Please find a special invitation to the launch of the Regional Innovation Forum & Science Park scheduled for 4 June 2012 below:

Regional Innovation Forum Invitation click to open the invitation

Launch Regional Innovation Forum RSVP click to RSVP

Kind regards,

Rynette Coetzer | Senior Administrator: Prof DJ de Beer | Technology Transfer and Innovation

Tel:+27(0)16 950 9325 | Fax2Email: +27(0)86 565 3301 | Cell:+27(0)83 379 5616 |  Email: rynettec@vut.ac.za | Website: www.vut.ac.za

THE 34TH ANNUAL LOERIE AWARDS

VIVA AFRICAN CREATIVITY. VIVA!

The Loerie Awards aims to recognise, reward and foster creative excellence in all areas of brand communication. The awards sets a benchmark for the best creative communication from the African and Middle Eastern region, with the core message that Creativity is Business. Here is where you can find out more about entering the Loeries, including the entry criteria, categories and fees, to the judging procedure and the award ceremonies in Cape Town (21 – 23 September 2012).

New this year: A new category to encourage entries from outside South Africa – Rest of Africa & the Middle East. As well as a new TV Craft category for the Best Use of Music, plus split Digital Crafts, including Interface & Navigation, Animation, Illustration & Graphic Design, Music & Sound Design, Writing, and Photography. The deadline for entering The 34th Annual Loerie Awards is 31 May 2012 – don’t forget, you can save 5% on entry fees by sending us your work by 16 April.

The Loerie Awards encompass all areas of brand communication including television, radio and print, communication design (including brand identity, architecture & interior design, package & publication design, motion graphic design), direct marketing, PR Communication, non-broadcast video, live events, sponsorship, digital communication and integrated campaigns.

The Ubuntu Award was launched in 2010 to recognise brands contributing to social and environmental change.

The awards are regionally focused on Africa and the Middle East, and entries from outside of this region are not eligible.

Recognised as the most prestigious award in our region, ‘the Loeries’ has become far more than a single awards ceremony and now includes several activities promoting creative excellence throughout the year, such as the Travelling Exhibition, Migrate magazine, seminars, and the hard-cover printed Annual the ultimate historic stamp of whos who of the years leading brands and agencies.
THE BACKGROUND

The Loerie Awards were first held in 1978, as a mechanism to support and grow television advertising. Since then the awards have expanded to encompass every area of brand communication including radio and print, design, architecture, direct marketing, non-broadcast video, live events, and digital media. The awards are now regionally focused on Africa and the Middle East, and only entries from this region are eligible.

The Loeries has become far more than a single awards ceremony – since 2005 it has grown to incorporate activities throughout the calendar year to promote creative excellence, including Migrate (our own award-winning magazine) and the hard-cover printed annual and DVD. The Loeries official rankings tables are published in the Annual and include the top 10 brands, agencies and production companies, as well as a breakdown by category and size. Also included are the individual creative rankings all contributing to making this book an essential tool for anyone involved in the brand communication industry. The Annual is available from our online store, as well as from Exclusive Books and Pulp Books.

Additionally, the Travelling Exhibition showcases the years winning work and has travelled throughout South Africa, including educational institutions, corporate headquarters, festivals and museum’s – as well as international destinations including Namibia, Botswana, Russia and the One Club in New York.

In 2008, the CreativeFuture scholarship was launched, offering talented high school pupils from a disadvantaged background the opportunity to further their studies. There are currently two students in the programme and one student who has subsequently been employed by Draftfcb Durban.

The Loerie Awards stands by its founding values – the association is all about recognising, rewarding and fostering creative excellence. Our role is to promote creativity and innvoation as primary business tools in the brand communication industry. The Loerie Awards is a Section 21 association. This means it’s a non-profit organisation serving the best interests of the industry; so all funding goes right back into the industry to be put towards promoting the industry and nurturing potential creatives, especially in disadvantaged communities.

The Loerie Awards is internationally recognised and is the only award endorsed by the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA), the Creative Circle (CC), the Brand Design Council (BDC), the Commercial Producers Association (CPA), the South African Institute of the Interior Design Professions (IID), and the Public Relations Institute of South Africa (PRISA).

Outlined as on of the premium innovation events in South Africa, the Innovation Summit is back with the exciting theme:  Leading Innovation, Africa’s Competitive Edge.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________58 Speakers, 12 Keynotes, 3 Sensory Workshops, 42 Breakout sessions

What is NEW at this year’s Summit?

• The ‘Greener’ Innovation Lab

A professionally curated interactive space, designed by industry experts and featuring food, installation art, architecture and the latest in high tech inventions.

One of the key functions of the Innovation Lab design is the facilitation of enterprise matchmaking. The Lab has been specifically structured to bring entrepreneurs together with technology providers, funders and government agencies.

The Lab’s innovative architecture has been developed to showcase the possibilities of sustainable design, as well as the experiences and ideas of all participants.

The Lab’s aesthetic is friendly, organic and purposefully wooden. The exhibition spaces will be built with wooden pallets, which provide the perfect contrast to the surrounding marble floors and steel.

Innovation Lab – Highlights

Technology matchmaking -  inventors pitch to a panel of experts
Showcasing – sponsors and partners show, tell and explain
Gurus and Giants – meet and greet the innovation Celebrities of South Africa
Extend your reach – interact beyond your boundaries

• A focus on YOUTH

- Workshops and experiential sessions targeted at the South African youth and focusing on entrepreneurship and funding.

The 28^th of August is youth day at the Innovation Lab. Aside from the participation of young enterprises, which ranges across the three day event, Youth Day will see the arrival of specific youth groups, including school tours. These groups will take part in the general Innovation Lab experience, as well as in specifically designed workshop and facilitation programmes.

• ZERO-Carbon Footprint Event

The Innovation Summit  is contributing R100 per delegate to Food and Trees for Africa to reduce the carbon footprint of the event and to plant bamboo’s in impoverished areas in South Africa.

The Innovation Summit will also include:

Pre-summit workshops, keynote presentations, facilitated experiential workshops, deep dive content workshops, networking (connectworking), experiential breakout sessions, compelling thought leader panels, pioneering thinkers & facilitators, Innovation Lab, ‘teenpreneur’ workshops and more!

You don’t want to miss this one! Bring your  senior managers for real impact.

Click Here to Register for the summit

Interested in becoming a sponsor? E-mail marketing@innovationsummit.co.za

For more information on bookings, rates and content, see the document below.

innovation-summit-info-doc

One of the benefits of being a SAINe member is 15% discount when attending the Innovation Summit, for those who are not members the early bird discount end 30 June – don’t wait until the last minute, REGISTER NOW.

Website: www.innovationsummit.co.za

Twitter: @SA_Innovate

According to the South African organisations surveyed, the greatest innovation enablers in their environments were:

• senior management support,
• supportive organisational cultures,
• empowerment in support of innovation,
• the resources internally available and
• recognition of innovation efforts.

Most respondents further agreed that although these enablers were present in their environments it could receive better attention and be leveraged to a greater extent while innovation is often “talked about but rarely walked…..”. Is this the case?

1. What do you view as the greatest enablers of innovation in your organisation?

2. Is innovation something that is prized (often talked about) but not sufficiently addressed (put into action)?

If you are interested in a copy of the report “ Organisational Innovation Management Approaches in South Africa” please email me at henra@innocentrix.co.za

Henra Mayer Biography

Henra Mayer is CEO of Innocentrix. The company specialises in providing innovation management services to organisations. Years of innovation management experience and an intense desire to see innovation deliver the results it should, acted as inspiration for out of the ordinary, contextually relevant solutions that demonstrate the value of innovation in the environment of the organisation. Henra often acts as judge at Innovation competitions and is passionate about the management and measurement of innovation in the organisation.

Henra completed her first degree at the University of Pretoria and then the Programme in Business Leadership (PBL) as well as the Masters Degree in Business Leadership (MBL) through Unisa. Her Master’s Research Report was entitled “Radical Innovation – Gearing for the Future through Corporate Renewal”, which she obtained with distinction.

Henra regularly contributes articles to innovation related publications and research journals. Henra can be contacted on:
E-mail: henra@innocentrix.co.za
Mobile: 082 323 7447
Office: 012 844–0084

AGRICULTURAL BUSINESS CHAMBER (ABC)

Why do some nations prosper while others struggle? Businesspeople, policymakers, and social scientists have sought to answer that question for centuries, starting as early as 1776, when Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. A closely related question is, Why are some nations more innovative than others? Innovation is increasingly seen as the key to unlocking competitive advantage, as much for countries as for companies. Comparing innovation on a nation-by-nation basis, however, is fraught with difficulty, given the diversity of national business practices, economic structures, and financial and economic reporting conventions.
Resolving these difficulties is the main objective of the Global Innovation Index (GII), a research project conducted by INSEAD in
partnership with Alcatel-Lucent, Booz & Company, the Confederation of Indian Industry, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (a specialized agency of the United Nations). The research measures innovativeness for 125 economies.
This year’s report (available at www.globalinnovationindex.org) ranked Switzerland as the world’s most innovative nation, followed by Sweden, Singapore, Hong Kong (SAR), Finland, and Denmark — and the U.S., in seventh place. The GII complements, at the country level, the work that Booz & Company’s own Global Innovation 1000 study has undertaken for the past seven years at the company level. (See “The Global Innovation 1000: Why Culture Is Key,” by Barry Jaruzelski, John Loehr, and Richard Holman, s+b, Winter 2011.)

Soumitra Dutta, the study’s primary author, is the Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Business and Technology and the founder and academic director of INSEAD’s eLab, which focuses on the digital economy. His current research is on technology strategy and innovation at both the corporate and national policy levels. Dutta discussed some of the GII’sfindings with strategy+business in September 2011.

Download the full document HERE

Give your opinion, leave a comment below.

The reflexive response is that it is a human capital problem — that is, that most people just don’t have what it takes to successfully innovate. I reject that view. Academic research in fact shows that almost anyone can become a competent innovator (with sufficient practice). I’ve seen countless examples of ordinary individuals displaying the creativity, ingenuity, and perseverance of the world’s great innovators.

Those people can only be effective in the right context, but, ironically, many of the things leaders do to encourage innovation actually kill it. Look carefully at your company and you might spot one of four types of unintentional innovation assassins.

1. The Cowboy. Itching to create a corporate culture tolerant of creativity and innovation, the Cowboy says something along the lines of, “No boundaries! Just great ideas!” Of course, companies should continually evaluate and push their boundaries. But every company has a set of things it simply will not do. Saying innovation has no bounds when it does just leads people to waste time working on ideas that — honestly — have no hope of ever being commercialized.

Instead, consider issuing highly-focused challenges. For example, a few years ago Netflix offered a $1 million prize to any team that could improve the performance of the algorithms that determine which movies it should suggest to consumers by at least 10%. More than 250 teams rose to the challenge, and two actually exceeded the target. Focus is one of innovation’s best friends.

2. The Googlephile. Inspired by stories of how Google and 3M ask engineers to spend 15% of their time dreaming of new ideas, this executive asks everybody to spend a bit of time on innovation. Maybe carve off a half-day during the third Friday of the month for everyone to focus on innovation.This approach feels participatory and inclusive. But it rarely works, unless the company has sophisticated systems to select and nurture ideas. Too frequently these efforts lead to a long list of suggestions that never get implemented. Cynicism takes hold quickly, and more and more employees find excuses to miss Innovation Friday.

As an alternative, executives should ask a small number of people to spend a significant amount of time on innovation. Remember, most start-ups fail — even with entrepreneurs spending every minute of every day obsessively focusing on their business. One person spending all of his or her time on innovation often trumps 1,000 spending 10% of their time on it. The math doesn’t work — except for when it does.

3. The Astronaut. This executive invokes the United States’ ultimately successful effort to put a man on the moon by urging, “We need something big, people! What is our moon shot?” It’s great to think big, of course, but pushing for big ideas often leads to proposals with sink-the-company risk (remember Motorola’s Iridium?). That risk means that the idea must be carefully studied, and since it hasn’t been done before, it probably won’t withstand analytical scrutiny. The push-for-moon shots too often mean innovation efforts never even get to the launch pad.

Instead of shooting for the moon, executives should encourage what author Peter Sims calls “little bets.” Academics and entrepreneurs agree that the very best ideas emerge out of a process of trial-and-error experimentation. Hang up posters of Thomas Edison with his famous line, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Start sweating.

4. The Pirate. This swashbuckler says, “We don’t have a fixed budget for innovation — but we don’t need one. We find the money when we need it.” While that statement sounds entrepreneurial, it can make the innovator’s life a nightmare because it signals a lack of clear rules for obtaining resources.This often means endless meetings with a varying cast of stakeholders. No one quite says yes, and no one quite says no, either.

The best companies manage innovation in a disciplined manner. They have dedicated budgets for it, with clear rules for how to obtain funding. While many leaders think this kind of disciplined approach is anathema to innovation, it actually enables it. During a memorable discussion a few years ago, former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley put it well (PDF)when describing his company’s innovation process: “The important thing about the process is that you follow it.”

The good news? Since unintentional innovation assassins are easy to identify, they are also easy to disarm. Constrain the Cowboy, bound the Googlephile, ground the Astronaut, and make the Pirate walk the plank — and watch innovation efforts soar.

Scott Anthony

Scott leads Innosight’s Asian operations. His fourth book on innovation, The Little Black Book of Innovation, is now available (HBR Press, January 2012). Follow him on Twitter at @ScottDAnthony.

source: http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2012/04/the_four_worst_innovation_assa.html?awid=8548948136041588743-3271

It is best to start off by defining local economic development. In South Africa, Local Economic Development (LED) is often taken to refer to social participation, income-generating activities, local political leadership, human capital investment, and redistributive wealth mechanisms that retain and expand local economic activities. According to SALGA guidelines, local economic development must aim to create jobs by making the local economy grow.  The key drivers of local economic development are therefore defined as alleviating poverty, boosting global trade and wealth creation for the region.

Innovation can be defined as the improvement of existing or the creation of entirely new products, processes, services, and business or organizational models— and drives long term economic growth and quality-of-life improvements in regions.

When attempting to address poverty alleviation, there is no way but to address innovation strategies for serving the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ market. The ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ is a global socioeconomic concept that refers to the demographic group of approximately 2 billion poor people around the world, who survive on 2 dollars or less a day. The ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ has become the common denominator for a relatively new and booming field of innovation projects and business ventures aimed at developing profitable and sustainable new markets. In South Africa, local municipalities are the ones faced with the challenge of serving this demographic group while trying to build their regions as economically competitive.

When trying to address innovation in a local government setting, the question that seems to come up is – communities have obvious needs such as clean water, electricity, food and means of income, why should municipalities invest in innovation programmes over addressing these needs? It is therefore important to emphasize the importance of innovation in addressing these community needs by developing services, products and business models that are culturally and socially useful to the people while understanding their local needs. It is therefore a role of innovation practitioners and developers to take efforts in educating and empowering local municipalities about innovation and its role in local economic development.

Governments across the globe, and regional governance institutions such as the European Union, have adopted strategies and measures to be active participants in facilitating the evolution of knowledge economies through innovation. Regions seek to foster more innovation for three primary reasons. First, innovation helps regions realize an economy characterized by a consistently improving standard of living, which can only be achieved by continuously increasing productivity levels. Second, regions seek innovation to boost the competitiveness of their traded sectors in international markets, leading to increased exports and better terms of trade. Finally, they look to leverage innovation in order to continually develop new and more effective ways of meeting societal and business needs.

South African government through the Department of Science & Technology has put in place excellent policies and strategies to foster and support innovation, however this are only in place at a national level. Some provinces including Gauteng, Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Kwazulu Natal are also developing their own regional innovation strategies. The time has now come for focusing on local government and the role they can play in using innovation to develop themselves as economically competitive regions.

About Jeanette Morwane

BIO

Jeanette has experience in the science & technology sector mainly working for The Innovation Hub. The work involved development of regional innovation systems programmes, including the Activator programme (a triple-helix collaboration programme) and Tshwane Smart City Project. She was also part of a consulting team between The Innovation Hub & Technolopolis Plc. (a Finnish Science Park) to develop a business plan for the creation of Botswana Innovation Hub in 2006. She was also involved in facilitation of training workshops on science park development for the Department. of Science & Technology with officials from other African countries such as Botswana, Ghana, Senegal, Namibia, Swaziland, etc. Jeanette also worked for the Free State Investment Promotion Agency mainly assisting the Free State Provincial Government in the establishment of an information and communications technology sector.

In the course of her career, she gained invaluable experience, knowledge & skills in the fields of innovation systems development, international collaboration, innovation strategy development, financial management, SA’s research and development environment, governmental strategies & processes, HR transformation issues & communications & marketing of projects. She also has strengths in enabling partnerships between business & academia, development of clear mechanisms for promoting regional technology development, transfer and the building of regional technology capabilities, development and facilitation of active innovation forum with academia as well a public and private sector participation.

Jeanette is currently a founder and managing director of InnoSpark Consulting which provide advisory and project management services for demanding innovation systems and economic development projects.

Ms. Jeanette Morwane – Managing Director, InnoSpark Consulting

BA (Information Sciences) – University of Pretoria, MBA (University of South Africa)

Tel: (012) 348 5088

Cell: 076 689 8939

Email: jeanette@innospark.co.za

Website: www.innospark.co.za

Can games change the way we think about the future? From April 3-5, (starting this afternoon 16:00 GMT – that’s 18:00 SA time), the Rockefeller Foundation will be holding a global public online game, called Catalysts for Change, to identify a thousand new paths out of poverty in just 48 hours of gameplay with hundreds of players from all walks of life. The game is open to everyone, anywhere in the world. See an explanation, and register to play here http://play.catalyze4change.org/ or otherwise follow the game on Twitter (@catalyze4change) and on Facebook.’

The game is also a way of utilising all the horizon scanning material and experience that the Rockefeller Foundation has built up through its Searchlight Project – that ‘weak signal’ identification work that I’m always on about. So this promises to be an interesting one.

Tanja Hichert will be a ‘game guide’ online for the next two days and certainly hope to ‘see’ some of you there. Please forward this note to those that you think may be interested.

Greetings and regards

Tanja

Tanja Hichert
Scenario Planner & facilitator of strategic conversations

Hichert & Associates (Pty) Ltd. Institute for Futures Research
Tel: +27 (0)21 855 5839 Tel: +27 (0)21 918 4152
Cell: +27 (0)82 576 6429 Fax: +27(0)21 918 4146
e-mail: Tanja@hichert.co.za e-mail: Tanja@ifr.sun.ac.za
www.hichert.co.za www.ifr.sun.ac.za

posted on linked in by Itha Taljaard

January
New Members registrations and renewal of memberships

24 February
Breakfast Event in JHB

14 March
Breakfast Event in Cape Town

22 June
Breakfast Event

28,29,30 August
The 5th Innovation Summit – 10% discount to all SAINe members

28 September
Breakfast event

16 November
Breakfast event

Remember to put
these in your diary!

www.twitter/saine_SA

The South African Innovation Network (SAINe) is a non-profit network providing a neutral platform for activating the multi-helix principle in Southern Africa where government, academia, industry and society come together and collaborate to find new solutions, innovate and generate value. SAINe therefore works to enhance and promote the innovation climate in South Africa.
SAINe intends building a community of innovation practitioners to focus on the development of a South African National System of Innovation for economic and social benefit with positive influences spilling over to neighbouring countries; create a platform for SAINe leaders of Innovation to be used as an instrument to lobby support and understanding of the importance of dedicated activities to grow a culture of innovation in South Africa and create, share, disseminate and celebrate knowledge in the subject of “Innovation Management” in Southern Africa.
SAINe aims to achieve this by creating and cultivating an innovation culture in Southern Africa through connecting and mobilizing people and knowledge within the region. Currently, the largest following is in South Africa, but there is a growing body of members from throughout the SADC region and future growth will include nurturing this expansion into SADC.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

HOW SAINe STARTED

Many role players like the SA Innovator magazine and The Research Institute for Innovation and (RIIS) endeavoured to start an innovation network. During the Innovation Systems Leadership Programme piloted by the Cooperation Framework on Innovation Systems between Finland and South Africa (COFISA) participants came up with ideas/ roles and commitment on how to take the main learning points like collaboration and building innovation networks further.
In parallel to the COFISA pilot, the SA Innovator magazine hosted South Africa’s First National Innovation Summit with the theme: “Innovation on Trial”. This summit was used by RIIS, who was one of the content organisers of the event, to survey the need amongst participants for a networking club amongst role players from the academic, government and business sectors. Of the organisations and individuals that were in attendance at the summit, forty-three indicated that they felt a need for an innovation network. The Summit participants also indicated that they wanted the network to be formalised for it to contribute pro-actively to the innovation landscape in South Africa. Suggestions included members funding research projects on innovation, discussion of case studies and innovation lessons learnt, and for best practices in innovation management to be benchmarked.
In due course, SAINe was officially established at a stakeholder meeting on 17 July 2009. The first steering committee meeting was held on 31 July 2009. The SAINe website was launched on 18 August 2009 at the SA Innovation Summit. CLICK HERE to see what is happening at this year’s 5th SA Innovation Summit.

The Lean Startup takes you through a journey – it starts by asking you questions and with every question you answer correctly you progress and earn points. Incorrect answers take you to lessons learnt.

About questions:

About The Lean Startup

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable.  The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.

The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively.  Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.

Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs – in companies of all sizes – a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

Four myths about the Lean Startup

Myth: Lean means cheap. Lean startups try to spend as little money as possible.

Truth: The Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Lean Startups waste less money, because they use a disciplined approach to testing new products and ideas. Lean, when used in the context of lean startup, refers to a process of building companies and products using lean manufacturing principles applied to innovation. That process involves rapid hypothesis testing, validated learning about customers, and a disciplined approach to product development.

Myth: The Lean Startup methodology is only for Web 2.0/internet/consumer software companies.

Truth: The Lean Startup methodology applies to all companies that face uncertainty about what customers will want. This is true regardless of industry or even scale of company: many large companies depend on their ability to create disruptive innovation. Those general managers are entrepreneurs, too. And they can benefit from the speed and discipline of starting with a minimum viable product and then learning and iterating continuously.

Myth: Lean Startups are small bootstrapped startups.

Truth: There’s nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are able to deploy large amounts of capital. What differentiates them is their disciplined approach to determining when to spend money: after the fundamental elements of the business model have been empirically validated. Because lean startups focus on validating their riskiest assumptions first, they sometimes charge money for their product from day one – but not always.

Myth: Lean Startups replace vision with data or customer feedback.

Truth: Lean Startups are driven by a compelling vision, and they are rigorous about testing each element of this vision against reality. They use customer development, split-testing, and actionable analytics as vehicles for learning about how to make their vision successful. But they do not blindly do what customers tell them, nor do they mechanically attempt to optimize numbers. Along the way, they pivot away from the elements of the vision that are delusional and double-down on the elements that show promise.

To order the book ‘The Lean Startup’ or to read more click here

RIIS is one of the founding members of SAINe.

To find out more about RIIS go to www.riis.co.za

SAINe is the natural platform for innovation in Southern Africa and strives to be the go-to place for innovation articles and conversations.

ARE YOU PART OF THIS PLATFORM??

SAINe needs your ongoing support and involvement – please do not hesitate to leave comments and send suggestions for articles on the site. We need your collaboration to keep this innovation community alive.

Become a thought leader, send articles and case studies, become involved! Share! Collaborate! Network!

Please click on the link below to download the latest Newsletter:

SAINe Newsletter 2 March 2012

If you are not yet following us on Twitter, here is the handle: @SAINE_SA

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor please contact info@saine.co.za

Thank you for the ongoing support from our members.

Keep Innovating!

Linda Swart

National Coordinator

SAINe

Industry often expresses concern about the serious gap between FET College education output and the skills need of industry. As technology advances the gap will continue to increase and speculations about it will continue. Little has been done to address the problem thus far.

Two unique pilot projects where industry and government seek to make a difference, are addressing the alleged disconnect head on.

The South African Oil and Gas Alliance (SAOGA) in partnership with the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDAT), the City of Cape Town, participating FET Colleges and Industry, is in the process of completing two innovative skills development projects that will see the gap between FET College education and industry skills needs narrowing.

At two distinct levels the SAOGA lead FET College Lecturer – Occupational Trainer development and the FET College trainee bridging pilot projects will not only provide useful information about bridging the skills gap between industry and FET colleges, it also aim at developing models for helping to bridge the divide between the FET College sector and industry. In addition to this the pilot projects are making a difference by providing training practitioners and trainees the opportunity to gain experiential exposure to industry.

The SAOGA FET College – industry trainee bridging pilot project

The SAOGA FET College- industry bridging pilot project makes use of the services of industry member company, JTK Academy to provide practical training to 10 trainees. Trainees are working in industry while they are learning to operate in a high tech industry environment. How is this project different? Individual mentoring and coaching help trainees to gain confidence in working with machinery and equipment in the Oil and Gas industry. The progress of trainees are carefully monitored and recorded, in order to assist with doing a gap analysis between FET output and industry requirements.

For most of the trainees this is a first experience working with the ‘tools of their trade’. You can see them beam with excitement. ‘We participate in several other work placement initiatives in our sector, where industry generously hosts FET trainees for workplace experience.
What is different with this project is that it provides us with the opportunity to measure and write up the gaps more accurately, with the intention to develop programmes to address it more appropriately and to provide feedback to training institutions; says the SAOGA Skills Office Manager. ‘We could not have done this without partnering with the different stakeholders’; he says. SAOGA is passionate about developing world class artisans to help grow the industry and to work towards bringing back the dignity of the highly skilled qualified artisan.

Below is a photograph of nine of the participating trainees with one of the occupational trainers, Mr Templeton Zozwana who is in the process of completing the SAOGA Occupational training programme (on the left).
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