How I approach innovation and entrepreneurship is different from most.
That difference has been shaped largely by my exposure to structured, world-class innovation environments like the UNLEASH Global Innovation Lab and other global design-thinking ecosystems.
Because of that, I’m very particular about how I teach innovation and how I practice entrepreneurship.
Not theory.
Not slides.
Not slogans.
But process, deeply rooted in design thinking and system design.
For context: yesterday marked the end of a campaign and the start of a new month. In my work, that transition is never handled casually.
Before sales, I met with Aisha, my finance lead, to review January’s numbers.
Revenue in.
Costs out.
What the P&L was quietly telling us about February.
Budgets set.
Only after that did we move into sales.
We have a new sales team member. She’s been onboarded, but onboarding doesn’t replace systems thinking. So instead of starting with February targets, I went upstream.
I walked her through:
• How the annual goal was set in December
• How that annual goal was broken into quarters
• How Q1 was translated into monthly priorities
• Where January actually landed inside that structure
Then we redesigned February.
Live.
The January action-plan template wasn’t wrong, it was simply no longer sufficient. Scale has a way of revealing that.
So I opened the spreadsheet during the meeting and rebuilt parts of it in real time:
• Adjusted the structure
• Introduced new categories
• Changed ownership logic
• Added colour-coding for urgency and accountability
She watched me do it.
At some point, I said something I repeat often internally:
“When we say innovation is one of our pillars, we’re not talking about ideas.
We’re talking about continuously redesigning systems as reality changes.”
This is also why I don’t approach entrepreneurship purely from a local or operational lens.
Long before building I-Train Africa, I worked within structured innovation environments, design-thinking labs, global innovation programs, and institutional systems where experimentation is disciplined, not chaotic.
Those experiences trained me to think beyond execution and into:
• How decisions compound
• How structure shapes behaviour
• How clarity reduces friction
This is the kind of work I enjoy teaching.
Not how to start a business, but:
• How strategy becomes systems
• How systems become execution
• And how leaders learn to redesign those systems as scale increases
If you’re teaching entrepreneurship without teaching innovation as a process, you’re only telling half the story.
And if you’re building companies without redesigning your systems as you grow, you’ll feel the friction long before you can name it.
This is the work I’m deeply invested in now, and the kind of conversations I enjoy having in classrooms and boardrooms alike.
Global Opportunities Expert | Experienced Professionals, Academic & Founder Positioning | Employability Strategy