Something Great is happening in South Africa
The past two decades have seen a groundswell of positive energy directed towards innovation in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. Led by innovations in the Americas, Europe and Asia, major technological advances have been achieved with the help of ICT Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), ICT Service Providers and Software Developers (SD).
Specialized institutions have also risen to spur the growth of this economy in the form of Business Accelerators and Business Incubators. According to Mian (1996), the number of institutions that seek to stimulate innovation by “linking talent, technology, capital and “know how” to leverage entrepreneurial talent” have been steadily on the increase since the 1980’s. Today, American business incubators such as YCombinator have incubated some of the most successful ICT companies in the world (YCombinator, 2014).
The positive momentum gathered by such institutions in recent years has presented greater opportunity for entrepreneurs to leverage technology for socio-economic development. CortexHub or “the Hub”, aims to exploit this opportunity by creating an innovative society that is able to sustainably leverage current technologies towards solving society’s problems.
The Hub aims to create global players through leading research and development and an incubation platform that will activate, nurture and support technology innovation. The Hub combines a robust, two year training platform, with real world experience of the entrepreneurial world to give our entrepreneurs an edge when entering their potential markets. The Hub’s goal is to create an innovative society that is able to sustainably leverage current technologies towards solving societal problems. It aims to achieve this by forming strong partnerships with universities, ICT providers, entrepreneurs and other business incubators to create a robust entrepreneurship ecosystem within the Eastern Cape (EC) region.
Leonard Bernstein once quipped that “to achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” – The Hub aims to achieve great, GREAT things within these next two years. Watch this space, this is going to be a great adventure!