Highlights of the 2020 Innovation Showcase Week

Facebook, in partnership with the Co-creation Hub (CcHUB), held the second edition of Innovation Showcase Week (ISW) on February 13 and Valentine's Day.

The two-day exhibition was held at NG_Hub from Facebook.

Innovation Showcase Week is for everyone in the techosystem. The exhibitions this year featured startups from CcHUB, Facebook Accelerator Programme and 'outside'.

Innovation Showcase Week for us, is not only to show these guys [the teams exhibiting] what's possible, it's also to bring people that are important within the innovation ecosystem together to see what people are building. And in turn, that would inspire them to put more resources, energy, and support in ensuring that innovation thrives in Nigeria.

Like last year's event, #ISW2020 kicked off with a roundtable with pressmen. Bosun Tijani, CEO of CcHUB, in his address, emphasized the importance of storytelling and narratives. He said: "Storytelling and narratives are quite important. The stories you guys [journalists] tell are very important too."

Bosun added that it's also a challenge for journalists covering the techosystem. He said "If journalists are not telling the stories, innovation will suffer. When you see what TechCrunch is doing, they are telling more of our innovation story than even the local media. Because they have the resources and have the know-how."

The world knows how innovative we're becoming as a people, but our people locally don't have a clue of what's happening in Yaba or any other innovation in the country.

To that end, Cc-HUB would be launching a fellowship programme for journalists. Bosun said, "We are going to start a fellowship programme for journalists, where we would pick between 15 to 20 journalists every year and pair them with the best journalists within the technology space in the world to give them access to modern thinking and how to tell technology stories, as well as resources".

It is noteworthy that CcHUB had organised something similar, albeit a blanket fellowship programme for the media industry: CcHUB Media Fellowship.

The 3-month fellowship programme was aimed at training creatives, including cinematographers, filmmakers, actors and scriptwriters, to become excellent storytellers. Over 300 storytellers applied but only nine emerged CcHUB Media fellows.

After the roundtable with pressmen, there was a Corporate Innovation Workshop hosted by Bosun himself. The workshop had in attendance the likes of Funke Opeke, CEO of MainOne, and Emeka Okoye, COO of CYMANTIKS Nigeria Limited.

It was refreshing listening to @bosuntijani deliver a presentation on Corporate Innovation 'Driving Superior Performance Through Corporate Innovation' at the #ISW2020. @funkeopeke keynote address was full of takeaways.

Seeing corporate folks in attendance made the event great

— Emeka Azuka Okoye (@EmekaOkoye) February 13, 2020

Speaking at the event, Funke Opeke charged corporations to see the possibilities in early-stage startups and support them by contributing to their journey.

Bosun also shared insights on how to drive superior performance through corporate innovation.

Afterwards, both the pressmen and business leaders, as well as other tech enthusiasts that attended #ISW2020 get to look at the innovative solutions of the 12 startups that exhibited at the Innovation Showcase Week.

Meet the 17 startups that exhibited at the 2020 Innovation Showcase Week

The startups were grouped into five categories, namely: data intelligence, education (or edtech), fintech, healthtech and lifestyle.

Out of the 17 startups that participated in the Innovation Showcase Week this year, 11 of them are in Facebook Accelerator 2019 cohort and two of them (Quadron Studios and Gricd Frij) are from the 2018 cohort. Thus, Riby, Iconet Embedded System, Taeillo, and Findworka are the non-Facebook Accelerator startups.