People innovate, just that we have a weak IP framework (which people like CIPIT at Strathmore University are working to resolve). To quote the many times abused aphorism, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Just because there are no patents coming out of Africa it does not mean that Africans are not innovating. Many times IP from Africa is registered abroad e.g. M-Pesa is implemented in Kenya, but the IP is resident in the UK, granted the team that worked on it was British, but it's an example of a product built in Africa but whose IP is resident in the UK (possibly rightly so, I'm not debating the ethics of having the IP resident there, just pointing out that it's hailed as an African innovation but the IP isn't resident here). In other cases, people don't bother patenting the innovation that they come up with, simply because of the amount of time it takes to acquire rights or simply costs of the same. On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Ken Okong'o <ken_okongo@yahoo.com> wrote:
Philip, I think there’s a fundamento difference between an innovator and an inventor. I’d say invention is the creation of a new product or introduction of a new process while innovation naturally happens when one improves on or makes a significant contribution to something that has already been invented. For instance, while Steve Jobs was an innovator, Thomas Edison was an inventor. The latter’s was novel idea without precedent. Overall, technology is an aggregation of all existing inventions and innovations. Because of this u will also realize from the stats you shared that economies that invest much on the inventive talents become potential sources of innovation and new technologies. However, the measure of the level of patented inventions available for innovation is just one indicator that can serve as a measure of inventive output.
*From:* Philip Adar <philip.adar@gmail.com> *To:* ken_okongo@yahoo.com *Cc:* KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> *Sent:* Saturday, 25 January 2014, 14:52 *Subject:* Re: [kictanet] Innovation & Patents
@Ali, I would want to believe that Innovation/Patents means much more than programming or Software. I thought it should start from abstract ideas, something not seen before or not done before...
On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Ali Hussein <ali@hussein.me.ke> wrote:
Adam
The answer to that is not a simple one.
America has realized that innovation and patents don't only reside in inventing and creating. In the recent past process innovation has gained a lot of attention simply because America is loosing some of its competitive edge by outsourcing production entirely to Asia. This of course has other implications like China being able to copy and produce products as good or even better than the west can. I think that's possible one of the reasons that some American companies are talking production back to the Homeland.
I suspect this is both an intellectual, business and political question that will dog us for years to come.
The other issue about patents/innovation is what role this has in a world that is increasingly 'Opensource'. So patent registration may not be the only barometer to gauge how innovative a company/country is. We may want to aggregate more sources.
Ali Hussein
+254 0770 906375 / 0713 601113
"I fear the day technology will surpass human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots". ~ Albert Einstein
Sent from my iPad
On Jan 25, 2014, at 7:59 AM, Adam Nelson <adam@varud.com> wrote:
Apple: Designed in California, Built in China
Kenya can follow either path but innovation/prototyping have almost nothing to do with mass production when it comes to the tech industry. That's why it's mind numbing to hear all this talk of creating thousands of jobs through manufacturing.
Kenya is in a position to follow California with high value innovation careers but instead the government appears to be focused on following China with low-value mass labor.
The irony is that the low-value mass labor of electronics production in Asia is already being displaced by robots so by the time the infrastructure is here, the industry will have already moved on beyond mass labor anyway.
-- Kili - Cloud for Africa: kili.io Musings: twitter.com/varud <https://twitter.com/varud> More Musings: varud.com About Adam: www.linkedin.com/in/adamcnelson
On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 1:20 AM, Philip Adar <philip.adar@gmail.com>wrote:
Listers,
I am not sure if the attached statistics report is accurate, but it seems no new patents are coming up anywhere in Africa apart from South Africa?
One would wonder, are we building technology parks so that we can start inventing or should it be the inventions that should drive the development of technology parks?
-- Regards
Philip Adar
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