Innovation Beyond Technology

Redefining Innovation: Beyond Technology and Tech Disruption

Innovation is a term we often use without fully understanding its depth. It's commonly associated with shiny gadgets, artificial intelligence, Silicon Valley, and slick startup presentations filled with words like “disruption” and “unicorn.” However, innovation is not solely about technology. In many parts of the world, especially in Africa, some of the most transformative changes have little to do with new devices or software. Instead, they are rooted in new ways of thinking, organizing, collaborating, and adapting.

Innovation Is Behavioural Before It’s Technical

Before any piece of technology can change lives, a shift in mindset must occur. People need to adapt their behavior, systems must be flexible, and culture must be open to change. For example, mobile money in Ghana didn’t succeed because of the phones alone. It succeeded because Ghanaians were already sharing financial responsibilities through traditional methods like susu, rotating savings groups, and trust-based lending. The technology simply formalized and scaled what was already culturally ingrained.

This is an example of behavioral innovation—when people change how they do something either before or alongside the introduction of a tool.

The Illusion of the “New”

Many so-called “tech disruptions” are not new at all. They are just digital versions of traditional systems. Take e-commerce, for instance. While it feels revolutionary, the concept of buying something you don’t see physically and then receiving it later has existed for decades through catalogue shopping, mail order, and even village provision stores where you place orders for items that arrive within a week.

The real innovation wasn’t e-commerce itself but logistical efficiency and data-driven fulfillment. Recognizing this helps us stay grounded. Innovation isn’t about invention alone; it’s often about improving access, speed, scale, or trust.

Innovation Happens Before, During, and After Tech Arrives

Consider farming. Long before agri-tech platforms existed, farmers innovated by rotating crops to preserve soil fertility, observing ant movements to forecast rain, and storing seeds in ash to preserve them. Now, with technology such as drone mapping, blockchain tracking, and AI weather models, we should view it as an addition to traditional knowledge, not a replacement. The most successful innovations merge ancestral wisdom with modern tools.

Innovation Can Be Administrative

We often overlook administrative innovation. Some of the biggest bottlenecks in African economies are procedural rather than technological. A regional produce market that digitizes its permit process is innovating. A government office that reorganizes how it handles export documentation, reducing delays from 5 days to 1, is also innovating.

Administrative systems affect every sector, yet they get the least attention in conversations about innovation. Why? Because they lack glamour. However, they are highly impactful. For example, when Maxwell Logistics digitized cross-border permit processing between Ghana and Burkina Faso for our commodities shipments, we saved three days of border delays per truck. Across a hundred trucks, that’s 300 days saved. Time is money, literally, because the cost of deployed capital (interest) is reduced per trip.

Innovation Can Be Emotional

Innovation can also be about how people feel. Consider customer experience. Two services can provide the same result, such as bank transfers, but the one that is easier to use, more friendly in tone, and respectful of the user’s intelligence will win every time. How you make people feel is part of your innovation stack.

At WellMax Inclusive Insurance, we had to design not just the product, but the language around it. We avoided confusing jargon, introduced follow-up calls with real human voices, and used stories, not spreadsheets. When people feel respected, they engage more. When they feel intimidated, they disengage. That emotional journey is as critical as any base code or product launch.

Innovation Can Be Invisible

Some of the most powerful innovations never get noticed because they work so smoothly that nobody questions them. A system that automates warehouse inventory without fuss, a financing tool that disburses to farmers without requiring them to queue, or a platform that links village cooperatives to markets without them even knowing what an API is.

At Confideo Technologies, one of our most impactful tools is a background credit-scoring engine for our stakeholders within the MIG Ecosystem, embedded within our MIG Impact platform. No fanfare. No dashboard. Just quiet intelligence improving outcomes.

Innovation Can Be Who You Involve

Who’s in the room matters. Often, we think innovation comes from experts, but communities, frontline workers, and low-income users have insights that no consultant ever will. Designing an agri-marketplace? Talk to the woman in the market who knows how pricing changes by hour. Building a logistics app? Speak to the driver who knows which checkpoints cause trouble on Fridays.

Innovation isn’t just what you build. It’s who you build with. At the Africa School of Entrepreneurship (ASOE), we involve students, employers, artisans, farmers, traders, and other schools in curriculum development. They are co-creators, not just beneficiaries.

So What Should We Do Differently?

Here are five practical changes we can all adopt:

• Broaden your understanding of innovation: Don’t restrict your search to devices or apps. Consider processes, people, feelings, and culture. Sometimes, a change in meeting structure can be more impactful than a new software subscription.
• Build on what works: Don’t always aim to replace. Sometimes the best tech supports what people already do well. The goal shouldn’t always be to disrupt. It can and should be to empower.
• Fund boring things: This one’s for policymakers and investors. Real change often comes from funding admin upgrades, HR systems, training, and distribution networks. Not exciting, but transformative.
• Involve those closest to the problem: Innovation is not top-down. It’s grassroots-up. Ask teachers about edtech. Ask traders about fintech. Ask nurses about healthtech.
• Celebrate unseen success: Not all innovation makes headlines. The internal process that made your team 20% more efficient is innovation.

Technology matters, but innovation is bigger. Innovation is about how we think, relate, and choose. It’s the quiet decision to redesign a form for simplicity. It is the moment a teacher adapts a lesson because a student didn’t understand it the first time. It’s the business that reworks its payment plan due to a customer’s seasonal income.

The future won’t be shaped by technology alone. It will be shaped by people who understand systems, trust, rhythm, equity, and context. People who ask better questions. People who listen more than they pitch.

And those people? They’re already here. Often, they’re quietly solving real problems in ways no pitch deck will ever capture.

Let’s notice them. Let’s support them. Let’s be them.