Last month we hosted our very first series of the “Eureka Hour” featuring Tanzanian investors, corporates, innovators, and business owners. Our theme for the day was “The success and failure of digital products in Tanzania”. Our experts thoroughly dissected our theme for the day, by coming up with very insightful problems and solutions to ponder about. Some of the key issues that were raised during our “Eureka hour” include contributing factors such as research, capital, and solutions.

A significant factor in the failure of digital products in Tanzania is research, as innovators take too much time in researching rather than providing people with solutions. This is a big issue as instead of rolling out prototypes to the test and receiving valuable feedback that would benefit their product. Innovators would rather spend months or even years just researching and ensuring that the product will be a success instead of putting it out and analyzing its market performance along the way as they slowly improve and diversify their products to meet the market’s needs.

One of the major causes of the failure of digital products is income, as most innovators don’t have multiple sources of income, to begin with. And this can take a toll on their start-up businesses as they end making bad decisions for the business as a result of struggling to meet their own basic needs. As an innovator, one must first ensure that they have their basic needs met first before going on to innovate or start any successful business as this will help them build and sustain the business gradually as they make their way to positive returns.

Another crucial contributing factor to failure is the product’s solution. There is a notion with innovators that every solution brought forward must be digital, but it’s not compulsory for every problem in our society to have an app. But with market research one can come up with solutions that will help better the society in one way or another. This can be achieved by designing solutions that tackle real-world problems in our society and not just building apps for the sake of profit or recognition.

For more on what unraveled during the “Eureka hour” click here to watch the full video.