‘Ghanaian entrepreneurs must be innovative’
An International Business Speaker from South Africa, Mr Vusi Thembekwayo, has advised Ghanaians, especially entrepreneurs, to keep themselves from ventures which are no longer relevant in a changing world.
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Rather, he has asked them to cultivate the habit of developing a competitive edge over their peers.
That, he said, would help provide a stream of advantages to sustain those businesses through which they could beat their competitors.
Mr Thembekwayo, who is also a global motivational speaker and venture capitalist in South Africa, gave the advice at the maiden edition of the Inspire Ghana series organised by Stanbic Ghana in Accra.
The event, which brought together hundreds of people, challenged leaders, entrepreneurs, professionals and the youth to attain greater levels of excellence through strategic thinking and an entrepreneurial spirit.
Speaking on the topic, “What got you here, can’t get you there,” Mr Thembekwayo said many entrepreneurs often made the mistake of outcompeting their peers at everything but the right option was outcompeting the competitor at what matters most to the customer.
“One of the mistakes we make in business is we think we need to out-compete our competitors in everything but you should not; you only need to outcompete your competitors at things that really matter to the customer,” he said.
That, he said, would enable the company to focus its resource and capital at a particular direction which would ensure good turnaround of the company’s fortunes and also sustain it to a high level.
Giving further explanation, he noted that companies that refused to innovate appropriately to meet the needs of a changing world would be booted out of business in no time and added that “as the behaviours of consumers change, so must the behaviours of today’s business need to change”.
According to him, businesses must be very particular about their brands because it is the perception the customer has developed over the years about the company.
“So the important question to ask yourself as an entrepreneur is what business are you in, not what property you sell but what business are you really in, so you need to define your context as a business,” he stressed.
Meanwhile an application challenge aimed at engaging programmers, developers and designers to create innovative financial education to the public has been launched by Stanbic Bank Ghana in Accra.
The competition, dubbed: “Stanbic Money App Challenge,” was officially launched by Mr Thembekwayo and is expected to run from March 28 to the end of July 2016.
At the launch, the Managing Director (MD) of Stanbic Bank Ghana, Mr Alhassan Andani, indicated that the challenge reaffirmed the bank’s belief in empowering the people.
