According to the late Nelson Mandela, education is the most powerful weapon with which you can change the world. This is very true at every level of education, beginning from the formative stage (basic education) where a solid foundation is laid; but the most evident manifestation of this Nelson Mandela quote is seen at the tertiary level. Tertiary education provides a platform which enables any individual to harness the foundational principles acquired during their formative education stages to learn and develop specialized knowledge, with the sole purpose of creating a new value chain whose applications make far-reaching progressive impacts on the society.
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| What and which places spark and drive innovation? |
Hence, one of the fundamental aims of tertiary education is the creation of new value chains. This means that tertiary education, in its true calling, does not produce individuals who end up in different industries/sectors of the economy doing only routine jobs that require no form of human ingenuity and creativity. In its pure form, tertiary education institutions are the centers of innovation and creativity, with teaching methodology and curricula constantly adjusting to the socioeconomic dynamics of their environment and the world at large. This very attribute has characterized world-class tertiary institutions like MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Oxford, the University of California campuses, and so on because at the heart of their ever-adapting curricula and teaching models lies creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
These institutions pattern their curricula after current, and even future, real world problems that require breakthrough solutions, with students being taught, mentored, guided and supervised by faculty, in collaboration with leading players in different industries providing solutions to problems, to come up with and work on innovative ideas that will birth these breakthrough solutions. The students are motivated to study not necessarily because they want to score highly in exams, which passively happens, but by the possible impact any innovative solutions they create may have. The result of this form of teaching and learning at the tertiary education level is the production of graduates who are not only sound in their respective academic fields but are also creators of innovative solutions to real world problems and who go on to create and add new value chains to their society, whether they establish companies or take up jobs in already established ones.
These institutions pattern their curricula after current, and even future, real world problems that require breakthrough solutions, with students being taught, mentored, guided and supervised by faculty, in collaboration with leading players in different industries providing solutions to problems, to come up with and work on innovative ideas that will birth these breakthrough solutions. The students are motivated to study not necessarily because they want to score highly in exams, which passively happens, but by the possible impact any innovative solutions they create may have. The result of this form of teaching and learning at the tertiary education level is the production of graduates who are not only sound in their respective academic fields but are also creators of innovative solutions to real world problems and who go on to create and add new value chains to their society, whether they establish companies or take up jobs in already established ones.
Unfortunately, tertiary institutions in Nigeria are at an immeasurable distance behind the above-highlighted attribute of tertiary education. Curricula, teaching methodology, facilities and even faculty teaching models and advisory/mentorship platforms are many decades behind in meeting the threshold training capability and capacity demands of current real world challenges and problems: students only memorize outdated concepts to pass exams; embark on shallow adventures (which are just replication of dust-laden research endeavours whose real-world problem-solving applications have long fizzled out) in the name of degree research projects which their institutions certify; and the majority of their faculty mentor them to follow old, traditional and conventional career paths along which most of these students end up doing routine tasks in their places of work (healthcare, oil and gas, finance, legal, engineering, agriculture and many other industries) which can and will easily be taken over by automation software and robots powered by Artificial Intelligence (well, this will happen during and after the Fourth Industrial Revolution).
What’s the way out for Nigerian tertiary institutions? A massive review of academic curricula across institutions and the creation of courses that are oriented towards solving current real world problems; retraining of academic faculty in dynamic teaching models that adapt to both students’ unique learning techniques and the changing nature of socio-economic demands of the world outside the four walls of academia; strong collaboration between tertiary institutions and leading players in various industries of the economy; and partnership with leading tertiary institutions around the world. Another very important step which must be taken by our tertiary institutions is the introduction of what I call the entrepreneurship and innovation dimension for every field of study: Mrs. Ibukun Awosika, the Chairman of FirstBank Nigeria Limited, shares this same opinion. This means that every student in any tertiary institution will take real world problem-driven courses in entrepreneurship and innovation as regards their field of study; for instance, medical students will take courses patterned around devising innovative ideas/solutions to very critical problems facing medicine and healthcare practice and delivery in Nigeria and how these innovative ideas/solutions can be turned into features, products or services and companies; the same goes for law, theatre arts, economics, sociology, physics, agriculture or engineering students. Together with this entrepreneurship and innovation dimension course model, tertiary institutions can establish innovation labs, similar to the Harvard University Innovation Lab, on their campuses to nurture students whose innovative ideas/solutions have strong potential for commercial success in the form of products or services; and they can also partner with established business incubators in the country like the Co-Creation Hub Nigeria, and international business incubators/accelerators like Y Combinator in Silicon Valley, California, USA, to ensure a smooth translation of classroom work, field projects and early innovative idea/solution prototypes into real world problem-solving products and services that will likely go on to become successful national and international companies/brands.
To achieve this, a lot of dedicated and sustained effort and collaboration between the institutions, the public and private industries and the government will be needed at an unprecedented level; and it will take time. But the benefits cannot be quantified. One of the first and immediate benefit is that Nigerian tertiary institutions will become innovation factories producing individuals armed with the most sought-after, indispensable and irreplaceable skills needed by innovative companies across the planet, according to a 2016 World Economic Forum report, even if the majority of their graduates decides to work for already established companies. In addition, and even more profoundly, some graduates of these remodeled tertiary institutions will enter the real world with breakthrough solutions to problems affecting hundreds of millions of people and create products and services, and in the long run, companies that will create new value chains and add significant value to both the Nigerian and global economy. This projection is something that is already in play in places like the US. According to the 2016 Reuters top 100: the world’s most innovative universities, Stanford University, which made the top spot for the second time a row, is described as consistently innovating both at the student and faculty level; for the records, the ideas behind Google, Instagram, Snapchat, Hewlett Packard (HP) were conceived and developed by Stanford University alumni while they were still students (undergraduate or postgraduate), and the University, through its faculty and networks, played important roles at the pre-incubation phases of these now multi-billion dollar companies. A study carried out by the University in 2012 estimated that all the companies founded by Stanford entrepreneurs generate about $2.7 trillion in annual revenue; and according to the latest Techcrunch CrunchBase report, released earlier today, on US university-affiliated startup companies which received funding from investors this year, Stanford University was the undisputed leader, with more than 225 startup companies whose founders are products of the University
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| Stanford University, 2016 Reuters world's most innovative university |
Imagine if Nigerian tertiary institutions, after undergoing this proposed innovation-oriented remodelling, could produce innovators and entrepreneurs whose companies can generate (collectively at the national and global level) just 10% of this Stanford amount, $270 billion; imagine the impact of $270 billion (about N108 trillion at current exchange rate) in annual revenue on Nigeria’s economy—the jobs that will be created, the hundreds of thousands of people who will be lifted out of poverty every year. Nigeria in economic recession will be a thing buried in the mist of history.
From an individual perspective and for someone who will soon enter the real world, the medical/healthcare industry, as a medical doctor, I don’t intend to spend my entire life on traditional, conventional career paths: there are so many pain points that tens of millions of Nigerians, and hundreds of millions more worldwide, face almost on a daily basis as regards therapeutic modalities, healthcare delivery, availability, accessibility and affordability—and there’s a limit to what sitting in the clinic taking patient history, carrying out complete physical examination, interpreting investigation results and administering different treatment modalities (medical and surgical) can do for these tens and hundreds of millions of people.
What about you? As a young engineer, computer science grad, lawyer or even someone who has worked for so many years in the civil service, do you intend to spend your entire active/productive life on traditional, conventional, innovation-starved career paths? As individuals, young Nigerians, we can help ignite this innovation revolution by constantly engaging in meaningful conversation on the importance of creativity and innovation in our education system; curiously questioning the old, out-dated ways of doing things in our fields of study in the tertiary institutions and in the workplace; and ceaselessly mapping out frameworks, even if they are only theoretical, for innovative ideas and solutions that can potentially replace the old and inefficient methods of solving the ever-dynamic real world problems faced by hundreds of millions of people around us.
Happy 56th Independence Day, once more, my dear country, Nigeria. The future is radiantly bright.
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