From waste to wealth, circular economic models go beyond the
‘take-make-dispose’ principle to ensure more sustainable supply chains and
products that have a second life.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



The traditional economy is built on the idea of “take, make,
dispose”. It’s linear, economically inefficient and unsustainable. But in a
circular economy, companies look to take end-of-life products and push them
back into the economy as a resource. 



It’s a circular economic model that aims to keep resources
in use for as long as possible, to extract the maximum value from them while in
use, and to recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of their
service life.



“So you’re continually using these resources and not using the planet’s finite resources,” explains Kirstie McIntyre, Global Director for HP Inc.’s social and environmental responsibility operations. 



McIntyre is also a founding member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a global organization focused on promoting the concept of a circular economy.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="#30Under30: Technology Category 2019 (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/30-under-30/2019/07/01/30under30-technology-category-2019/" target="_blank">#30Under30: Technology Category 2019</a>



“There are some big challenges in sustainability. There are
challenges now, and they will be more acute in the future,” McIntyre says. “It
also means companies need to question and innovate in fundamental ways. This
isn’t just about a little bit of recycling.”



Circular economy theory questions how we can maintain a
thriving economy within the limits of the planet, taking both resource
depletion and climate change into account. 



“When you work in sustainability, it can be quite
depressing. There are plenty of smart people doing space exploration; Elon Musk
is one of them. But I don’t think we can afford to wait for Elon Musk to find
another planet for us to pull resources from, I think we’ve got to get on with
this now, ourselves,” adds McIntyre. 



HP’s framework revolves around doing more with less. It’s about moving away from simply recycling and into a functional circular economy. And it’s more than eco-printing for a “forest-friendly” future where more trees are planted than are cut down to enable printing operations.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“There are big sustainability issues in front of us. We have a large responsibility because we’re leaders in our industry. It’s about ensuring our products, where possible, have a second life. When that’s not possible, they’re taken apart so we can use the components,” says McIntyre. </blockquote>



Innovations that matter are innovations that have a positive
impact. HP is just one of many companies working towards the idea of a circular
economy; in 2018, trans-national consumer goods company Unilever revealed that
its sustainable brands grew 46% faster than the rest of the business,
delivering 70% of its sales growth. 



Caroline Laurie is the Head of Sustainability at Kingfisher.
In a digital-first world where transparency and provenance are becoming
increasingly prevalent, Laurie believes that businesses can actually benefit
from becoming more sustainable. 



“Sustainability drives you to think differently about your
business. Customers’ expectations of big business are getting higher, yet their
trust in big business is getting lower. You’ll very rarely find consumers
making a choice between two products. But what they want to know is that you’ve
made that choice for them. It is often about range editing. Customers want to
trust in brands to do the right thing,” explains Laurie.



In other words, sustainability done right brings consumer
trust, and with it business, commercial, social, and environmental benefits.



“None of us can solve these issues on our own in isolation. This is about complete value chain re-engineering. This isn’t about philanthropy anymore, it’s about real commercial sense,” ends Laurie.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="617" height="617" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-41213" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png.png 617w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png-300x300.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png-100x100.png 100w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png-600x600.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png-150x150.png 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Caroline.png-80x80.png 80w" sizes="(max-width: 617px) 100vw, 617px" /><figcaption> Caroline Laurie &#8211; Head of Sustainability at Kingfisher. Picture: Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



<h4>The war on plastic straws</h4>



Coffee shops are turning to glass and paper as alternative
sipping options, with some restaurants even offering tubes of pasta as an
alternative, more sustainable solution to the traditional plastic drinking
straw. There’s a war on plastic straws, and it is the start of both companies
and consumers becoming more conscious of the use, reuse, recyclability and
disposal of plastics… but is our focus wrong?



“Customers rarely understand the relative environmental impact of different types of materials,” says Andrew Smith, the CEO and co-founder of Yuppiechef, the kitchen-focused e-commerce website. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“They believe plastic is bad and paper is good, but this is not always true. Plastic is often recyclable and can have very little environmental impact.”</blockquote>



Moving away from single-use plastic – and applying the principles of the circular economy – the New Plastics Economy initiative was formed towards the end of 2018 with the over-arching goal that plastics never become waste. The organization believes that instead they should re-enter the economy as part of products made from recycled plastic material wherever possible.



<h4>Digital twins?</h4>



Technology has a massive role to play in creating a greener
supply chain. For many, this means the use of artificial intelligence (AI),
virtual reality (VR), and digital twins. A ‘digital twin’ is a 1:1 digital copy
of a product, process or service, used to provide deep technical training on a
device or service without requiring a physical representation of said device or
service. According to research and advisory company Gartner, 50% of large
industrial companies will use digital twins by 2021.



Jason Ried is the Founder and Managing Director of Fuzzy
Logic, an innovative software development company based in South Africa’s
Western Cape province that has created digital twins of large machinery for
mines and automotive and healthcare companies.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Forbes Africa #30Under30 list: Business, Technology, Creatives and Sport (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2019/07/01/forbes-africa-30under30-list-business-technology-creatives-and-sport/" target="_blank">Forbes Africa #30Under30 list: Business, Technology, Creatives and Sport</a>



“Using augmented reality solutions on mobile devices or
headsets (like Microsoft HoloLens), we allow users to &#8216;see&#8217; a digital
representation of the machinery they’re being trained on as if it was really
there,” explains Ried. 



“Users can get a sense of the scale and design without
needing the real thing in front of them. They are able to assemble and
disassemble the machine as many times as required to fully learn its
intricacies, while each action is digitally tracked and stored, allowing
management to understand how well each user performed.” 



From a sustainability point of view, there are major
benefits in the creation and use of ‘digital twins’ in business: not only do
digital twins save time and money, they enhance learning by increasing the
quality of training and retained knowledge. 



Once digital twins are integrated into business workflows,
companies like Fuzzy Logic can further enhance productivity by overlaying
digital data onto physical objects.



“Users might, for instance, see steps to repair a part,
while info like current temperature and pressure display alongside the machine,
updating in real time as users interact with it. This strengthens the link
between digital and physical objects,” he says.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="405" height="529" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Jason.png.png" alt="" class="wp-image-41214" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Jason.png.png 405w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Jason.png-300x392.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Jason.png-230x300.png 230w" sizes="(max-width: 405px) 100vw, 405px" /><figcaption> Jason Ried the Founder and Managing Director of Fuzzy Logic. Picture: Supplied </figcaption></figure></div>



Ultimately, the concept of a circular economy is about doing
more, with less. Gartner’s Managing Vice President, Steven Steutermann, says it
best:



“The goal is to deliver customer value with minimal waste,” Steutermann says. “For such a system to be efficient, it must be automated, and this is where the previous factors come into play. Using technologies such as digital twins and AI in an automated fashion enables the supply chain to execute against circular economy principles by acting on its own and ultimately becoming its own ecosystem.”



-Tiana Cline

Circular

Circular Economy: Doing More With Less

We are now well into 2019. It is scary how time flies, it
only seemed like yesterday many of us were still on holiday, planning our new
year resolutions. Well, hopefully by now, your resolutions have become your
daily habits. But there is a resolution that you may have overlooked.



I am talking about resolving to stay relevant and re-skill yourself for the future of work. The good news is that it is not too late, and there is no time like the present to start. There is no better time to make a ‘fourth industrial resolution’.



We live in a time where disruptive technologies and trends
such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics
and virtual reality (VR) will change the way we work. 



Are you equipped for this change?



Education has always been a powerful tool, but never has
that been truer. I am not talking about the traditional, outdated, boring type
of education. Please don’t rush to get an MBA or a new colleague degree. 



READ MORE |<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/03/11/the-businesses-of-the-future-20-new-wealth-creators-on-the-african-continent/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Businesses Of The Future: 20 New Wealth Creators On The African Continent (opens in a new tab)">Businesses Of The Future: 20 New Wealth Creators On The African Continent</a>



Try to pursue relevant and ongoing education aligned to the
times. There are hundreds of free or low-cost resources online that could help
you with this. 



Platforms such aUdemy have some top-quality courses,
Codecademy will help you code (although the benefits thereof are debateable),
and Trend Hunter will help you keep up to date with the latest products and
companies being launched globally.



Some companies have amazing learning and development teams
that push great learning initiatives to their people. If yours does so, embrace
these. If they don’t, push them to support you in your plans to grow your
knowledge, in the right way.



The right type of education



So, what is the right way? 



1. Understand the uses of new technologies. You can win in this era even if you are not a digital guru. It is not necessarily the person who has a doctorate in artificial intelligence that will become the billionaire, but the person who uses some creative or lateral thinking, one who spots a new way to use the technology that no one before had thought of.&nbsp; 



Most people don’t understand the inner workings of their smartphones but know how to use them to improve their lives. 



In the same way, it is more important for most people to
understand what can be done with AI, Blockchain, VR, IoT, etc than to
understand the inner workings of these new technologies. 



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/03/03/banks-are-promoting-female-chatbots-to-help-customers-raising-concerns-of-stereotyping/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Banks Are Promoting ‘Female’ Chatbots To Help Customers, Raising Concerns Of Stereotyping (opens in a new tab)">Banks Are Promoting ‘Female’ Chatbots To Help Customers, Raising Concerns Of Stereotyping</a>



2. Update your toolset of daily digital enablers – I have
helped employees and leaders in top companies throughout South Africa and have
been astounded by the lack of knowledge of new smart digital tools that can be
used to complete tasks faster, cheaper and better than ever before. 



Companies are still overpaying for services, because they
don’t know any better. For example, some are paying large amounts for research
that can be found for free online, for instance, by using sites like Moat or
SimilarWeb. 



3. Learn what is happening globally, in all industries.
Don’t just focus on your industry. You can get amazing ideas by exploring
outside your confines. 



Stop only going to your same-old, staid industry
conferences. Commit to exploring across the board. 



Learn about what is being created in different fields and apply that thinking to create new solutions.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2019/02/24/internet-in-our-bodies/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Internet In Our Bodies? (opens in a new tab)">Internet In Our Bodies?</a>



Make a real change



Most of those reading this won’t make a real commitment to
get ready for the future. I am not naïve – I know this. In fact, most people
probably quickly scrolled through the article, or just read the headline. 



But this is why it is even more important for you to be the
one who listens to my advice. 4IR will have many victims. Don’t be a victim, be
one of the people who actively takes control of their future. 



It may not be January the 1st but there is no better time to
make a fourth industrial resolution. 



– The writer is the CEO of 1064 Degrees.com. He is also a keynote speaker and author of ‘Exponential Potential’.

Robot working at desk, 3D Rendering

The Robots Are Coming:  How To Stay Relevant And  Re-Skill Yourself

If you thought computer games were all play and no pay – think again. Although, it takes a lot of sacrifice, just ask Evan and Shaz Greenwood, founders of Free Lives, who lived on instant noodles and steaks fried on a sandwich toaster as they built their digital gaming company. They made a game called Broforce and launched it in 2015. These days it&#8217;s worth more than $3.7 million – a gaming goldmine, they say.
&#8220;Broforce just keeps going. There is a lasting appeal. I think there is a community that&#8217;s driving it. Some of the people that play Broforce play it so much they keep evangelizing it to new people. It&#8217;s just at the top of their lists and they keep recommending it,&#8221; says Evan, founder and creative director of Free Lives.
It meant saying goodbye to penniless days sleeping on a couch under flickering florescent lights in a warehouse apartment in Muizenberg, near Cape Town. It has also meant hello to mansions on the winelands of Constantia; three-month workshops in Mauritius; and a full-time chef instead of noodles and burned steak.
&#8220;If left to my own devices I would never finish a game. It can always have more work done on it. It can always be better,&#8221; says Evan.
Behind closed doors and over the internet this little-known games industry has taken shape. If the names Broforce, Genital Jousting or Gorn don&#8217;t mean anything, they should if you like games. These quirky games have made Free Lives more money than most could make in several lifetimes behind a desk doing the bidding of others.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/08/31/female-gamers-new-sport-stars/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Female Gamers: The New Sport Stars</a>
This is part of Africa&#8217;s $310-million gaming market, that is expected reach $642 million by 2021, according to the PwC report, Entertainment and media outlook: 2017-2021.
This dramatic acceleration in the South African video games market is a result of the emergence of cheaper and plentiful games. The challenge is for companies, like Free Lives, to come up with new ones.
Back in 2008, before Broforce was even an idea, Evan quit his job as a commercial graphic designer to pursue his childhood dream designing games.
&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t ‘til about 2011, that I&#8217;d made a game that really made a significant profit at all,&#8221; says Evan.
In April 2012, Broforce came about. While entering into Ludum Dare, an online &#8216;game jam&#8217; competition where developers from around the world sit down and spend a weekend creating games based on a theme suggested by the community.
They feared their game based on action-hero characters from the 1980s, such as Rambo, BA Baracus and Chuck Norris, wouldn&#8217;t be cool. Turned out it was.
&#8220;Out of thousands of entries, it was voted number one in fun and third overall,&#8221; says Shaz, Evan&#8217;s right hand and the company&#8217;s producer.
&#8220;This was a project that had the right sense of humor, we had the right interests, we were passionate about it. It just got better and better the longer we worked on it,&#8221; says Evan.
The ticket to Broforce&#8217;s success was timing.
&#8220;Games in the 80s had been single person teams. In the 90s teams started getting bigger and bigger and budgets started creeping up and up. By the time I started wanting to build my own games, there were 50 to 100 person teams,&#8221; says Evan.
&#8220;What happened in 2007/08 was that process, the 100 person team process, could only make certain kinds of games. It had to make conservative decisions because budgets were enormous. They were making the equivalent of blockbusters. This meant there was an opening for making more niche games, more weirder experiences, more novel smaller experiences.&#8221;
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/entreprenuers/2017/07/17/mind-blown-drone-160kmh/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Mind Blown By Drone At 160km/h</a>
At the time, technology was so far advanced that anyone who could get onto the internet could make their own game. It was also a time when digital distribution was kicking off, giving rise to online platforms like Steam, owned by Valve Corporation&#8217;s founder Gabe Newell whose net worth is $5.5 billion according to FORBES. Steam sells games around the world online, especially on PC and mobile, which means didn&#8217;t have to compete for shelf space with the &#8216;big guns&#8217;.
<div id="attachment_34919" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34919" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-34919" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Free-Lives-Working_JC-200x300.jpg" alt="Free Lives game developer" width="300" height="450" />A game developer working in the Free Lives office. (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
It&#8217;s a good position to be in if you are Free Lives. Millions across the continent are just waking up to what the PwC report calls &#8216;a seismic shift&#8217; in the gaming market (primarily in the form of smart phone-based mobile games) which eclipses revenue from traditional PC and games console video gaming formats.
Among those to benefit are the online PC games. The report says casual gaming revenue more than quadrupled between 2012 and 2016 and will overtake traditional gaming revenue in 2017.
It was the bulging biceps of the 1980s and 1990s action movies and nostalgic games that made Free Live&#8217;s Broforce a success. They were able to stay afloat by selling it early on Steam, opening it up to gaming reviewers and beta testers, while still completing the game.
&#8220;Such a community rallied around it telling us they wanted more of it. We&#8217;re big on open development, constantly getting feedback from people who are really enjoying it,&#8221; says Shaz.
&#8220;A lot of games start off well but you don&#8217;t know how to follow it up… We were letting people play the early versions of games and using that as data that you can make better decisions on,&#8221; says Evan.
Not only could they pay themselves for the first time, but it also meant more comfortable accommodation – renting a double-storey house in Kenilworth, Cape Town, with one guy sleeping in the lounge and three others upstairs. They began to work in earnest.
&#8220;We&#8217;d originally moved into the house so that the guys wouldn&#8217;t drive home late at night at crazy hours. What happened was nobody went to sleep,&#8221; says Shaz.
Free Lives was far from being a success. Evan and Shaz were $70,500 in debt. They also didn&#8217;t want to take lousy publishing offers which would have cut into their profit margins – one company offered to help them in return for a 20% stake in the business. Instead, Evan loaned the money from his parents until they could get the game up and running.
&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t like they were rich, they used their retirement money. I don&#8217;t want to create that myth that if you just work hard, it will just work out. Without their support we wouldn&#8217;t have got far,&#8221; says Evan.
Just months before their launch, there was another snag when their lease in Kenilworth ran out. Whereas other people who are kicked out of their flat would have moved back into their parent’s garage, luckily the money was turning over. The team instead moved into a mansion on the hills of Constantia – it earned the company a legendary status among the gaming community.
&#8220;We walked into the place and were like ‘this is too cool, we have to do this,’&#8221; says Evan.
&#8220;It had an indoor Jacuzzi, an outdoor Jacuzzi, a sauna, a steam room and three waterfalls. It was the perfect environment for the guys in this final awful phase of game development,&#8221; says Shaz.
By the time they launched in October 2015, the gamble paid off. Since then, Broforce has brought in a whopping $3.7 million. In 2017 alone, Broforce sold over a million units on Steam.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/04/01/glory-days-geeks/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Glory Days For Geeks</a>
So what does a dynamic duo, who forged a mini-gaming empire in less than four years on nothing but snackwich suppers, do with bucket loads of money?
First, they rewarded their team with a three-month vacation in Mauritius and invited some of the world&#8217;s creatives to come along and make more games.
&#8220;It&#8217;s another thing that happens in our industry – you release a game and very often small studios implode, because there is a depression you enter. You kind of go ‘who am I after this thing?’. There was also a fair chance of burnout. Taking everybody to this tropical island, taking their worries and saying ‘let&#8217;s just jam for three months’ was an incredible way of keeping this team together… and it worked,&#8221; says Shaz.
<div id="attachment_34920" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34920" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-34920" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Free-Lives-Working_JC-2-e1515398853100-300x200.jpg" alt="Free Lives game developers" width="500" height="333" />Game developers work on the latest offering from Free Lives. (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
They also bought a six-bedroom bed-and-breakfast cottage, more modest accommodation than the mansion and lower down in the valley of Constantia, and turned it into their own gaming hub; complete with sound booth, VR testing station and a large kitchen with a full-time chef.
Evan and Shaz believe Cape Town is the African hub for game development because of its affordable lifestyle.
&#8220;The cost of living in New York is six times the cost here… Making it radical working here is a very good business case. We need staff retention. I think people focus on how to save money as being the most important business thing, whereas for us it’s more about our team,&#8221; says Evan.
From this house, Shaz and Evan hope to build their next hit. One could be the risqué Genital Jousting, an adult party game that leaves little to the imagination and has clocked more than 300,000 downloads since January.
Another winner, GORN, has 30,000 downloads since its release in July. Described as the most brutal and violent VR game yet, GORN is a gladiator conquest game set in the arenas of ancient Rome.
&#8220;I&#8217;m very sure that VR is the future of gaming. GORN is like Broforce in the VR world. The fanbase is rabid. It’s currently sitting at seventh on the list for VR games in 2017. I know it&#8217;s a small market right now, but if we can get to the top of the list, it&#8217;s going to stay relevant for the next five years,&#8221; says Shaz.
<div id="attachment_34921" style="width: 507px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34921" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class=" wp-image-34921" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Free-Lives-Gorn_BurntFaceMan-e1515399070676-300x170.jpg" alt="Free Lives GORN" width="497" height="282" />Free Lives&#8217; game, GORN. (Photo supplied)</div>
The increasing interest in gaming is also helping to fuel the rapid growth in the related segments of VR and eSports in South Africa. Combined, the gaming segments will add $225 million in consumer spend over the forecast period.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t know whether [VR] is the future or whether it&#8217;s the future in five years. Most of the skills you are going to learn are going to apply to VR and PC game development,&#8221; says Evan.
It&#8217;s a tough market to be in.
&#8220;There is an enormous difference between the games that have this kind of devotion and love and the games that are just a little less popular. They are not on the tip of people’s tongues, they don&#8217;t get recommended. When they start dipping off, they are much closer to disappearing,&#8221; says Evan.
&#8220;On mobile, there are 300 games a day being added and on Steam there are seven a day. It’s thousands of games a year per platform. Mobile is completely flooded. There is well over a million games on mobiles.&#8221;
The team at Free Lives is a big part of that and they aren&#8217;t working for free anymore.

From Late Night Snacking To Snapping Millions

When the iPhone emerged in 2007, it came with all the promise and pomp of a major Steve Jobs announcement, highlighting its user interface and slick design as key selling points. We know now that the iPhone transformed the mobile phone business, the internet economy and, in many ways, society as a whole. But technically speaking, the iPhone was not very innovative.
Its software and the interface idea were based on the iPod, which was already <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/itunes-10th-anniversary-how-steve-jobs-turned-the-industry-upside-down-20130426">reinventing the digital music industry</a>. Touchscreens had appeared on earlier phone and tablet models, including <a href="http://oldcomputers.net/apple-newton.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Apple’s own Newton</a>. And <a href="http://nokiamuseum.info/category/launching-year/2007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">top-line Nokia phones</a> had more memory, better cameras and faster mobile connectivity. What made the iPhone transformative was the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15782200/one-device-secret-history-iphone-brian-merchant-book-excerpt" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">shift in concept underpinning the entire iPhone project</a>: Its designers did not create a telephone with some extra features, but rather a full-fledged hand-held computer that could also make calls and browse the internet.
As a <a href="http://www.internationalinnovation.com/how-digitasation-is-changing-the-working-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">scholar of management, design and innovation</a>, I find it hard to predict what the next truly revolutionary technological development will be. In the 10 years since the launch of the iPhone, <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/when-iphone-met-world-7-years-ago-today/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">so much about modern life, commerce and culture has changed</a>. In part that’s because the iPhone, and the smartphone boom it spurred, created a portable personal technology infrastructure that’s almost infinitely expandable. The iPhone changed the game not because of its initial technology and cool user interface but rather as a result of its creators’ imagination and courage.
<h2>Inventing mobile apps</h2>
As the iPhone took shape, its designers found themselves <a href="http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/the-one-device/9781478915836/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">torn between making a phone or a computer</a>. Engineers and marketing executives alike worried the new device would kill the iPod market that had <a href="http://business.time.com/2012/09/14/without-music-apple-would-be-nothing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">driven Apple’s corporate resurgence for five years</a>. Nokia, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/263438/market-share-held-by-nokia-smartphones-since-2007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the biggest player in the cellphone market at the time</a>, had similar technologies and prototypes, and also <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304388004577531002591315494" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">feared outcompeting</a> its own successful mobile phone product lines that used a simpler and more old-fashioned software platform than that on which iPhone was built.
Apple took the leap, however, by installing a fully capable computer operating system on the iPhone, along with a few small application programs. Some were phone-related, including a program that handled making and receiving calls, as well as <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a new way to display voicemail messages</a>, and a system that kept different contacts’ text messages separate. Others were more computer-like, including an email app and a web browser. Of course, the music-playing features from the iPod were included too, linking the phone with the emerging Apple music ecosystem.
Initially, that was about it for apps. But <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/164137/meet-geohot-guy-who-unlocked-the-first-iphone-and-hacked-the-sony-ps3/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">skilled computer engineers and hackers</a> knew they were holding a palm-sized computer, and set to work writing their own software and <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/213904/how-far-weve-come-the-original-iphone-jailbreak-took-74-steps-jailbreak/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">getting it running on their iPhones</a>. That was the dawn of the now-ubiquitous app. Within a year, these apps were so popular, and their potential so significant, that <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/1134503/iphone2update.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Apple’s second version of the iPhone operating system</a> made it easy (and legal) for users to install <a href="http://www.phonecruncher.com/features/00942/the-first-ever-apps-on-the-app-store-gone-but-not-forgotten/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">apps on their phones</a>.
<h2>Shifting priorities</h2>
The prospect of making a fully functional hand-held computer changed how users and manufacturers alike thought about mobile phones. For Apple and every other phone company, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-android-smartphones-2011-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">software became much more important than hardware</a>. What apps a phone could run, and how quickly, mattered much more than whether it had a slightly better camera or could hold a few more photos; whether it flipped open, slid open or was a bar-style; or whether it had a large keyboard or a small one. The iPhone’s <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-reaction-first-iphone-2015-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">keyboard was on-screen</a> and software-generated, making a function that had required dedicated hardware into one running on generic hardware and dedicated software.
At the time of the iPhone launch, Nokia offered about 200 <a href="http://nokiamuseum.info/category/launching-year/2007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">different phone styles to meet all the different needs</a> of its hundreds of millions of customers. There was just one iPhone model at the start, and in the ensuing decade there have been only <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_devices#iPhone" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">14 major styles</a> – though today they come in different colors, not just white and black as the original did. This is the power of software functionality and related simplicity.
The heightened importance of software on a mobile phone shifted the industry’s economy as well. The money came now not just from selling devices and phone services, but also from marketing and selling apps and in-app advertisements. <a href="https://www.recode.net/2016/6/8/11889298/google-apple-subscription-app-revenue-share" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">App developers must share revenue</a> with the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/16/14634656/android-ios-market-share-blackberry-2016" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">companies that control smartphones’ operating systems</a>, providing serious earning power: Apple holds <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/16/14634656/android-ios-market-share-blackberry-2016/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">about 15% of the mobile phone market</a>, but reaps <a href="http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170308000345" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">80% of global smartphone profits</a>.
Whatever the next tech industry game-changer is, and whenever it arrives, it will likely have some connection to the smartphone and related infrastructure. Even today, <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/13/virtual_reality_is_made_o_smartphones/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">exploring virtual reality</a> requires only installing an app and connecting just a bit of additional hardware to an existing phone. Similarly, smartphone interfaces and cameras already <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410889,00.asp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">monitor and control intelligent and automated homes</a>. Even as devices are developed to operate all around us, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/alphabets-new-plan-to-track-10-000-people-could-take-wearables-to-the-next-level-76620" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">even in our clothes</a>, many of them will be able to point to the iPhone as a conceptual ancestor and inspiration.  &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kalle-lyytinen-336943" target="_blank" rel="author noopener noreferrer">Kalle Lyytinen</a>, Iris S. Wolstein Professor of Management Design, Case Western Reserve University
Originally published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a>
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