#73—Efosa Ojomo: Prosperity through Innovation

Efosa Ojomo is the Director of the Global Prosperity research group at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, an innovation-focused think tank based in Boston. Efosa is also on the faculty of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management where he teaches the course, Entrepreneurship and Market Creation in Emerging Markets. Efosa was selected as one of 30 thinkers in the 2020 Thinkers50 Radar list.

He researches and writes about how innovation can transform organizations and create inclusive prosperity for many. In January, 2019, alongside the late Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, he published the book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. Christensen was the world’s foremost thinker on Disruptive Innovation and was a mentor to Efosa Ojomo.

Over the past several years, his work has been published and covered by the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, The Guardian, Quartz, Forbes, Fortune, The World Bank, NPR, and several other media outlets.

He speaks and consults often on how organizations can develop a culture that fosters market-creating innovations, and has presented his work at TED, the Aspen Ideas Festival, the World Bank, Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and at several other conferences and institutions.

His TED Talk on Innovation and Corruption has garnered over 2 million views.

Efosa graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in computer engineering and received his MBA from Harvard Business School.

In this podcast, he shares:

• How to apply disruption innovation theory to prosperity and poverty
• Three types of innovation: efficiency, sustaining, and market creating
• Five barriers to consumption which, if you can remove them, can open up new customers, sales, adoption, markets

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Episode Timeline:

00:00—Introducing Efosa + The topic of today’s episode

2:27—If you really know me, you know that...

3:08—What is your definition of strategy?

5:55—How did working with Clayton Christensen impact your career?

7:33—Can you talk about disruption theory in the context of prosperity, as you developed it?

10:31—Could you describe the three types of innovation?

15:55—What are the reasons—that we can address—to unlock non-consumption?

19:38—How can people connect with you and keep learning from you?

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Additional Resources:

Personal Page: http://efosaojomo.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/efosa-ojomo-95b74710

Twitter: https://twitter.com/EfosaOjomo

Thank you to our executive producer Zach Ness, our producer Nazanin Homayoun Jam and our editor James Pearce. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, download, and subscribe. I’m your host, Kaihan Krippendorff—thank you for listening.

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