Silva Opuala-Charles, Bayelsa-born professor of economics and founder, Garden City Premier Business School, has explained why most researchers and scholars with many scholarly works still pass as poor.
The President of the business school spoke in Port Harcourt last week to flag off training of members of the editorial team of ‘The Transformation Digest’, a magazine recently opened by the school.
The training was designed to help the editorial team work better in an editorial environment because most of them are academics. The training attracted top resource persons such as Ijeoma Tubosia and Jesse Okedi, both scholars with doctorate degrees in Mass Communication studies.
Speaking to declare the training open, Opuala-Charles, former banker, finance commissioner, etc, now in the academic world, said he has discovered why most academics and researchers are still in a state of want. He said there is a disconnect between research works and the market, what many call ‘gown and town’ connection.
Opuala-Charles stated: “That is why you can see a lot of our scholars and academics still battling poverty. Some of them have written 30 published articles but nothing to show for it.
“The paradox is that scholars that churned out such high number of research works are still struggling with lack. We are saying, is there a way we can reach the market with these works? We want to add value to the market. That is why we set up ‘The Transformation Digest’ to serve as that essential bridge between the academics and the market, the decision-makers.”
He said the magazine would dig up these works in the academic world and look for the recommendations and push them to those who can use the recommendations to change the society via policy.
He explained that the Garden City Premier Business School (GCPBS) handles a lot of research work as foundation for knowledge and way forward, but the problem is how to link this wealth of knowledge with the policy world, being the policy makers in both the government and private sectors.
“We then came up with this special purpose vehicle (SPV), ‘The Transformation Digest’ to serve as a conveyance belt between the research base and policy base.
“These guys seated here in this training are scholars and researchers involved in studies and academic research to see how we can contribute to knowledge.
“It is disappointing that most of the things we do here do not get to the market. We promote innovation here, and this is innovation with transformation of ideas to create wealth.
“People sometimes mix up innovation with invention. They are two different concepts. The concept of innovation is that until you are able to transform ideals into wealth, it is not innovation. Innovation is creativity plus market access. Our worry is that a lot of the works being done by scholars are not getting to the market or end-users to become valuable.”
He gave the categories of the research work being done at the business school, saying; “Here, we have three areas of research: One is Business Optimisation. We try to look at how CEOs can optimize their businesses in various facets; manufacturing, banking, oil/gas, etc. How do we ensure scalability in them?
“Next is Policy: This deals with policy research. People are doing a lot of work in terms of policy research. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is dealing with monetary policy. The government deals with tax policy (such as the recent passage of new tax laws) such as fiscal policy. The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has been changed to Nigerian Revenue Service (NRS). These are all policy and we research into them to find how to measure the effectiveness of the policies. Some can do a work to test the validity of each new tax piece of law after about six months to find out if things are better than they were before.
“The last is Institutional Research: The research tries to see how an institution is performing along with the policies it has chosen to work with. For instance, why is Shell leaving Nigeria? Can Renaissance learn anything from the Shell experience in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR), etc?
“The important point is to ensure that we are able to pass knowledge, both explicit and implicit knowledge, to decision-makers to implement. So, we are taking these things to the market so that value can be created.”
He said: “So, if you come to ‘The Transformation Digest’, you are coming to knowledge. We are far away from actualizing this vision but we must move in the right direction. We are glad to have a seasoned chairman of Editorial Board from the industry.
He said the training that was going on is part of what he called strategic innovation. “It is about existing businesses creating new businesses. That is part of strategic innovation. This business (magazine) is a subset of the business school, so it is strategic innovation.
“The beauty of it is that people get new skills to diversify. The more skills you acquire, the more you earn more. Those who understand this will talk about in the future. This idea is a big for those that appreciate it. Those while growing up in PH, the whole of this PH areas was not there. If anybody saw tomorrow, he would buy lands. A lot of people do not see beyond their nose.”
The President of the business school said making money is a process. “Money does not just come like that. So, what we are creating in ‘The Transformation Digest’ is a process. Look at Arise and Channels Television groups, especially when government is not involved. It’s all private sector initiative.”
He said he was happy for the training and hoped that everybody appreciated this process. “We are increasing your capacity and you must see it that way. I have listed a number of trainings I want to embark on. I like what the resource person said about learning from the Dede of Journalism despite having doctorate degree in Mass communication. So, we all learn.
“Another point is that this business school can become a centre for Journalism Training in the Niger Delta. It can work with collaboration with the NUJ, seeing this school as a partner.
“We once trained broadcast journalists with support from an institute in London. We can expand that scope and reintroduce it. Beyond what we are doing with the Editorial Chairman, we can do something bigger, because nobody is doing something serious in this direction. Let’s look at that so we can expand the frontiers of Journalism.
“A lot of personalities that make waves today in politics are from Law and Journalism backgrounds. This is huge opportunity. A lot of things can be done to deepen knowledge, even abroad.”
He said one of the most important things in life is conversation. “I love being involved in conversation because it brings you new ideas and new perspectives. Before you know it, you are a different person all together. I like the perspective of this training and of the lecture by Tubosia, and I think it’s something I want to be involved in.”
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