Regulations: Help Or Hindrance To Innovation?

CIO East Africa shall on 21 July 2020 host a webinar at 3.00 PM EAT themed Balancing Regulations, Compliance, and Innovation.

The free-to-attend webinar will set to host representatives from a regulator, the Communications Authority of Kenya and modern innovators like Huawei Kenya and Smart Africa Ghana, to demystify the concept of regulation, innovation, and compliance.

Many modern innovations are created to get around what seems like protectionist and inhibiting regulations traditional models. Still, they continually face several calls for further regulation for disrupting conventional business models. This does nothing to improve the product from being disrupted and simply acts to protect the flaws in said products.

To attend this webinar, register here.

Aligned speakers include Thelma Quaye, Head of Digital Infrastructure Program, Smart Africa in Kigali, Rwanda, Mercy Wanjau, Ag, and Adam Lane, Senior Director, Public Affairs, Southern Africa at Huawei Technologies.

Thelma heads the Digital Infrastructure Division at the Smart African Secretariat, where she is responsible for developing sustainable initiatives and creating a conducive ecosystem. One that fosters collaboration with governments of member states, the private sector, academia, non- governmental agencies, regulatory bodies, as well as other stakeholders. All this to increase affordability and accessibility to digital infrastructure across the member states of Smart Africa.

Wanjau is an attorney with over 20 years’ experience in both public and corporate sectors specialising in policy, regulatory and governance advisory predominantly in the ICT sector with a particular interest in fostering digital transformation, particularly in developing economies. In contrast, Lane is responsible for Huawei’s external partnerships, community programs, and cross-sector collaboration.

Find out if regulators can be innovative by registering here. 

William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their book Cradle-to-Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, note, “In a world where designs are unintelligent and destructive, regulations can reduce immediate harmful effects. But ultimately, a regulation is a signal of design failure. It is what we call a license to harm: a permit issued by a government to an industry so that it may dispense sickness, destruction, and death at an acceptable rate.”

Contrary to this general belief that regulation kills innovation and steals people’s jobs, many renewable energy companies have profited from new environmental regulations imposed by governments around the world.

“Pivoting to adjust to new challenges is at the core of innovation. So to claim that regulation is somehow impacting the ease of innovation is not universally true,” George Hill, Managing Editor, Innovation Enterprise, notes in his article, Do Regulations Kill Innovation? He adds, “In many cases, it’s the kind of innovation that would allow companies to do huge environmental damage in which case it is not innovation.”

Hill concludes that, “There is an interesting theory that rather than either promoting or restricting innovation, the actual existence of regulations, especially in manufacturing and factories, is a sign that there has been a historical flaw in an innovative idea.” From his observations, it is clear that this makes regulation and compliance on innovation a most delicate balance.

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