Startup Fitness
Will ports’ congestion jeopardise Santa’s Supply Chain?
December 9, 2021
Inclusive Sustainable Development
January 10, 2022
Startup Fitness
In 2022, the DIGILOGIC project will make a call for proposals from innovators to develop novel solutions to address challenges in logistics in Africa, in Europe, and between the two continents. From the proposals, 12 teams will be selected for a one-year programme of expert mentoring and access to the facilities of the project partners. The expert mentoring will address the need to future-proof startups. This is essential because the current survival rate of startups is very low.
Dr Stephen Fox, of DIGILOGIC project partner VTT, draws upon decades of natural sciences research in his new journal paper, which relates business survival to fundamental principles for the survival of living things in changing environments.
Dr Fox explains these principles in terms of charts that are widely used in business practice. In particular, radar charts, process control charts, and bar charts. These are used to explain the essential need for businesses, as other living things, to continually reduce information gaps between themselves and environments as both change. In particular, it is imperative for businesses to reduce information gaps by paying continual attention to signals from the external environment and by updating their business models as they do so. In other words, businesses always need to maintain their fit with the changing environments in which they intend to survive: i.e. maintain their ecological fitness. In the opinion of two co-founders of DIGILOGIC project partner, BongoHive, Silumesii Maboshe and Simunza Muyangana, these findings from natural science research are relevant to BongoHive itself and to the many startups that it supports through its wide range of programmes.
