Tech innovations through partnerships

Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr.

A lot of tech enthusiasts these days are barely making headway in their quest for driving innovation into this fledging industry. This is because they are always trying to hide some of the projects they are working on from the prying eyes of fellow techies so as to prevent what is known as intellectual theft.

Although they may have a point, I dare say that successful innovations in the tech world are rarely achieved with the efforts of a single individual. Tech landmarks have always been the result of collaboration of efforts among tech enthusiasts, with individuals bringing their wealth of experience into such formidable partnerships. The synergy often gives rise to unprecedented breakthroughs in technological innovations. From Apple to Google, Microsoft, Asana, Mainone and Swift networks, it has been a story of partnerships or collaborations.

The need to write this piece arose when, a few days ago, I strolled into a cybercafé run by a long time friend of mine for a brief chat with him. There, I met two young guys who patronise the cybercafé embroiled in a serious altercation. By the time they were separated and asked what was amiss, we got to know that they were trying to develop separate Apps but had to use my friend’s cybercafé to take advantage of constant power supply.

One of them accused the other of spying on the App he was developing. That was when I had to come in to explain to them how it was necessary for them as techies to partner to achieve phenomenal innovations.

The way it works is this. An individual can dream out an idea and start to give it life. At a point, however, that individual may get stuck and can no longer proceed without help from other people that possess the knowledge and skills. No one can claim to have monopoly of knowledge. Let me give you some instances.

If you ask anybody about who invented the initial telephone that has now been passed through a lot of revolutions to become handsets and smartphones that we have today, the answer that you will most definitely get without much thinking is Alexander Graham Bell. 

Thomas Edison and Elisha Gray were also working on inventing the telephone at the time the breakthrough for Bell came, though. Who knows, if the Bell, Edison and Gray had collaborated, the telephone might have been invented earlier than it was. But then, what many do not even know is that there was Thomas A. Watson, who was an experienced electrical designer and mechanic, and worked closely with Alexander Graham Bell in the course of the invention. It was, in fact, a mistake made by Thomas A. Watson when an experiment was in progress that really broke the ice for the success of the invention of the telephone.

Facebook

, today is a billion dollar concern and Mark Zukerberg is acclaimed to be the founder, but then, what most people do not know is that Mark might not have been able to achieve the 

Facebook

 feat without the contribution of his four room mates, all who had their special tech skills.

For Facebook to be what it is today, Mark himself, a programmer, was ably assisted by another programmer, Dustin Moskovitz; Andrew McCollum, who is a graphic artist; Eduardo Saverin, who handled the business aspect (some even claimed that Mark was not the main originator of the idea). Last, but not the least on the Facebook team, we have Chris Hughes, who was in charge of testing and product suggestion. Chris was in fact the member of the team who brought the idea of opening Facebook to other schools aside from Harvard University, where they were located and this eventually led to opening Facebook to the whole world with the resultant billion dollar returns. That is what partnership does to you.

Other examples of partnerships in the tech world include Microsoft where Bill Gates was the main man, but there was Paul Allen who played a prominent role in the development of Microsoft; the combined efforts of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in the development of Apples; Jerry Yang and David Filo, in the development of Yahoo; Dustin Moskovits and Justin Rosenstein in the development of the wonderful Asana App; and Alexander Aghassipour, Mikkel Svane and Morten Primdahl in the development of the Zendesk App.

In Nigeria, we have a prevailing attitude of being the boss, hence, many of us avoid having anything to do with partnerships or collaborations. We need to change our perception and attitude towards partnerships in order to achieve unprecedented breakthroughs that will benefit the entire world. But I am glad at what MainOne has become today because of the collaboration between Ms. Funke Opeke and Fola Adeola as well as a few other tech startups who are truly collaborating to build something awesome.

All hopes is, however, not lost. In Nigeria today, I must say, the road to encouraging young IT professionals to collaborate more in order to innovate started a few years ago with the establishment of some ICT collaboration hubs where these young individuals find the enabling environment to work as a team to achieve breakthroughs. These are popping up and expanding in some other African countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Nigeria, nay, Africa needs more of these ICT collaboration hubs to encourage young IT enthusiasts to work in concert with one another for us to have technological breakthroughs.

Source: Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr