Global business-strategy thought leader to address ECOM Africa 2022 at the CTICC next week

These are the imperatives of the decade, says Salim Ismail, Co-founder and Chairman of OpenExO, a global ecosystem focused on innovation and digital transformation.

Salim Ismail, co-founder and chairman of OpenExO

OpenExO helps organisations replace incremental innovation with the ability to be flexible, agile, scalable, and purpose-driven, and enables them to implement groundbreaking technologies and profitably achieve ten-fold improvements, fast.

As the founder of some of the most influential tech companies at the core of our digital society, such as New York Grant Company, Confabb, PubSub Concepts, Fastrack Institute, Brickhouse, Yahoos incubator for new products and Ångströ, which was acquired by Google in 2010.

Ismail is also the author of the critically acclaimed 2014 treatise, Exponential Organisations: Why New Organisations are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What To Do About It).

In more than 150 entertaining, irreverent, epiphany-inducing presentations a year, Ismail shares these secrets with leaders of the world’s largest companies and heads of state.

Chief community officer of OpenExO, Kevin Allen

On 4 May 2022, Ismail and the chief community officer of OpenExO, Kevin Allen, will be addressing ECOM Africa 2022. The topic of their presentation is “Building an Exponential Organisation: Key to your eCommerce Future”.

Live at the CTICC

Businesses that leverage the Exponential Organisations approach show higher financial returns, greater team retention and purpose driven alignment with customers. With Allen live at the CTICC and Ismail joining via video, the pair will discuss the keys to building an exponential organisation and why it is important for e-commerce.

“We are incredibly excited that OpenExO will be joining us for Ecom Africa and to have Salim and Kevin sharing their insights into building exponential organisations and opportunities for African businesses,” says David Ashdown, CEO of the Vuka Group, organisers of Ecom Africa.

“Vuka Group is in the process of the organic evolution required to adopt the OpenExO operating model, and the impact has been immediate on our business. Salim and Kevin are calling this the Decade of the ExO and it is a massive opportunity for our delegates to hear what it takes to thrive in the 21st century from these globally respected strategists. Wait until you hear the insights of the data relating to the Top 10 companies of the FTSE 100!”

The Decade of ExO

“Over this next decade, pretty much every organisation, every nonprofit, every government department, every impact project will be organised according to these principles and if you are not, you won’t be extracting or delivering as much value as others. The data we’ve recently uncovered ratifies this completely. The imperative becomes ‘how do you apply these principles’,” says Ismail.

Ismail’s team interviewed the top 200 unicorns around the world to find out what enables them to scale so fast. A second edition of Exponential Organizations is due out this year and will incorporate new data that shows how companies like Tesla, SpaceEx, Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook are operating at 10x the results of anyone else.

Ecom Africa 2022 provides the perfect opportunity to hear Ismail and Allen interpret their findings for an African audience.

"We are excited to be a part of Ecom Africa and to share these insights and our vision with delegates at Ecom Africa 2022. We’re also looking forward to working with the Vuka Group on their development journey,” said Allen.

Ecom Africa 2022

Ecom Africa is the continent’s largest e-commerce conference and exhibition. This year’s expo will be the eighth edition and the first hybrid edition of this gathering of specialists in the e-commerce, e-tailing, and fintech sectors. Limited tickets are available for the in-person event and the online broadcast.

The in-person and online conference and expo will take place on 4 and 5 May 2022 at the CTICC in Cape Town.

Leading innovators in the current, global e-business evolution will be represented at the upcoming Ecom Africa. These include Zappos, Meta, Nestlé, Massmart, OneDayOnly, Bidroom, PicknPay, Chepa, Mantality, Konga, AutoTrader, Loot, UberEats, Sanlam, OneCart and Rugged
In addition to Ismail and Allen, the 40+ speakers include Alex Genov, head of Customer Experience Research at Zappos (USA), Michael Ros, CEO and co-founder of Bidroom (Netherlands), and local innovators Liam McCreedy, founder of Quench, Vincent Viviers, general manager: Pick n Pay Online Marketing & Commercial.

“Ecom Africa is the perfect opportunity for local and international solution providers to meet e-commerce players from all over Africa. By establishing relationships with these key players, solution providers can open up new opportunities for expansion into the region,” says Terry Southam, Group director Retail, Vuka Group.