The courage to make it structural is.
When Ajay Banga decided Mastercard’s real rival wasn’t Visa, but it was cash instead, he changed everything. Because that one shift wasn’t about competition.
It was about purpose.
The genius of Mastercard Labs wasn’t in its tech.It was in how it rewired a 50-year-old institution to behave like a start-up, to measure learning before revenue, and protect curiosity from the people paid to kill it.
That’s the real lesson for African organisations. Innovation isn’t a brainstorm. It’s an operating model. It’s culture.
And when you build it right, if you build it right, incumbency stops being a weight.
It becomes an advantage.
Let the records show that I am capable of writing brief posts too. Ahem.
Until next time,
Spyda.