Becoming an Innovator - The One Month Life Changing Experience

Introduction

They say that every New Year is filled with new opportunities. Mine came with a lot of opportunities to learn and to grow. I've always had this partial idea that as a programmer all I'm required to do is to build websites that work and write clean code but during my one month Innovation Readiness Training with IFA, I learnt that building the application comes last. A lot of research has to be done first. You have to think about your users, you have to discuss with them, ask them what they really want, create a problem statement. Ask more questions, critically process the data you receive as feedback, reiterate. Design a prototype, ask questions, modify, reiterate, and on and on until you discover what works best for your users. This training has opened my eyes to a world of numerous possibilities. I learnt about product management, I learnt what it feels like to deal with people from different backgrounds, I learnt how to listen to everyone's opinion and really thinking about it, I learnt about the design thinking processes and how to apply it to everyday life, most importantly, I learnt that I know very little about what customers really want.

I used to think entrepreneurship was about starting up a business and making a lot of money. I knew I had many factors to consider, but I didn't know how to ask the right questions. My four weeks journey with IFA has been filled with a lot of challenges in form of opportunities. A lot of new concepts to learn, lectures, video calls, meetings, blog posts, more lectures, more meetings, hackathon and consulting for a client. In my case, the client was IFA. I had the opportunity of working with three different teams. My hackathon team (Team Nimra Health) you can read more about this awesome team here, my personal branding team (We didn't get to name our team but they were cool) and my Hard skills team (IFA Consulting).

The Experience

In my personal branding learning team, we collaborated on working on our portfolios, look at each other's profile and details and render necessary feedback. In my strategic analysis team we critically analyze organizations using SWOT analysis, STEEPLE analysis or PESTLE analysis.

The Innovation Readiness Training was fun, interesting and informative. Everyday came with a new opportunity to grow and we always had new tasks to complete. We had the opportunity of discussing with some startup founders and innovators in Nigeria. Listening to their stories, asking a few questions and getting a reply from them. Generally, it was a wonderful experience. Their stories inspired me never to give up and to always have faith in yourself. We also learnt to apply the core IFA values almost everyday. I call it the "BIGG-C".

During the last week of our Innovation Readiness Training, we had the opportunity to discuss with John Chiedo, a Senior Engineering Manager at GitHub during our guest speaker sessions. It was an interesting and informative session. He told his story, gave us some advice. But one thing stood out for me - His dedication to his church, charity and family.

Teamwork

I believe Innovation Readiness Training has prepared me better for my next step in life, as an innovator and as an entrepreneur. During the course of the training, I learnt the importance of collaboration and that one person can have biased opinion when taking decisions. When we were working on Nimra health, we were looking for some features to add to the application, my teammate, Ugonna suggested we add a voice note taking feature for the doctors, Feyi suggested we make it work for hospital clusters. That way those hospitals can have one accurate source of patients information, Emmanuel also added that we can use HMOs to arrange the hospitals. That way a patient can go to a hospital supported by his/her HMO and they won't need to start reregistering. I suggested we add an in-hospital communication feature where all the departments can communicate freely without leaving the platform. We implemented all this features and more to create a well thought out Health Care system that works for the Nigerian healthcare providers.

I also learnt how to channel a teams debate in the right direction, make sure everyone has the same goal while we debate and that keeps everyone on the same page. Working with the various teams has really opened my eyes to the importance of working with teams and how ideas from different beautiful minds can come together to build a wonderful product. I also learnt that during the brainstorming sessions, the idea that sounds ridiculous at first might be the answer to hours of deliberation.

Final Thoughts

In a team, listening to everyone's ideas, sharing responsibilities and setting goals helps the team achieve their goals faster and everyone can grow together in the process. I wish more startups understood the importance of breaking their staff into teams, how to choose the right teams who share the same passion and how they can harness the team system to grow their companies faster.

If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.

It has been a wonderful experience. I can't wait to apply what I learnt in a real startup while I also use the opportunity to learn more.