Think Different

 

What do you see?

On hearing this. Jesus said to them “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners”

- St. Mark the Evangelist.

I come from a somewhat large family. My parents have 7 children. Yes, Yes. My mum is a superwoman. I know. (Hey Mum!) One of the things my siblings and I did regularly was eat together. One of the things you learn to do as a “survival mechanism” is to eat as much as you can, as fast as you can; especially if you’ve been told that there’s nothing left in the pot.

I feel that’s how most people see the world –like some kind of ‘grab all you can as long as you can scheme” This is even more prevalent in business. 

Most businesses are just fighting over the same people – like we’re all just fighting for a tiny slice out of a pizza box. It’s exhausting.

‘When I study phenomenal companies like Apple or Tesla or Rockefeller’s standard Oil, I see that the visionaries behind such behemoths saw differently. 

Instead of targeting the same customers as everyone else, they targeted non-consumption or non-consumers.

They didn’t focus on people who were already customers of a competitor or who already had considerable buying power or who were already this or already that. 

They, like the early explorers, searched for “virgin lands”, sectors or individuals neglected by the rest of society and deemed almost worthless. 

They flipped the paradigm.

As much as lack and scarcity is a terrible thing the world over, we must not forget that it could also be an immense sea of opportunity. 

Mo Ibrahim recognized this when he set up the first private multinational telecoms company in Africa. Rockefeller recognized this when he built and consolidated Standard Oil as did J.P Morgan with U.S Steel and Henry Ford with the Ford Motor company.

They didn’t complain about the vast number of people who couldn’t pay for their products. Instead, they used that constraint as a Launchpad to fine tune their product offerings and then brought to market, sometimes similar, products of considerable value at affordable prices. 

This not only earned them huge fortunes but created immense value for the rest of society and in some instances the entire world.

This is what the world needs. This is what Africa needs. We need more people who see that the “large number of people living below the poverty line in Africa” is not just a sad statistic. It is an immense opportunity. 

We need to think thoroughly about how we can turn that from a liability to an immense advantage.

These people are the non-consumers. They’re the ones most companies consider not worth fighting for. They’re the over 60% of people who are unbanked in Nigeria or the large number of people who live in rural areas with little or no access to basic amenities or the number of people living in towns or cities who can’t afford necessities because the products are too expensive.

This is what we should think about. This is how we change our world……and earn a few, or many, billion dollars along the way.

Think non-consumption. Think different.

Author:

Chinonso Ohakwe

UX Designer & Management Professional.

+2349097174236. +2349091134000

hello.ohakwechinonso@gmail.com