stated.
He, however, observed that in Nigeria, whenever there is a new innovation, people tend to just focus only on the popular ones. For instance, Blockchain technology’s most popular products were crypto currency and bitcoin, and everybody was doing just those.
Indeed, Blockchain has so many applications, but because of the size of what people know, they tend to rush into what is most popular, but there are so many other loads of knowledge embedded in the technology.
While reiterating that AI in any field is something worth looking at, Adesida said world’s richest man and founder of SpaceX Elon Musk, a fortnight ago, released some new prototypes of robots as vehicles. He said with Musk’s driverless cars, it means there will always be an ecosystem around it.
His words: “It means that those things (driverless automobiles) need to be managed; there need to be more Close Circuit Television (CCTV) camera, Global Positioning System (GPS) applications, because they all depend on those things to move. It also means that our road system will have to change because they can’t drive on the current structure we have now.”
Continuing, he said the world might also be having things like GPS engineering coming up as a profession that today has no market because they haven’t produced anything that requires a GPS engineer, including having CCTV production because all the sensors that the vehicles will need will become things that will increase in production.
“So, every new innovation creates its own ecosystem that brings new things to the market. As space travel now is becoming commercialized, we are having passenger shuttles that are going to space.
“The price use to be higher, about $15 million now. So, maybe in another 20 years, it will become what you can say we are going to space in summer, because now you can afford it, and if you can’t afford it, there will be a bank that will give you a loan to go,” Adesida added.
Again, this, Adesida emphasised, is what the Innovention Series is all about. “It is to say look, even if you are in automobile, here are the things that are possible; if you are in healthcare, here are the things that are possible; if you are in education, these are possible areas of research, areas of study, and areas of presenting papers,” he said.
As he insisted, “Nigerian institutions generally need to contribute more thoughts to the global knowledge bank. I believe this is an area where we are lacking greatly.”
Perhaps, to underscore this fact, Verdant Zeal, in the build-up to the Innovention Series, hosted a pre-innovention Campus event on Monday, October 21, 2024, at Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ogun State, with the theme ‘Machine Learning and Hyper-Personalized Marketing.’
It was aimed at engaging young professionals and academics in exploring cutting-edge AI strategies applicable to the marketing industry. “We are doing it deliberately in a university environment so that we can again look at those who are currently in the school and say here are the things you can learn about AI, how you can integrate it into what you are currently learning and your prospects for the future,” Adesida said.
Justifying the move, he said most undergraduates tend to think about the job they will get when they leave school, but fail to ponder about what they can do now when they are still undergraduates.
“This is because the technology is available, internet is available. So, for us, that’s our own way of training undergraduates by going to universities to say this is what is available out there, this is what you are learning right now, here are the things that you can start to do. Over the next one year, you can open your mind to AI in some areas,” he explained.
‘AI an enabler of creativity, innovation’
For Professor of Artificial Intelligence/Head, Center of Intelligence of Things at the University of Bolton, Dr. Celestine Iwendi, “AI is not merely a tool for efficiency; it is an enabler of creativity and innovation that will reshape the future of marketing.”
Dr. Iwendi, who is keynote speaker at this year’s Innovention Series, where he will provide deep insights into the transformative potential of AI in marketing and discuss emerging trends in the field, noted that the ability to harness AI’s potential will define the next generation of marketing leaders.
MSMEs’ productivity driver
Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) account for about 96 per cent of all businesses in Nigeria. They also contribute 49 per cent the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employ 84 per cent of the country’s workforce, according to professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC MSME Survey 2020.
The sustenance of Nigeria’s economy relies heavily on these enterprises. Adesida said with almost half of Nigeria’s GDP coming from MSMEs, which include those who are not working formerly in offices, AI is what they need to increase their productivity because “There is a lot that small businesses need to do that is labour-intensive that they might not be able to cope with.”
The COO said for the company, AI is an opportunity for MSMEs to upscale, and for people who might not be part of the formal economy to get productive. While also noting that oil accounts for more than 80 per cent of Nigeria’s revenue, he said there is a lot more going on that is not captured in the formal economy.
The 12th Innovention Series, which will be anchored by President of Power Talk Services, Temiloluwa Awonbiogbon, will feature CEO, Caladium Consulting, Ayo-Bankole Akintujoye; CEO of Hervest, Solape Akinpelu; Community Marketing Manager at MANO, Adeola Adenuga as panelists.
The Executive Vice Chairman of Verdant Zeal Group, Dr. Tunji Olugbodi, noted that this public service in line with the company’s commitment to advancing thought leadership on Nigeria’s critical economic and business challenges. He added that this year’s focus on AI comes at a crucial time when businesses are seeking more efficient and innovative ways to connect with customers.
