By Claude Ndayisaba
“What is the calculus of innovation? The calculus of innovation is really quite simple: Knowledge drives innovation, innovation drives productivity, productivity drives economic growth.”
These are the words shared by William Brody, former university president at Johns Hopkins University.
Everything we currently see, understand, or hear from history was discovered by others. This provides a picture of innovations that were launched in the past. Individuals put together things in a new way or come up with a completely new concept. In the process, many of these innovations played a big role in the community either by creating job opportunities, participating in the development of the community, or improving the quality of life.
Someone who personifies this is Samuel Nsabiman, a Southern New Hampshire University student and the founder of Itara Media Company LTD, a video production and graphic design company. The company has become well-known for video production services, photography, and graphic design. Moreover, in Itara Media Samuel has launched a website that publishes news and articles, which helps Itara Media to advertise for itself as well as other companies. In addition, the company also provides internships and short courses to young refugees in the camp interested in learning more about photography and video production.
"Everyone has an origin for how they progressed and succeeded in life,” Samuel said.
Samuel believes that he learned about innovation at a young age by doing poetry and drawing.
He has faced different challenges and consequently has become a good problem-solver. First, he struggled at different times to get the necessary equipment to do this work. Rather than declining the work, Samuel and his team borrowed equipment from other organizations.
Also, some people in our community are lazy and jealous and try to demotivate others. Samuel met such people but persisted with his work, following the advice of his advisors and friends who encouraged him to progress.
Achievements
Samuel has achieved much in his young career. Some 80% of interns he supported are now able to support others in the same field, most of them as independent employees. For example, many class activities had to move to a virtual setting due to the pandemic. Samuel supported students in moving forward with their studies from a technical perspective.
He previously worked with different reputable organizations like Kepler and Me-For-You organization. At Kepler, he developed his design experience by taking part in a competition in which all students submitted a design. He was given the top prize. As one of the co-founders of the Me-For-You organization, Samuel was given responsibilities as a communication and media specialist. This became his great opportunity to apply new skills.
As part of his business, he has created more than 40 small business banners, 500 wedding invitations and posters, more than 10,000 interesting pictures to post on social media platforms and webpages and much more. Below are some links to different works that can be available online. Here is a great example of his work.
Keys to Success and My Takeaways
Samuel attributes his success to his eagerness to learn new skills in the areas of photography, videography and graphic design. It has required a willingness to learn new technologies, both online and offline.
I have learned a lot from Samuel’s career advice during our conversation. Based on his advice, below are some key points that young people should put in place.
Try something new. In this world, most people have common skills. If people have skills that are different from others, they can be used to create new innovations.
Have a dream. Young innovators have to try their best to make their dreams become a reality. “When I was young, I had endeavored to create my own business, but I was not initially successful. Now people call me the CEO. This inspires me to continue working hard so that one day I will be a CEO of a big company,” said Samuel.
Don’t be selfish. There are tasks that require us to collaborate with others. We have to be honest with those around us and always be supportive.
I am passionate about bringing innovation to my community and making sure that I will leave something memorable. As Samuel tried to raise young people’s talents in his community, I always dreamt about what I can do to be memorable and supportive to my community.
I learned much from Samuel and now I am confident that I will do innovative things in my community. I have a passion for training my community in languages. I am taking courses related to languages including English, French and even Kiswali. I would like to see all people in my community, especially young people, being multilingual because there are so many opportunities that they are missing due to less knowledge in languages. Following Samuel’s advice, I look forward to creating novel ways for language learning to happen in my community.
Connect with Samuel Nsabimana on his LinkedIn profile for more information.
Claude Ndayisaba is pursuing his Bachelor of Art in Healthcare Management at Southern New Hampshire University. Connect with Claude on his LinkedIn profile.
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