America’s Stanford University to open Nairobi research hub

Prestigious Stanford University in the US has revealed plans to open a regional innovation centre in Nairobi by June next year, boosting Kenya’s growing status as the continent’s invention hub.

The Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies (Seed) will focus on training budding entrepreneurs to develop new products and services, and help scale up their ideas into viable businesses.

The upcoming research facility in Nairobi will be the second in the world and follows the setting up of Seed in Accra in June 2013.

“We support vital research which can fuel future breakthroughs in fundamental knowledge,” said Davis Albohm, Seed’s associate director in charge of global operations.

The California-based university said it selected Kenya as the home of its East Africa lab due to Nairobi’s global repute for tech innovation and enterprise, a young work force and infrastructure.

“Nairobi is important from a perspective of existing infrastructure, demographics, business climate and several other factors,” said Mr Albohm in an interview with the Business Daily.

Seed was founded in 2011 as a Stanford Graduate School of Business initiative after receiving a $150 million (Sh15 billion) gift from an alumnus and venture capitalist named Robert King and his wife Dorothy.

The research institute aims at applying practical innovation and entrepreneurship to create jobs and end the cycle of poverty in developing economies, said the university.

The American university was ranked the third best in the world in 2015 by Times Higher Education.

The new Stanford lab will be accounted alongside global players such as IBM, Samsung and Nokia who have set up innovation hubs in Nairobi.
Columbia University opened its first research centre in Africa, The Columbia Global Centre Africa, in Nairobi in January 2013.

It is a research and development hub aimed at spearheading innovations aimed at addressing Africa’s challenges.

Other innovation spaces in Nairobi include iHub, World Bank-funded Climate Innovation Centre, Brave Venture Labs, Impact Hub, Growth Hub, Chandaria Business Innovation and Incubation Centre, FabLab and C4Dlab among others.

Stanford said it was finalising arrangements on where the hub will be housed.

READ: MasterCard to open Sh1bn research lab in Nairobi

The university said it will offer a six months hands-on transformation programme for young entrepreneurs focusing on strategy, marketing, organisational structure, operations, and finance.

“At the end of the six-month programme, there will be the opportunity to apply for hands-on coaching from seasoned executives and entrepreneurs,” Mr Albohm said.

The private university says its entrepreneurship training is highly interactive and allows leaders to discover and apply tools and methodologies that will help them transform their businesses.

Stanford said it has slashed the fees for the programme to $1,500 per participant from the usual cost of $5,000 a person.

Seed targets start-ups and companies grossing between $150,000 to more than $15 million to help them scale quickly, create job opportunities, interact with peers and develop ideas into commercial enterprises.