Safaricom's Innovation Forum Terms & Conditions

In light of this discussion that came up on a local techie-list,Skunkworks, by a blogger,Al Kags, about Safaricom's innovation terms and conditions and I quote word for word about the section that caused a bit of question :

Terms of Idea Submission By Submitting your proposal to Safaricom, you agree:

(a) That the submissions and its contents will automatically become the property of Safaricom, without any compensation whatsoever to you;

(b) That Safaricom may use or redistribute the submissions and their contents for any purpose and in any way;

And the section elicited a lot of replies.But after looking at the situation critically,I came up with a different angle to the whole story.My view is based on a book I have been reading about "The fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" - By C.K Prahalad.He argues that some lessons that come up during "innovation sandbox" is to embrace constraints that become non-negotiables in the development process. In my opinion this are some of the non-negotiables that Safaricom has been having and in return they are able to bring up some very interesting products in the market.I can be biased or termed as a Safaricom sympathizer,but if they never do such things as tying you down the development process of the products will be slow and non-effective.Hence,we wouldn't have had products like bonga points,MPESA and M-KESHO just to mention a few.

Such stringent and "nasty" rules are part of the business, that is now raking the Kenyan Government millions of shillings from taxations and which in return benefits the Kenyans.I think there normally vested interests in each of the businesses we do and capitalism is what earns the company's revenue.They have recently moved into selling domain names at a cheap price and ensuring that using our MPESA you can pay for them.Meaning what,if somebody didn't come up with the set of tough and "non-ethical" rules then innovation would be retarded.As much as I say,there is nothing called fairness especially when it comes to making money,and thats what Safaricom is doing. In the Innovation Sandbox,C.K Prahalad,continues to state that that there are a couple of factors that are contained in it.One of them is mordern technology.Just going by the number of awards Safaricom has been given over the years,it was using a combination of innovation and use of modern technology to push the products to the people at the bottom of the Pyramid,and thats the common mwananchi.If MJ was to be asked where Safaricom's most money comes from is from the innovative products and solutions they bring to the common mwananchi.

In my humble Opinion,I think,such constraints are good and bad depending on how you look at them.Safaricom's CEO Micheal Joseph Gave his right of reply,which was posted on Al Kags Blog,in which he stated that they are trying to find a balance in the innovation area,which I found quite interesting and realistic.Am thinking in-order for a company to survive in this tough and turbulent Economic situations and guard its position as a market leader some,"rules" like this have to come into play.