Malili Technopolis can help spur Kenya’s growth

Jim Collins, the renowned professor at Stanford University, introduced a concept he and his co-author, Jerry Porras, refer to as a BHAG in his bestseller book “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.” A BHAG pronounced, Bee-Hag is short for Big Hairy Audacious Goals. He says that a BHAG encourages companies to define visionary goals that are more strategic and emotionally compelling.

Collins used this concept in Built to Last to examine 18 visionary companies and also studied 18 comparison companies with the view of establishing the characteristics of visionary companies and why some companies make the leap while others don’t.

According to Collins, a BHAG is as a form of vision statement “...an audacious 10-to-30-year goal to progress towards an envisioned future.

However, a true BHAG is clear and compelling, serves as unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a clear catalyst for team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organisation can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines.

So what all this about BHAGs and visionary companies you ask. Last week I attended what was dubbed as a Town Hall meeting of the Malili Technopolis. This is a technology business park project under the Ministry of Information and Communication aimed at transforming the Kenyan economy using IT enabled services (ITES) by the year 2030.

Yes, this hinges on the vision 2030 but the results are expected sooner than that. The tech city will host a BPO park, a financial district, a science park, a world-class convention centre, a mega mall and several hotels. The technopolis will also have amenities such as schools, hospitals and other recreational facilities. Planned to serve the metropolis is also a high-speed train that will take 11 minutes from Malili to JKIA.

Now, is that a BHAG or not! It’s visionary, its big, its audacious. All the attendees of the town hall meeting left the room wound up and some were spotted in Malili Farm checking out the place and possibly looking to buy some land around the proposed technopolis.

But having a BHAG in itself does not stimulate progress. It requires commitment by all the stakeholders to actualise it. It was clear that the Ministry of Information and Communication, PS and his counterparts in the Kenya ICT Board are committed to this goal. And this is good. The entire government should be behind this project and make it happen for Kenyans.

Technology parks have proved to be useful vehicles for research-industry interactions and for stimulating growth of technologically intensive, knowledge-based businesses. They also facilitate the links between the research and industrial communities. Different Technology Parks exhibit different characteristics due to the environments in which they are set up and the actors involved. Lets not loose this opportunity to create a new, planned technology driven city that has the promise to move the country to the next level of development.