Innovation and agility in the digital age africa, the worlds laboratories of tomorrow

2016 on the specificities of management in Africa, our work thus has the goal of grasping and describing the methods and processes which allow transformations to succeed and promote inn

coordinated by

Jean-Luc Cerdin

Volume 2

Innovation and Agility

in the Digital Age

Africa, the World’s Laboratories

of Tomorrow

Soufyane Frimousse

First published 2019 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers,

or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018965268

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78630-404-9

Contents

Foreword vii

Introduction xiii

Chapter 1 Disrupters, Breadcrumbs and the Managerial Revolution 1

1.1 Digital disruptions of management 3

1.2 New and fundamental insights 8

1.3 From pyramid to platform 10

1.4 Motivation by profit and especially by purpose 11

Chapter 2 The African Continent: Laboratory Tomorrow’s World 15

2.1 The frog’s leap, the leopard’s run and agility 16

2.2 Rebel talents and serial learners in dynamic rootedness 26

2.3 Rooted leaders/entrepreneurs, adventurers and hustlers at the service of African singularities 30

2.4 An African citizen educated and trained to think within organizations, who can speak and must be listened to 49

Chapter 3 The Mediterranean: Marrying the Future without Divorcing the Past 59

3.1 The Mediterranean: crossroads of civilizations, one-way street or dead-end street 61

3.2 Drawing from the Mediterranean thanks to people of transposition 74

3.3 Neither adoration, nor submission, but self-realization 94

3.4 Zones of fertility in “layer-cake” societies 115

Conclusion 129

Postface 131

References 137

Index 149

Foreword

Simply mentioning “Africa” as a reference in a particular model often involves a notorious misunderstanding of a continent whose land mass is larger than that of the United States, Oceania and Europe put together, whose number of languages is probably greater than 50,000 and whose cultural origins are among the most complex We often hear “Africans are this or that”, and quite often it is a coarse approximation of an infinitely more subtle reality

However, what remains common to the African continent, without a doubt, is a lag in development compared to the rest of the world, generally described as a permanent stain whose effects continuously reappear in economic matters, in human development and in social, environmental and educational matters

It seems to me that the real difficulty is in moving away from a given context to try to draw out long-term perspectives, without necessarily relying

on identified trends, but trying to identify a few weak signals which might constitute overdetermining factors in the medium term In this regard, there

is no doubt that development in Africa must experiment with new pathways,

if only because current dynamics paint a picture of a continent with different characteristics: Africa will thus, like Asia, be more than others a continent of megacities, city-states whose populations will be higher than 10 million inhabitants

The UNDP thus predicts that Africa will host no less than 18 of these (out

of a total of 70 by 2050) Concerning energy, Africa could well be one of the first continents to implement smartgrids on a large scale (Huawei is currently

carrying out several experiments with these technologies in Addis-Ababa, Cairo and Nairobi), technologies in which much hope is placed to bring about a new model of electrical energy Finally, as for flows of technology and skills, the traditional North–South axis could quickly be challenged by a South–East axis, as not only China (with its immense “One Belt One Road” initiative), but now also India seem willing to develop long-term partnerships with many countries

Yet, these three trends are only rarely emphasized by the media when Africa is discussed However, they will inevitably lead to the emergence of a model of development which, several decades from now, will be considered very different from what is observed in the West

Consider also Korea or Japan, two countries who were not spared in the memoirs of General MacArthur: reading them shows how much the general thought them incapable of developing, particularly Korea However, not only has their expansion been remarkable (South Korea was poorer than Mali from then until 1960), but it has involved creating their own technological and especially managerial culture

To bet that Africa might become a model for innovation and management seems very daring at first sight Few observers would risk such predictions

As Soufyane Frimousse emphasizes in this work, the African model of management – as we perceive it – is too often one of the worst caricatures of the Western “command and control” type of model, inherited from the mills and forges of the 19th Century, which we never cease to try to eradicate in our own latitudes

However, this is to ignore vast social spaces, those of the family, those of village circles and those of the informal economy, whose organizational capacities are remarkable in more than one way If these are not expressed in the productive base it is because the technologies, carefully imported from the West, have not been disassociated from the managerial cultures which came with them Quite often, African management has given up on its model

of interaction and consultation, faced with technologyʼs potential for intimidation We might speak of the “magical” intimidation of technology; the technological supernatural representing a transcendent factor, situated above humanity and imposing itself on all This is not a negligible factor: it was through taking account of a technological breakthrough – the atomic bomb – above and beyond everything known at the time, that the Empire of

Japan and its emperor surrendered, as fanaticized as they were by the messianic nature of their war

Although many decades ago, anthropologists identified the factors which have, in many regions of Eastern as well as Western Africa, given rise to significant social sophistication and harmony, rare are those who have risked translating this into the world of business Yet, several factors are actually in the process of creating a new model, in Africa

The first of them is leaving the neo-colonial era behind: in many countries, particularly Francophone ones, the former master is still an economic, technical, social and political reference from the very fact of maintaining the links which were created over centuries However, though these links remain important, they are increasingly less determining or dominant

The second consists of the emergence of a global digital culture: managerial reference points have been overwhelmed in the West as in Africa

by the emergence of a culture based on open-source, collaboration, proceeding by iteration or “building to fail”, so-called “agile” processes, etc Now, this culture is particularly powerful and acts like a wave against an aging dike: it washes it away, allowing the reappearance of local cultural characteristics which had been buried but never quite disappeared

The third consists of the nature of African innovation Inspired by massive necessity more than by industrial sophistication, constructed mainly outside of traditional scientific laboratories, African innovation is profoundly

“jugaad”, to take up the concept promoted by Navi Radjou In a digital

world dominated by the GAFAM companies and in a region where political, judicial and economic institutions are often unstable, it has developed rapidly and on a large scale, bringing forth a unique and diversified model These three factors, non-exclusive of the others mentioned in Soufyane Frimousseʼs work, are not negligible Whoever has the opportunity to meet African entrepreneurs, particularly in the digital field, can see that the time for condescension is gone Organizational models, business models and techniques emerge and develop effectively: mobile currencies (M-Pesa) and their associated services (M-Kopa for payments for solar electricity); renewable energy (the municipality of Kampala has just put out a call for tenders to reduce its energy consumption to 0% gas and carbon emissions)

and open and collaborative services for trash collection (ArClean); medical tools for access to diagnosis and care (CardioPad); applications for checking agricultural prices (M-Farm); popular social networks (Mxit) and so on Solutions imagined and designed by individuals, entrepreneurs, students, researchers, scientists or artists may sustainably inspire the rest of the globe The entrepreneurial energies unleashed by the African economic boom should be sustained, improved and supported so as to participate in the invention – even the re-enchantment – of the world of tomorrow If we must globalize African innovation, we must also Africanize global innovation to instill a digital vision which is more inclusive, sustainable, creative and useful

Although Western societies are currently remarkably efficient, they remain confronted with complex challenges: how to maintain technological and innovative leadership with a population whose aging is accelerating? How can we conceive of sustainability in a model which only tolerates reformist policies with difficulty, and breaking with models even less? These questions are not insignificant The study of history shows two impressive constants: the first is that nations have always neglected the factors that have led to their marginalization Thus, the Chinese empire was excessively welcoming to the British and Dutch who arrived to open trade offices and free ports, without realizing that the economic power of these merchants was powerfully defended by military power that would not hesitate to impose its conditions on the Qing dynasty after the Opium Wars The French empire did not understand that the British financial model, its legal stability, offered greater potential for development and thus a larger capacity for territorial expansion, and so on

The second is that models of innovations are systematically condemned when they appear From the Jacquard loom, to Fordist organization, to Toyotism, to the Internet revolution, these have all been the object of critiques almost always coming from the most orthodox representatives of a generally dominant model Here, too, new tendencies are not generally detected However, if we watch what is happening in Africa, we can only observe that the coming generation is beginning to assert its vision, a mixture of an assumed expression of the principles of consultation belonging

to ancestral cultures, a mastery of technological principles and the cultural models that this entails, a capacity to take large risks and a desire to self-emancipate from known frameworks These are some of the factors

which underpin the managerial and innovation culture of Africa and, probably, of the world to come

Gilles BABINET

Digital Entrepreneur Digital Champion of France at the European Commission Vice-President of the National Digital Council of France

Introduction

Contemporary managerial reality is based largely on a universalist logic This vision rests on the convergence of organizations towards a single and universal management model proclaimed to be the “one best way” This involves Fayol’s famous “planning, organizing, commanding and controlling” and its multiple derivatives, which are based on the Taylorist and Fordist models that we can sum up in the formula “command, control and execute”

This prototypical model of traditional business is called into question in current and future contexts In fact, the percentage of employees who feel disengaged from business never ceases to rise According to a Capgemini study in 20141, the figure has risen to 40% According to a study by Gallup2, the score is 80% These figures lead us to question the foundations and practices of organizational management

In fact, among Fayol’s principles, it is command and control that are strongly challenged in their application With the major principles remaining stable in their broad lines over a century, new models of management must innovate in every dimension while particularly taking account of developments in society, themselves accelerated by the digital revolution These upheavals have provoked many organizations to question their mode

of management, moving from a traditional pyramidal organization to an agile structure It is now necessary to have employees who are reactive and autonomous and who possess adaptive capacities

1 Capgemini (2014) À l’écoute des français au travail

2 Etude Gallup sur l’engagement des salariés (2014)

In this context, new modes of organization emerge, copying startups in giving more freedom of action to everyone and engaging with employees in

a more personalized way Within the well-known models of the GAFA companies (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon), their Chinese equivalents, the BATX (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi) and the NATU companies (Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla and Uber), management is now horizontal, organized into small groups with strong autonomy

These companies which have become giants have freed themselves from most classical organizational management practices to adopt others, issuing from the digital revolution Agility and disruptive innovation have become the key dimensions here All these are found at the heart of many African and Mediterranean cultures and enterprises, which now explains why multiple innovations originating from Africa are beginning to be internationally exported, part of the beginning of the globalization of Africa Africa is a unit at the level of the African Union It is a giant continent In contrast, there are plural Africas at the level of geography, history, economy, culture and political situations

At the managerial level, African and (southern shore) Mediterranean firms are often cited as examples not to follow In a large proportion of the managerial literature, methods and practices deriving from the African continent and the southern shore of the Mediterranean are ignored or considered to be archaic or quaint From these descriptions, we get the image

of an Africa condemned to marginalization Our work is opposed to this simplistic vision We believe that the African innovations which have emerged over the past ten years are directly linked with a managerial model which responds perfectly to the digital era

Following on from the lines of research of George et al (2016) on the

specificities of management in Africa, our work thus has the goal of grasping and describing the methods and processes which allow transformations to succeed and promote innovative and agile behaviors which are likely to create value for firms and their stakeholders while improving their

competitiveness We follow the recommendations of Zoogah et al (2015),

who encourage researchers to develop an understanding of African organizational dynamics, which call for appropriate theoretical and empirical approaches to improve knowledge

These advances are also potentially useful and rich in learning opportunities for non-African organizations and research

Innovation is not creativity Being creative means having ideas Being innovative means putting these ideas to work Creativity involves reflection, while innovation involves action As creativity belongs in the domain of psychology, it may be encouraged by various techniques such as brainstorming Conversely, innovation belongs in the domain of management It involves moving into action, ensuring that new ideas are not killed by the organization, its routines, its budgetary constraints and its power struggles, and that they find their way to the market If creativity generally has a cost, only innovation is likely to make a profit

Practices which qualify as innovative originate from firms, leaders, entrepreneurs and citizens They are the result of exchanges between people and of experiments Innovation in management includes innovation in organizing people, in managing systems, communication, social relations and the organization of work Managerial innovation is an approach which may allow firms to develop and sustain their activities Managerial innovation is based on: the capacity to differentiate oneself from competitors; the capacity to promote agile behaviors so as to adapt to changes; and the capacity to attract and retain engaged and passionate employees Managerial innovation consists of responding to many challenges: the development of agility; the enhancement of pleasure and well-being at work; the improvement of collaboration, cohesion and collective intelligence; the establishment of relations based on trust; the stimulation of innovative behaviors; and the improvement of engagement and loyalty

Africa is a reservoir of technological, managerial and societal innovations In Africa, technology is not a gimmick It responds to vital

necessity Here, we encounter jugaad, the art of innovation with limited

resources proper to emergent nations of which the Indian Navi Radjou has

become the guru Africa has jugaad in its DNA, with its very collective

functioning and the art of doing more with less Innovations are rooted

in territories

In his book Post-Capitalist Society, Peter Drucker (1993) describes the influence of major developments in the economy and society since the Middle Ages on the models of organizations Based on this perspective, this book presents the managerial developments that emerged in organizations after the anthropological revolution and the acceleration of digitalization that

is closely connected These revolutions are discussed and analyzed

The key dimensions of new forms of organization (structures, methods of work, etc.) and innovation underlying the digital revolution within the most innovative organizations in the world are presented

Developments involve the impacts of digital technology on some organizations in Africa, which have led them to rethink their organizational and innovation models In fact, some African firms offer products and services which are more than just copies of their international counterparts These organizations are based on real managerial characteristics, including frugality

Do these “made in Africa success stories” not draw the outlines of a new model of management and innovation for firms in the digital era?

Our reflections are based on the cultural, economic and managerial dimensions of the Africas and of the Mediterranean world, inserting them into a historical, geo-strategic and socio-political framework With movements of challenge and revolt in the Arab countries, the Northern countries have discovered, often with amazement, that the quest for liberty and human rights also continues on the southern shore of the Mediterranean and that it is not exclusive to the northern shore The eternal imaginary dissymmetry of East and West and the insurmountable pseudo-barriers between “them” and “us” break down These new data offer the chance to deepen this approach to the Mediterranean as a hidden source This work thus encourages us to discover or rediscover the Mediterranean as it is It shows the discrepancy between Mediterranean realities and well-meaning discourses and speeches It involves going behind the lighted stage of intercultural dialog, and dissecting the darkness of the facts We interrogate historical and cultural fractures so as to sketch the forms of their possible supersession, as the Mediterranean may constitute a hidden source

We insist on the claim of the Mediterranean, which seems to be echoed in those countries with cultures strongly influenced by the varying dogmas of the dominant model: cultural, economic, societal and managerial This claim

is expressed through: a form of resistance to the society of acceleration and consumption; a need for authenticity and relationships expressed in the notions of tribe and embeddedness; a need for singularity; a quest for well-being; and a management of people and no longer of human resources

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Airbnb and the like have attacked and disintermediated a large number of professions which thought themselves untouchable, like booksellers, advertisers, taxis, hotels and so on Today, instead of going to a bookstore, a 21st-Century person goes to the Amazon website

After four years, the Airbnb startup offers over 200 countries more rooms

to rent every day than the Hilton group, which has built up its heritage over a hundred years Uber, like Airbnb, shows that user experience is superior to regulation Uber not only interacts with 10 million customers and 200,000 drivers, but also interacts with banks, payment systems, traffic information systems, social networks and so on The more the firm interacts, the more it creates value and becomes indispensable for its users Joël de Rosnay (2016) describes these firms as “disruptors” (or disruption) In the classical model, goods and services are distributed by networks to reach consumers and create a profit margin In the disruptive model, platforms allow the creation

of added value by customers It is then reused by these firms to resell it to others

Innovation and Agility in the Digital Age: Africa, the World’s Laboratories of Tomorrow,

First Edition Soufyane Frimousse

© ISTE Ltd 2019 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The art of disruption or “Uberization” thus corresponds to businesses who have accomplished the disintermediation of traditional structures through offering more personalized services and products, more rapidly Disruption is based on technological reappropriation by citizens who create innovative systems which will change habits, ways of life and communication It is thus not a discovery that will change things

It is rather the convergence between these elements Gilles Babinet (2016) adds that innovation is also affected since previously, it was incremental The best example is that of the internal combustion engine whose performance has progressively developed over a century and a half Now, innovation also involves disruption

All these ruptures or disruptions are supported and accelerated by the development of technologies which are shaping a connected, globalized and rapid world in perpetual motion, which profoundly changes ways of thinking, communicating and working For “Millennials”, the smartphone is not a tool of communication, but a prosthesis They are capable of carrying out multiple activities by downloading applications Smartphones in particular allow us to interface with transmitter–receiver tools communicating directly between the body and the machine (Internet of Things) Technologies have changed our perception of space and time! The level of sophistication of these devices is such that we interact with machines more than with people

These very fast machines lead to shorter time, which is one of the aspects

of this anthropological revolution Technologies have not reduced distances; they have suppressed them Ways of accessing knowledge have also profoundly changed

For Michel Serres (2012), computers, including all information technology including the Internet, smartphones, etc., will affect all areas of life (law, politics, commerce, religion, education, finance, etc.) With the digital era, human beings hold the world in their hands In fact, they hold their devices in their hands and, if they wish, they can communicate with every place in the world and access every piece of information at any moment, and they are slashers (holding down several jobs) or freelancers (in business for themselves)

They overcome natural stupidity and move towards artificial intelligence Thanks to smartphones, artificial intelligence, robotics and the power of interconnection between them, human beings multiply their capacities due to the emergence of increased collective intelligence This means a real mutation of the human species

Joel de Rosnay (2016) predicts the emergence of an “increased collective intelligence” which will lead to hyperhumanism, which according to him is something much more preferable than transhumanism, which promotes the use of science and technology to improve the physical and mental characteristics of human beings Ray Kurzweil (2005), an icon of transhumanism, believes that exponential technological innovation will allow us to conquer death and eventually give rise to machines that are more intelligent than humans Kurzweil (2005) identifies genetics, nanotechnology and robotics as the three revolutions that will define our lives in the next few decades The adepts of transhumanism dream of being able to transcend humanity through artificial intelligence by creating superhumans and individual supra-intelligence This vision is far from being unanimously welcomed

For de Rosnay (2016), transhumanism is inhuman, as the transformations foreseen in the body or the brain are reserved for a privileged few, and life and death are inseparable and indispensable However, transhumanist advances may lead, thanks to philosophical reflection on pushing the limits

of the human body, to prolonging life expectancy and may contribute to positive human and social evolution Already, connected objects act in symbiosis with humans It is this integrated and collective symbiosis which humanity should create, and this is the challenge that current and future generations should meet We realize through these crucial questions that digital transformation is not to be addressed solely via the technological angle of digital tools It is also and especially a matter of human beings – but also of management and organization

1.1 Digital disruptions of management

The development of digital technology has upset the business world in its organization and its managerial system Traditional organizations appear outdated and incapable of handling the transformations caused by this mutation With its descending circuit of information, its centralized

decision-making process and its very hierarchical relationships, the classical organization has proved its effectiveness for a long time These hierarchical, functional, matrical, etc., models of operation, widely studied by Henry Mintzberg (1990), are very useful for building organizational charts, understanding the relationships between support functions and operation functions, and adapting managerial positions A manager in pyramidal organizations favors a formal mode of reasoning which does not promote the development of intelligence, sensitivity or intuition, but rather the acquisition of automatic behavior patterns and conditioning of the

“problem-solving” type

William Whyte (1956), in The Organization Man, aptly describes how

pyramidal firms maintain and create conformism These days, the need for innovation and agility, associated with the influence of digital technology on behaviors, puts into question this schema, which is proving too constraining

to adapt rapidly to changes in clients, the market and employees It is now necessary for employees to decide quickly and to be empowered to iteratively test which options are the most suited to a given context In a few years, innovative companies, with outstanding management who break with conventional wisdom, have thus become giants of the global economy In

2017, these groups have accumulated more than 250 billion dollars in turnover The GAFA firms (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) are worth 1,740 billion dollars after 23 years of existence The NATU firms (Netflix, Airbnb, Tesla and Uber) are worth 140 billion dollars after 14 years The Chinese BATX firms (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi) are worth 460 billion dollars after 14 years

It seems difficult to disconnect such results from the organizational environments that they put in place and the way in which they think about work Is it a new managerial paradigm? What are its innovative aspects? In the next section, we will explore a few of these

Amazon’s subsidiary Zappos, an online commerce site, has enacted

“holacracy”, which is a mode of organization based on shared responsibilities for employees and transversality of skills Employees are thus asked to act like entrepreneurs and to take initiative rather than to wait for orders from their manager Holacracy has already been adopted by more than 300 firms worldwide

Isaac Getz and Brian M Carney (2012) describe another form of organization which they name “liberated companies” These give their employees responsibility, granting them confidence and leaving very wide decision-making autonomy to their workers This encourages mutual listening and collaborative work Teams are motivated, involved, faithful and much more productive In a liberated company, control is not lost; it is shared Orangina and Michelin are engaged in this approach Frédéric Laloux (2015) recommends establishing freedom of decision-making at all levels of the organization Customer satisfaction derives most often from initiative, which is the result of teams being granted autonomy Frédéric Laloux (2015) cites and analyzes the example of the Favi and Buurtzort companies, which show the importance of “empowerment” of the team which becomes responsible for its business objectives Laloux (2015) constantly underlines the importance of continuous improvement with the influence of lean management in the sense of the Toyota Way

As part of the same movement of managerial innovation, Kazuo Inamori (2012) has developed for his group a method called “Amoeba Management”, which consists of dividing the organization into small operational units each under the authority of a leader They are called

“amoebas” The leader is in charge of creating the goals and action plans for the amoeba with their team The amoebas function as teams in collaborative mode “Amoeba Management” is used by approximately 600 companies

A movement called “adaptive enterprises” or Responsive Organizations has also been created in the United States, which brings together all the features found in holacracy and liberated companies This movement values collective intelligence An adaptive organization is “learning” Galindo (2017) presents the dimensions of the ideal type of human resources management in start-ups through the French acronym C.I.D (Knowledge

(Connaissances), Challenges, Conviviality / Informal, Involvement,

Initiatives / Delegation, Right to be wrong (Droit à l’erreur), Distribution of

incentives) Human resources are judged by their updated knowledge They are often challenged Thus, to avoid the excesses of individualism, maintaining conviviality is a priority The company favors informality at the level of exchanges and monitors the degree of involvement The spirit of initiative is encouraged

Employees are encouraged to become personally involved in resolving collective problems and to self-manage due to delegation of responsibilities The right to be wrong is part of the firm’s culture Contributions are recognized via rewards

Some observers reject these horizontal or cellular models as a fashionable phenomenon1 On our part, the authors believe it is part of a real revolution

According to Salim Ismail et al (2014), Amazon, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb,

Google and Instagram are exponential organizations (ExO), as they have been able to convert available information into competitive advantage by exploiting the network effect and the acceleration associated with this effect

to create a “disruptive” model This analytical matrix is based on the opposition between linear and exponential structures While the world of information develops exponentially, our organizational structures are still linear They are therefore inadequate These exponential organizations rest

on the six Ds defined by Peter Diamandis and Steve Kotler (2012) (Digitalized/Deceptive/Disruptive/Dematerialized/Demonetized/Democratized) Digitalization allows rapid spread

Afterwards, there is deception because growth is virtually invisible Then, disruption creates a new market and thus overturns what already exists Demonetization tends to remove money from services and products, and dematerialization tends to remove the services and products themselves Video camera, video game, dictaphone, calculator, clock… all these applications have been dematerialized and become free of charge when they once had a significant cost Even if the applications mentioned above have become free of charge, it is necessary to pay the price of the smartphones in which they have been integrated Democratization takes place when prices become low enough that they become accessible and affordable to the greatest number

These exponential organizations are also sometimes called “unicorns”, a term created by Aileen Lee in 2013 to insist on the link to dreams, magic, sympathy and power The author has re-used the term “unicorn” to describe these new technological firms which have reached values of at least a billion dollars This very small circle included, at the end of 2016,

179 companies in total worldwide This exponential vision was theorized by

1 Collectif des MECREANTS (2015) Entreprise libérée – La fin de l’illusion

Ray Kurzweil (2005), chief engineer of Google, based on Moore’s law stated

in 1965, according to which the power of processors doubles every

18 months

According to Kurzweil (2005), many people think about the future linearly They think that they are going to continue to deal with problems by using the tools and progress of today and do not take into account the exponential growth of technologies Evolutionary processes such as technology accelerate They function through interaction and create a capacity, then they use this capacity to pass on to the next stage

In other words, the results of faster computers are used to build even faster computers

Some traditional firms such as Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola are

moving towards this type of exponential organization For Salim Ismail et al

(2014), this evolution is based on a transformation of leadership and the progressive integration of principles In fact, to transform organizations, it is first necessary to transform employees and in particular, managers Leadership must thus change paradigm

Faced with the crisis of traditional models of leadership, the approach of the positive leader seems to constitute an interesting alternative A positive leader fits into a different paradigm, that of transformation, starting from the inversion of the pyramid It involves serving the area of value creation

In fact, the positive leader aims to transform themselves in order to better

transform their organization (Frimousse et al 2017)

Following this, they should struggle at the same time against the forces

of resistance while modifying the firm’s culture in a significant way Human transformation is the indispensable complement to the digitalization

of the company

In reality, the best-performing organizations apply the ambidextrous management developed by Tushma and O’Reilly (2016) They do not counterpose directive management to team autonomy They implement both

at the same time The best-functioning organizations are total democracies led by attentive directors The GAFA companies are known to have at their heads directive and authoritative leaders, but the high level of transparency limits the levels of vertical interaction and allows a very strong delegation of power to teams

1.2 New and fundamental insights

All these approaches involve power-sharing, accountability, continuous improvement, decision-making autonomy, personal and collective recognition, agility, innovative behaviors, the right to make errors and the quality of interpersonal relationships But, do they actually entail new managerial realities? In fact, these concepts are inspired by and draw from different theoretical and philosophical undercurrents, as well as the contributions of certain management gurus

First of all, let us cite the human relations schools, in particular

Mc Gregor (1971) and Theory X Here, collaborators prefer to be directed so

as to avoid responsibilities In this case, the solution is the hierarchical organizational model In “Theory Y”, human beings aspire to satisfy their universal needs for self-realization and self-direction An organization must therefore meet these needs in a manner appropriate to their cultural and human context, by offering an appropriate mode of organization This involves co-construction with employees of a unique mode of organization Next, as to the critique of Taylorist organization, let us cite Hannah Arendt (1958), Georges Friedmann (1956) and Hyacinthe Dubreuil (1929), who was the first theoretician of autonomous work teams More recently, the sociologist François Dupuy (2013, 2016) studied the failures of Taylorist management applied to 21st-Century organizations

At the level of managerial theories, we find the systemic principles that

Peter Senge (1991) has put forward under the name of The Fifth Discipline

The same goes for Deci and Ryan’s (1985) theory of self-determination Tom Burns and G.M Stalker (1996) and their distinctions between mechanistic and organic organizations are also a source for these new concepts Mechanistic firms are made up of rules, procedures, operating modes, organizational charts and job descriptions Here, organization is understood as a mechanical machine built from assembled gears

In contrast, organic organizations are understood as a living organism comprised of organs and of molecules in perpetual motion, producing what Jean-Daniel Reynaud (1989) calls autonomous regulation, referring to the rules that the members of a group spontaneously give themselves The mechanistic logic’s control regulation designates rules defined by a third party, in particular by leaderships and managers, to prescribe behaviors

Let us also emphasize the contributions of such great management gurus

and practitioners as Tom Peters (1992) with his book Liberation

Management, or Edward Deming (1982) with quality circles Jeff Sutherland

and Ken Schwaber (2014) – the inventors of the agile method – have shown that developers who no longer work in the framework of tasks but in that of goals perform better General Stanley McChrystal (2015) describes how it became necessary for him to profoundly modify the chain of command when, operating in Iraq in the years 2002–2008, he realized that his army was no longer waging a conventional war against a traditional army, but that its opponent was a guerrilla movement structured into several militias He describes his new approach as a network of teams, with a high degree of autonomy and a high level of communication

At the philosophical level, Mounier’s (1936) personalism is also a source for the principles that are being mobilized With regard to intellectuals, the

reflections of Georges Archier and Hervé Sérieyx in the book The Type 3

Company (1994), the “intelligent firm” described by Hubert Landier (1991),

and Edgar Morin (1990) on complex thought should also be cited

as references

We thus understand that the renewal of organizational models is an old question and that many theoreticians, thinkers and practitioners have made concrete proposals in this regard Are current attempts at modelization therefore nothing but old recommendations repackaged for today’s tastes through clever marketing work?

Actually, no What is really convergent and innovative is the fact that these modelizations fit into a new context corresponding to the convergence

of managerial ideas, anthropological evolution and a technological earthquake named digitalization, which marks a real rupture Why did Google succeed in escaping from the design process much more quickly than the average company? Why does Airbnb have more offers per employee than its competitors? In fact, the growth of these companies does not stem from technology in itself, but from the way in which they are organized Technology is, at the same time, a point of support and a lever of action All

of the firms mentioned have shown their capacity to take advantage of the dramatic acceleration of technology, which promotes, at the organizational level, moving from the pyramid model to the platform model, particularly with the principles of the blockchain These models provide fundamental

insights into aspects of the revolution in the environment of today’s firms and certainly those of tomorrow

1.3 From pyramid to platform

The exponential rhythms of the development of technologies and changes

in the environment lead to the appearance of an organization structured as a network of teams and, by means of an open and collaborative platform, allowing the exchange of data between different stakeholders At Facebook, employees all work together in an immense open space Mark Zuckerberg himself does not have his own office, moving from station to station depending on which project he is working on Young technological enterprises often feature an internal culture which promotes experimentation and risk-taking, and does not penalize failure All this comes with a great deal of autonomy and little hierarchy

Exponential firms are platforms, that is, interactions with stakeholders allow them to fulfill their missions Jean Louis Beffa speaks of platformization and of the capacity to pivot (2017) The platform is orientated, in turn, towards clients, suppliers, partners and employees It involves allying with the multitude, with billions of educated, equipped and connected individuals, and inviting them into the company’s value chain (Colin and Verdier 2015) The Internet of Things multiplies points of contact with individuals and intensifies the collection of their personal data, allowing the firm to anticipate their needs The platform gives information and advice

It sells the firm’s goods and/or services, while ensuring their quality It is concerned with attracting talent and developing the employer’s brand The platform especially allows a hyper-customized offer of service for the largest number within and outside of the firm It is a powerful digital instrument panel Teams can access real-time data on the use of the products and services offered (Simon 2011)

HR departments may, in particular, measure the impact of a new training module on employee performance The data collected allow them to obtain all the segmentations and information necessary for a product launch Data which were exploited little in traditional pyramidal organizations will thus

be better used to create new forms of intelligence Digital technology changes and breaks traditional hierarchical systems Take the example of blockchain technology, the users of which say that it increases meritocracy

within organizations In fact, the Backfeed startup was inspired by Bitcoin’s blockchain, except here, it involves tasks carried out by a network of contributors who collaborate on a given project The principle of validation

of transactions of Bitcoin’s blockchain becomes evaluation of contributions with Backfeed This is “Proof-of-Value”

The latter is a mechanism allowing a whole network of contributors to evaluate the value of a collaborator’s work Thus, the importance of an individual within a group does not correlate to a status, but to their actions Blockchain technology allows everyone to consult the whole set of exchanges, present and past The role of an individual thus depends on what they produce With such a system of collaboration, individuals gain in reputation and are rewarded depending on the value that they produce Work does not only relate to a contract, but to value Blockchain allows a collaborative and self-managed work organization; but can we manage human relations like financial transactions? Debate is ongoing In any case, what is certain is that work in project mode within “co-working” spaces and direct relationships between employees are favored more and more The success of applications such as Slack or Evernote and design-thinking approaches bear witness to real expectations in this area Design thinking is

an iterative methodology based on the empathy of the creative team in collaborating with users affected by the project These approaches are based

on the free flow of information

In this configuration, the manager no longer seeks to convince, but rather

to bring together a community of actors He or she does not supervise his or her employees He or she orchestrates and dynamizes teams Granting responsibility to employees and having a flatter hierarchical structure promote collective intelligence, which allows firms to be more reactive and performing

We have presented these organizations while insisting on their contributions at the structural level; but how do we describe their living ecosystem composed of human beings?

1.4 Motivation by profit and especially by purpose

Hamel and Prahalad (1996) argue that there are two strategies to improve

a firm’s performance: the “butcher strategy”, which consists of cutting costs

and retrenching the workforce, and the “baker strategy”, which strives to increase added value based on the mobilization of the individual and the collective intelligences of employees Here, competitiveness depends first of all on the quality of the company’s internal and external relations, which the classical firm does not promote because it imposes a dehumanized Taylorist functioning on staff However, employees demand a nurturing organizational environment Remember that Deci and Ryan (2000) suggest the existence of three basic psychological needs in human beings: the need for autonomy, the need for personal development and the need for social affiliation Exponential models and other alternative forms seem to respond to the universal needs of human beings

First of all, satisfying the need for equality and translating this into the world of work with respect, consideration and trust imply that the manager treats their collaborators as human beings endowed with intelligence and who are capable of completing a certain number of tasks by themselves The need for personal development is translated into a desire to learn and to progress In exponential organizations, this need is satisfied by setting up proactive activities in the field of training and symbols of recognition Finally, the last need related to autonomy and self-affirmation requires trust and the right to make mistakes instead of punitive controls Iteration and experimentation promote the expression of this last need

A nurturing environment is thus the first explanatory dimension of success in managing people within these firms, which offer organization, working conditions and above all, content In this regard, they innovate more than their competitors while having the same access to the same talents, the same agencies, the same consultants, the same media and so on

In fact, these organizations answer the central question, the famous

“why?” of Simon Sinek (2015), by which people do not buy what you produce, but they buy a shared conviction These organizations know why they do what they are doing And this “why” does not just mean making a profit That is a consequence This “why” is a question of purposes, causes and beliefs These aspirations are at once a guide and a catalyst for the community of employees

Meaning reflects the extent to which the pursued goal is important for the individual and coherent with their values The “why” refers to the fundamental importance of the firm’s aims as its foundation

Salim Ismail et al (2014) speak of massive transformative purpose, that

is, the objective which defines the firm’s mission, in the form of a “massive” challenge to transform society by targeting the customer Only a disruptive objective puts the firm in a position to exploit the exponential progress of technology These organizations are thus simultaneously profit maximizers and goal maximizers

If we observe the characteristics of the digital revolution and its consequences on organizational structures and cultures, it is easy to understand why the era of Africa has probably come: an increasingly young population increasingly urbanized in larger and larger cities with more and more urgent demands in terms of work, health, education and so on

Africa will have to invent in order to insert itself into a world order which

is itself in total upheaval Environmental constraints now require us to integrate the principles of exponential organizations, while contextualizing them through frugal approaches and dynamic rooting The emergence of a middle class, the arrival of investors, the development of the Internet and the explosion of the mobile phone are all opportunities that certain firms have been able to seize by deploying horizontal management, organized into small groups with strong autonomy In these organizations, agility and frugal innovation are commonplace

Thus, dozens of innovations coming from Africa are beginning to find the path towards export blazed by the four Ms (MPesa, Mkopa, MPedigre and JuMia

the continent of desperate young people fleeing en masse in fear for their

lives This Africa exists However, it masks another Africa, larger and more powerful An Africa which is building the future and is already a reality for hundreds of millions of people, and an Africa which attracts many firms

(Chironga et al 2011) The economic growth of the African continent has

been, on average, 5% per year for more than a decade, just behind Asia and far ahead of Europe The Human Development Index has improved More than 80% of the population is connected to a mobile telephone network The population of Africa will double by 2050 to reach almost 2 billion individuals, which will make it one of the largest markets in the world

We will thus evoke this Africa of possibilities in the next section, as we are very attentive to the growth of the continent and its transformations, and

we think that the African continent may be the laboratory of tomorrow’s world

At the organizational level, actors develop in a context marked by the dynamics of interweaving formal and informal dimensions (Hyden 2006;

Bruton et al 2015), as well as modern and traditional elements (North 1990;

Collier 2007) These are organizations that interact across territories, which are “enchanted” in Weber’s (1964) sense; spheres of values and beliefs are juxtaposed with and mingle with the economic and managerial spheres,

Innovation and Agility in the Digital Age: Africa, the World’s Laboratories of Tomorrow,

First Edition Soufyane Frimousse

© ISTE Ltd 2019 Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

which are in the process of secularization (Michalopoulos and Papaioannou 2015; Frimousse and Sahraoui 2016)

Gilles Babinet (2016) explains that the African countries that have experienced the most growth in recent years are those that do not sell raw materials Excluding these, the rest of the continent has seen a major impoverishment of 37%

The reason for this is the absence of telecommunication This constitutes

a challenge for investors and entrepreneurs By 2025, GDP per capita in Africa should follow the growth of the market for smartphones The development of digital technology in Africa poses strong challenges because

it leads us to rethink the entrepreneurial dynamic and its managerial model Many start-ups propelled by the advent of digital technology are developing across the four corners of the continent The Africa of innovation appears to

be resolutely marching on

2.1 The frog’s leap, the leopard’s run and agility

Some African firms offer something that is not simply a copy, but a real innovation, adapted to Africa and competitive on a global scale These are

“success stories made in Africa”, whose spearheads are M-Kopa, M-Pesa, M-Pedigree and Jumia (the 4Ms)

Let us turn our gaze to Kenya, and more precisely to M-Kopa Solar, a start-up with the goal of providing domestic solar installations to populations not served by national electricity networks It is estimated that between 18% and 30% of the African continent has access to electricity today, and the cost

of energy is among the highest in the world, up to $0.50 per kilowatt in some countries To circumvent this problem, M-Kopa deploys solar kits allowing the provision of electricity bought in daily quantities by means of SMS The operation is simple and inexpensive The firm boasts more than 450,000 clients and receives one SMS per second The firm has set a target of one million homes equipped by 2018 Every M-Kopa kit thus allows customer households to light three bulbs for the equivalent of about €0.43 per day M-Kopa is a symbol of “off-grid” electricity It democratizes access to energy It is a frugal, decarbonized and decentralized model

M-Kopa allows the poorest people to access light without using the dangerous and polluting oil lamps, which are still present in millions of

households across Africa According to the African Development Bank, 600,000 Africans living “off-grid” die every year of poisoning from domestic heating oil M-Kopa allows the generation of economic activity and social inclusion It supplies cybercafés, cold storage and so on Let us not forget that regular power cuts reduce the competitiveness of firms In the agro-food sector, the absence of electricity prevents the creation of a cold chain and spoils about a third of African production Off-grid electricity may lift 75 million people out of energy poverty in Africa They will thus move

to off-grid electricity without going through the traditional electrical network

The development of solar energy is supported by a “pay as you go” model This is appropriate to the requirements of the most modest households and the middle classes An M-Kopa customer makes a payment, from a mobile phone, to their telecom operator, who notifies M-Kopa M-Kopa then sends a code by SMS, which is used to activate the solar kit Kenya is a region conducive to development The “Silicon Savannah” is a nickname frequently given to Kenya, in large part due to its information and communications technology sector In many areas of innovation, Kenyans design products by viewing things first from the mobile point of view Let us not forget that 99% of Internet users in the country use a mobile device The success of these areas of innovation has not escaped the multinationals Two technology giants have set up innovation laboratories in Kenya: the Nokia Research Center and IBM Research – Africa

Kenyans use M-Pesa, from the telecom operator Safaricom, to manage their bills “Pesa” means money in Swahili M-Pesa is an intelligent and practical system for payment via mobile phone and is the result of behavioral analysis Safaricom discovered that in small villages, phone credit could be used to repay debts or to barter for seeds Some farmers even use it to pay workers in the fields The Kenyan population had begun to “hack” traditional banking with a simple telephone Safaricom was inspired by this resulting in the creation of M-Pesa, an innovation that marvelously embodies the concept of “leapfrogging”

This system is now more effective than conventional banking because people have confidence in it M-Pesa compensates for the absence of banks

in remote areas Ten years after its launch, the popularity of M-Pesa, a pioneer of mobile payment in Africa, cannot be denied In just few months,

M-Pesa boasted a million users Today, the application claims 30 million regular users in the world, including 18 million in Kenya (70% of the country’s adult population) In 10 years, M-Pesa has transformed the Kenyan economy with fast, more secure and, above all, traceable transactions A study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that 2% of Kenya has come out of poverty thanks to microcredit supported by mobile phones According to Safaricom, the platform has allowed the generation of about 860,000 jobs and approximately $1 billion of economic activity The director

of the company claims to have contributed to a rise of 6.5% in Kenya’s GDP M-Pesa used the problem to invent the solution

In 2016, 88% of the population owned a mobile phone (38 million users out of a total population of 43 million inhabitants)1 In comparison, in France, only 8% of smartphone users made m-payments in 20152 The Kenyan phone operator Safaricom made a simple observation: the difficulty faced by city-based populations when sending money to their families who remained in the countryside, in a country where less than 10% of the population has a bank account

The operator then put in place a system allowing its subscribers to send money to each other, both easily and quickly After 10 years, transactions by mobile represent almost half of Kenyan GDP, and more than 90% of the population have an account on the M-Pesa mobile payment platform The latter has also been exported to about 50 countries around the world M-Pesa has crashed through the glass ceiling imposed by banks By taking advantage

of M-Pesa, millions of Kenyans have access to a digital bank while bypassing traditional banking institutions Their telephone number becomes their bank account access, and their mobile phone becomes a virtual safe (Abdelkrim 2017)

Every day, M-Pesa executes more microtransactions than the global money-transfer giant Western Union, although the latter employs more than half a million agents all over the world M-Pesa has also moved into other

1 Kenyan Wall Street (2016) Kenya’s mobile penetration hits 88% to 38 million users Available at: http://kenyanwallstreet.com/kenyas-mobile-penetration-hits-88-to-38-million- users

2 Deloitte (2015) Usage mobiles 2015 A game of phones Available

at:http://www2.deloitte.com/fr/fr/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/ usages-mobiles-2015.html

territories, including Tanzania, Rwanda, the Republic of the Congo, India, Afghanistan, Romania, etc It reminds us that problems are also opportunities to create value It is demand on the ground that creates the market, and not the reverse

As well as banking, mobile technology has transformed insurance and the agricultural world The Tanzanian start-up Jamiihas developed a system of health microinsurance aimed at those living in poverty, which allows the user to pay only for what they use, and thus avoid often prohibitive costs

M-Farm, an application launched in Kenya, provides farmers real-time access to details of retail prices for their products, thus becoming better informed during negotiations with potential buyers

The African continent is particularly plagued by the scourge of counterfeiting The World Health Organization estimates that in some countries on the continent, more than 30% of medications sold are affected and a figure of 100,000 deaths per year has been suggested Created in 2007, the Ghanaian company M-Pedigree gives its consumers the ability to check the authenticity of a medication Operating in five countries in English-speaking Africa, this method consists of the consumer sending an SMS to M-Pedigree containing the code featured on the label of the box of medication that they wish to buy

The company performs a verification and returns a message to the consumer to let them know the medication’s authenticity, or otherwise This system of verification is free of charge and now accessible to more than

205 million people on the continent Every month, more than a million requests are sent to the M-Pedigree platform It has already authenticated more than 500 million boxes of medication This service is truly innovative because it sets quality criteria for the entire logistic chain At the same time, M-Pedigree helps the owners of trademarks, consumers and governments It also provides security for spare parts for automobiles as well as agro-food products

M-Kopa, M-Pesa and M-Pedigree are models for African entrepreneurs who recognize the possibility of building world-class firms, unicorns, in Africa, with Africans

Jumia may be interesting, in this regard, as it is sometimes called the

“first African unicorn” Jumia specializes in services and online sales It

combines services, applications, an e-commerce site, a marketplace, a hotel reservation site, a site for small ads and food delivery Jumia is the fourth most visited website behind Facebook, Google and YouTube Jumia responds to Africans’ needs via the Internet It mainly targets the middle class, which is experiencing a considerable boom: currently comprising

375 million people, it should grow to 1.5 billion by 2030

E-commerce in Africa may experience a surge to $50 billion by 2018, according to forecasts from Deloitte3 These firms are something other than

a kind of American or European clone They do not follow the mapped-out trails, but walk nimbly on the paths they have chosen themselves They show that Africa can have the right to development without first passing through a phase of heavy industrialization They demonstrate that Africans are capable

of being agile in responding to the challenges imposed upon them (Dia 1996;

Rivera-Santos et al 2015)

What is considered a given in Europe or the United States does not exist for Africa, or only in a very problematic way: electricity, transport, education, health, security and so on They indicate that good practices and other models of management also come from the South, and not exclusively from the east coast of the United States Certainly, these exponential organizations have many similarities with their international counterparts, but they have some characteristics that are more linked to the contexts in which they evolve: frugal innovation, leapfrogging, effectuation and anti-fragility, and the dynamic rootedness of youth in territories, which are still enchanted

African exponential organizations promote the emergence of products and services “made & designed in Africa” By accessing 4G networks and digital services, the 4Ms show that they are “leapfrogging”, jumping over

60 years of telecommunications technology based on copper wire In fact, they directly access the latest technologies without having to pass through intermediate stages, jumping over multiple levels of development at once The example of M-Pesa is staggering No bank in the world has ever succeeded in giving bank access to 22 million individuals, or 50% of Kenya,

in less than 8 years How many banking agencies would need to be set up to achieve this goal?

3 Deloitte (2015) Africa: A 21st Century View

These disruptive innovations provoke new habits of consumption and use, leading to the creation of a new, radically different market They are based on ecosystem intelligence According to Ron Adner (2006), this is involved in the reduction of risks by means of identifying opportunities and partners Products and services are designed according to the specific needs

of populations Ecosystem intelligence refers to this capacity to grasp the unique economic, social and technological context of African markets This

is a visceral understanding of consumers, whose habits, relationship to technology and perceptions of social status are specific Ecosystem intelligence is supplemented by a form of “smart power”, which refers to an ingenious and astute intelligence (Clerc 2014)

We must associate the frog’s leap with another image; the run of the leopard, an opportunistic hunter who knows how to crystallize its energy and mobilize its efforts with minimum waste Here, the notions of frugality and agility are essential

The theoreticians of the “frugal” economy, Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu (2015), promote a new approach to innovation consisting of doing more, or better, with less means and at lower costs, aiming at accessibility for the greatest number of people Frugal innovation has the corollary of ingenuity Frugal innovation allows us to economize on means and develop global solutions This notion of frugality is central for African organizations However, it is not natural for Northern firms that are used to designing with sizeable financial and technological means Frugal innovation promotes inverted innovation, which consists of designing products and services in and for emerging countries, and then selling them in developed countries

(Govindarajan and Ravi 2011)

Stimulated by innovation, Africa is experiencing a decisive transformation By promoting access to ideas, knowledge and technologies, the digital revolution has served as a catalyst for innovation in Africa This movement goes beyond technological leapfrogging Africa is not a continent seeking to “catch up” via innovation It invents its own model, finding pragmatic and innovative solutions to its own challenges of development and growth, by using different levers including agility in particular

African firms, or firms established in Africa, must be agile because it is a question of urgency and survival In a field that is simultaneously complex and experimental, knowing how to pivot, adapt and become adopted is an

extremely vital approach Winston Churchill said: “We must take change by the hand or rest assuredly, change will take us by the throat” In Africa, users repurpose the things they are offered, redefine them and consume them in their own way Adapting, reformulating, refreshing, listening to needs, learning about consumption, understanding habits and defining unsuspected desires are the principles for living and existing in Africa

It is very difficult to plan and predict in Africa Most offices for research and advice on planning and perspectives produce studies on Africa, however, the day before the publication of their studies and inquiries, the needs of Africans have changed in the meantime! This tunneling effect has a cost Hence the interest in experimentation with frugal approaches and initiatives

In Africa, people live by the rhythm of uncertainty and instability Promoting the agile approach means reconciling Africa, the customer and the firm with productivity in the broad sense Knowing how to adapt to the African market is a means to facilitate social change Agility is at the heart

of the chain of Africa’s innovation program (Youzan 2016) Nearly 70% of employees in Africa are ready to leave their firm if it is not favorable to innovation and “intrapreneurship” Innovation is a strategic priority for a growing number of firms established in Africa, who rarely have the necessary internal resources and agility to transform themselves Inspired by outside successes without seeking to copy them, and adapting to local realities to generate new projects, innovative African entrepreneurs contribute to the invention of new models Some companies rely on the innovation potential of their employees It is now up to firms to get involved

in this kind of approach, so as to respond to the local needs of the market and

to create an agile culture, which will help them to reinvent their business model

Agility fits into the logics of learning (Ingvaldsen 2015; Kayes 2015) and

of change readiness (Holt and Vardaman 2013), not only at the individual

level but also at the organizational level (Rafferty et al 2013) In fact,

change readiness plays all the more central a role in the success of change (Kotter and Schlesinger 2008) in ensuring that the change does not always result in a rupture In that case, it involves learning permanent change

In fact, Caldwell (2013) emphasizes that “what is striking for employees

is not an organizational change but rather a changing organization”

In this context, Autissier et al (2010) offer a means to measure firms’

capacity for change They distinguish four poles: methods and resources, practices, obtaining results and actors In the context of our research, we propose studying more specifically the behavior of actors In fact, the success of change largely depends on the goodwill of employees

Research on organizational agility and agile management has been carried out by several researchers However, few of these works mention agile behaviors in a hypermodern context marked by many changes Agility concerns strategic populations like promising young graduates, established managers, specialist workers or executive directors It is essential to the performance of firms

Firms expect from their talents a heightened capacity for decision-making and action in new and urgent situations This means agility in the face of exogenous events The behaviors valued by the organization in a dynamic context are the development of new skills, creativity, knowing how to interact with others and adaptation to new contexts These agile behaviors are considered crucial in reaching the organization’s goals In the managerial literature, these behaviors are grouped under the name of adaptive and contextual performance (Charbonnier-Voirin 2013) Adaptive performance corresponds to the aptitude of a person to modify their behaviors to adapt to

a given environment Contextual performance refers to behaviors that contribute to organizational effectiveness by their effects on the psychological, social and organizational context of work These performances therefore refer to behaviors valued and expected by the company Developing agile behaviors thus conditions the competitiveness of enterprises It thus seems essential to know their determinants

The study of organizational change has progressively developed in the

form of five successive paradigms (Autissier et al 2015) Armenakis and

Bedeian (1999) highlighted the emergence of a new paradigm in which change is based on developing the change-readiness of actors through

experiential processes Rogers (1969) speaks of experiential learning, which

corresponds to learning by practice

Experiential processes may allow us to understand and respond to the concerns of employees faced with changes Permanent change induces a certain agility among employees Faced with organizational change, the employees must face new challenges and develop their capacities for learning and adaptation to sophisticated technologies, for example We believe that agile behaviors involve: a capacity to easily and quickly adjust

to new events and to make decisions despite the uncertainty and ambiguity inherent in these situations; a capacity to react to avoid a danger, a crisis situation, or to deal with urgencies in an appropriate manner; a capacity to find solutions and to develop creative approaches when faced with atypical

or complex situations; a proactive capacity with regard to personal development; a capacity to adjust interpersonal and intercultural behaviors; a capacity to work in difficult environments and a capacity to have extra-role behaviors Our conception of agile behavior is a construct that includes adaptive performance and contextual performance

Studies of adaptive performance also represent significant advances in the field of work performance Hesketh and Neal (1999) are the first to refer to adaptive performance, which they define as the capacity of individuals to adapt to dynamic work situations A person develops their adaptive performance by adjusting their behaviors to the demands of work situations

and new events (Pulakos et al 2000) Johnson (2001) defines adaptive

performance as the ability of a person to modify their behavior so as to adapt

to a new environment or to a given situation This involves the capacity of employees to show creativity, continuous learning and management of unforeseen or urgent situations, while also showing interpersonal adaptability (Charbonnier-Voirin 2013)

Contextual performance allows us to expand the assessment of agility beyond the adaptation and reactivity of employees Contextual performance involves promoting individual behaviors, which contribute to organizational effectiveness by their effects on the psychological, social and organizational context of work Being agile thus also means improving the social and organizational context of work Borman and Motowidlo (1997) suggested the first conceptualization of contextual performance They distinguished five dimensions: (1) persisting with enthusiasm and deploying efforts to complete one’s tasks with success; (2) voluntarily engaging with tasks and activities that are not formally part of one’s work; (3) helping and cooperating with others; (4) following organizational rules and procedures

and (5) sincerely approving, defending and supporting organizational objectives

Contextual performance thus corresponds to off-role behaviors – behaviours which are not listed in the job description Thus, agile behaviors imply an interest in learning, accomplishment, development and social affiliation Agile behaviors and allowing flexibility to actors so they may adapt to changes are part of these neglected dimensions Actors in development will, at the same time, have to use ever-increasing masses of data to compare them with each other and to draw adequate lessons from them

In this context, Abdelmalek Alaoui (2015)4 proposes an analytical grid in the form of an “economic and political transformation matrix”, crossing the axis of strategic agility, taking into account governance and the ability to lead change, with a “strengths and weaknesses” axis that measures the level

of development reached by different African countries on the basis of an aggregation of subindices (demography and urbanization, energy and infrastructure, human capital and innovation, financing growth and economic integration)

By combining these dimensions, and by putting them into perspective, we can identify four groups of countries that have different issues:

– African achievers, who are in the higher quadrant of the matrix, with

both an (already) high level of development and significant strategic agility;

– future gems, who are still at the bottom of the development scale, but

who have remarkable strategic agility, generally associated with enlightened political leadership These countries may serve as examples for the following two groups;

– sleeping beauties, who have relatively good development indicators,

but who are lagging behind in the field of strategic agility due to institutions that do not promote economic and political inclusivity These countries exploit their natural resources and do not sufficiently exploit their potential;

– African laggards, who suffer from many problems including both

serious governance problems and chronic political conflicts resulting in

4 Alaoui, A (2015) L’Afrique en quête d’agilité stratégique: état des lieux et scénarios

Mazars

low-level of strategic agility, and a lag in terms of socio-economic development

Frugality and agility mean giving power back to creativity by breaking free from cumbersome structures This is encouraged by the digital revolution, which has democratized access to knowledge and shifted the power of innovation away from professionals towards the masses The Millennials have understood this Their motto could be: “I create, therefore I am.” Frugal innovation is first of all a matter of people: human ingenuity and audacity are its engine, not computer code or robots

2.2 Rebel talents and serial learners in dynamic rootedness

The African unicorns have been able to develop their capacities to learn and deeply change their model of learning This involves a transformation of employees in their day-to-day relationship with their professional activity, with knowledge and with continuous adjustment of their skills to contexts The success of this development is strictly linked to collective intelligence and the agility of the whole organization This new kind of talent has a

name: the serial learner Such a person possesses the capacity to train

themselves and to learn, breaking out of the marked-out project areas set up

by the company The serial learner is active in the development of their employability They are attentive to developments affecting their career and anticipate new skills to develop The learner is active and does not undergo training To be a good serial learner, one must develop five qualities: proactivity, sociability, the capacity to learn, a sense of sharing and pragmatism

In the digitalized economy, it is essential to create the conditions for everyone to learn faster than their competitor The question is no longer know “what I must learn”, but “how I can put myself into a dynamic of permanent learning”? And one of the most promising paths seems to be training on a daily basis To make one’s employees serial learners is to help them to develop their skills and thus to ensure sustainable employability Learning becomes continuous, collaborative and informal Serial learning affects the three forms of learning: learning by experience, by collaborative work and finally through formal training It allows organizations to respond

in a much more efficient way to the challenges of their environment and their markets