MTHULISI SIBANDA
JOHANNESBURG – THE name Shaka Zulu is synonymous with one of the most influential monarchs in African history.
The erstwhile king of the Zulu Kingdom in South Africa is lauded for changing the nature of warfare in Southern Africa through a number of innovations.
Shaka, dissatisfied with the long throwing spear, is credited with introducing a short stabbing version with a long, sword-like spearhead.
He introduced a larger, heavier shield made of cowhide to ensure more protection.
His famous bull horn formation was rated as the most effective form of attack during his lifetime (c.1787-1928).
Shaka’s meteoric rise from a foot soldier to an all-conquering warrior and king has been an apt theme to inspire entrepreneurial ventures at the Systems Applications Products (SAP) Start-up Focus in Johannesburg.
Delivering the Keynote Address at the event held at the SAP Africa headquarters, Dr Nikolaus Eberl, shared innovation secrets from Shaka.
Eberl, Chief Executive Officer of Ideas Management Agency, explained how the then-Zulu king transformed the battle field by innovating new weapons and strategies.
He encouraged the startup entrepreneurs to have “courage to disrupt, discover big ideas, question the status quo, sharpen their spears and break the assegai.”
“Only organizations that embrace innovation in today’s competitive business environment will succeed,” Eberl said.
The SAP Start-up Focus is a global programming helping promising startups in the big data, predictive and real-time analytics space build applications on the SAP HANA platform and accelerate the go-to-market by tapping into the global SAP ecosystem.
Over the last three years, SAP Start-up Focus has engaged with more than 2 600 innovative startups and brought 200 of their validated solutions to market.
Since 2012, about 2 800 organizations have joined the global SAP HANA startup initiative, of which several have successfully developed and commercialized products based on the HANA platform.
SAP Africa Chief Technology Advisor, Simon Carpenter, said the company aimed to introduce more startups from the continent into the SAP ecosystem.
“We aim to help African entrepreneurs maximize their potential,” said Carpenter.
He said with the advent of the digital economy, startups had to be empowered.
“The world is transforming at dramatic speeds. It is scary. Most companies are struggling to keep up with the pace at which the world is changing,” Carpenter said.
The SAP event enabled up-and-coming developers meet successful start-up
founders who are currently in the Start-up programme, pitch to a distinguished panel of enterprise customers, accelerators and SAP executives, learn the operational details of raising money and understand how to leverage SAP HANA and the ecosystem of customers for viable commercial opportunities.
