In an ever changing world, innovation is not only welcome, but ought to be encouraged. Such innovation includes innovations that enhance service delivery by the state, and its entities.
However, more often than not, innovators or entrepreneurs, as the case maybe, would expect to be paid for their innovation or product. Or an NGO may expect to be partly funded for their proposal that will, presumably, help the community. At the same time, government has responsibility to exercise care in the spending of public funds.
Among others, there is the infamous Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) that regulates how government should buy services. The main provisions of the PFMA are that government should, as far as possible, buy products or services using an open and fair competitive bidding process. But there are exceptions that apply in evidently exceptional circumstances.
Furthermore, the PFMA prescribes that such procurement should be planned and budgeted for, in advance. Hence departments are expected to submit their annual procurement plans that outline when, during the financial year, are they going to buy what, and how much they have budgeted for that procurement.
Most startup innovators, particularly in the digital space, usually do not have the understanding nor the capacity/patience to find out, how to get their products/services to the market, particularly when they believe that their customer is government, or a government entity. Regularly, politicians are inundated with requests for meetings from entrepreneurs to present a proposal, solution, an app, a system that solves problems A, B and C.
The startup innovators usually do this for mostly one, or more, of 7 reasons (sic);
- They believe they have a brilliant product but do not know what to with it, so they wish someone would advise them whether it is worth anything
- They have developed a prototype but need funding to scale up their service/product (capital funding)
- They have the product and it could be scaled up if they got a buyer or buyers (market access/customers)
- They would like to be recognised/endorsed by someone with authority so that potential customers can trust their product, or so that potential funders can fund the product development/growth
Most public servants and politicians are not business consultants. More often than not, brilliant ideas do not take off because the innovator seeks entrepreneurial guidance from persons who are not experts on the subject.
Innovators also usually do not care to investigate whether there is a product similar to their innovation that already exists or not. They always believe theirs is the first and only product that does what they are hoping it will do. Sometimes they are right, but in most times they are not right.
Market access is perhaps the most difficult subject for digital product innovators. Almost all smartphone owners use less than 10 apps of all installed apps on their smartphone, including the innovators themselves. But somehow app innovators, who are prone to pitching to government, usually believe that someone should still pay them for their app, even though its usage is likely to be really low, if not twice off.
The twelve pages on this link, explains the process that government has to follow in order to buy a product/service without following the prescribed procurement process. It is extremely unlikely that government, or a government entity, would pay someone for a service/product who did not respond to a competitive bid, without following the process outlined in the 12 pages. No amount of meetings can replace the 12-page guideline for unsolicited proposals.
The good part is that if the product/service meets the criteria outlined in the unsolicited proposal practice note, the innovator might stand a chance to be eventually paid for their service or product.
There are various funding institutions in government, including those at the Department of Small Business Development, the NYDA and others. Their respective websites have details on how the funds can be accessed to finance small businesses. The criteria outlined in the websites cannot be replaced by meetings.
The ugly side of pitching is the latent risk of intellectual property. Public servants, and politicians, who accept meeting requests for pitches out of courtesy, or duty, inadvertently, expose themselves to a risk of future litigation, which, hopefully, would not materialise. There are many innovators who develop prototypes of products that the government might already be working on. If those products are launched few years down the line, the innovators might suddenly claim it was their idea that was stolen. But, not all risks, always materialise.
So it is important that both government and innovators think carefully about whether their meetings are the appropriate instrument to achieve the intended objectives, or there are other more appropriate routes that they can follow to achieve the same results, that is less risky to litigation or maladministration.
Of course, in some instances, information is hard to come by, even on government websites. This is part of what leads some entrepreneurs into seeking meetings in order to get answers on how to access funding, customers or some other element of their business. Sometimes, even where information is available, the turnaround timelines are unclear, or not adhered to, by government entities, resulting in frustration on the part of entrepreneurs who end up believing appealing to the executive might help get them answers.
There should be continuous interaction between government and its people. Such interaction should be within the law and manage the expectations, to avoid disappointment. When misplaced expectations are not met, it often leads to resentment that is rather undue.