The University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (GSB) is exploring unorthodox, innovative and applied solutions to solve African challenges.

GSB Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship director Dr François Bonnici says that “creating the conditions for creative people from across the spectrum of disciplines to work together on complex challenges is a vital first step in allowing such innovation to thrive”

As part of this, the centre is offering a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degree with a focus on inclusive innovation studies. The candidates who register for the MPhil can explore several themes, ranging from human-computer interactions, social innovation strategies, inclusive business designs and applied communications technology to aspects of Africa’s health and education delivery and management systems, and sustainable business actualisation.

“With a programme of this kind, we are hoping to foster an environment which will not only help develop worthwhile innovations and have an impact but could also be scaled up and implemented to address some key challenges and opportunities facing the continent.

“Further, we want to sustain a real-time body of knowledge that clusters around innovating and designing solutions for societal problems in an African context,” says MPhil student supervisor Professor Kosheek Sewchurran.

The programme will focus on various challenge areas, such as inclusive banking in Africa, open government and democracy or civil society, which are focused on citizenship and the human elements of creating a more equal society.

MIT Media Lab entrepreneur Julius Akinyemi says that the GSB approach draws much of its inspiration from the world-famous MIT Media Lab.
The MIT Media Lab has been an inspiration in the development of this programme in terms of its ‘antidisciplinary’ and open innovation approaches to understanding solutions that will help with the future of humanity.

“MIT has been championing a multidisciplinary model since 1985. The phenomenal thing about the approach is that it teams up people who are not discipline experts, allowing designers, engineers, artists and scientists to work together to look anew at different challenges and answer the unasked questions that change our lives,” says Akinyemi.

GSB is offering this model, based on principles learned from developing its own programmes and other programmes elsewhere, such as the action learning, designing thinking and systems thinking approach adopted from the MIT Media Lab.

Bonnici believes that this kind of cross-disciplinary approach will be the way forward for South African businesses, society and government to find solutions in the areas that are critical to the country’s future.

“Free thinking and collaborative programmes such as this create an open innovation environment that allows for the new ideas of students to be cocreated with aligned people and organisations.

“The GSB Living Lab innovation does not happen in a linear way nor can it be presupposed, and this model encourages cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral interactions,” explains Bonnici.

GSB director Walter Baets says he is looking forward to working with the students and witnessing the evolution of their research.