James Patell is the Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is is a Business School Professor with an Engineer’s training. He and his three brothers worked in their father’s tool and die shop as teenagers, and then he went to MIT, where he earned a BS in Naval Architecture and an MS from MIT’s Business School. He followed that with a Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon, and then joined the faculty of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. There he has taught several different core courses (Operations, Accounting, and Computer Modeling). He also teaches a very popular course on Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability, in which teams of Engineering and Business students design products and implementation plans for use in developing countries.
Listen to our conversation below as we discuss the importance of manufacturing in African countries. James Patell also shares some of his experience with manufacturing in Africa.
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 Below are snippets of the conversation
[kpakpakpa.com] How important is manufacturing and processing to the development of the African economy?
“Africans are tired of seeing the raw material leave at a low price and the produced material come back at a high price and say why is all the value added elsewhere…so the opportunity to add the value locally which means creating jobs and creating wealth locally is there”
“It’s just not as sexy on the internet to be doing that but it can be hugely profitable and hugely valuable to West Africa as a community to have a culture of manufacturing”
“It’s slow and hard and requires a lot of capital”
[kpakpakpa.com] What can products can African manufacturers produce and maintain global competitive advantages?
“FOOD!!! – Everybody got to eat…… Water, Buildings”
[kpakapkpa.com] Can you tell us steps that can be taken to encourage the development of industrial parks to speed up the manufacturing industry?
“It’s too much for one company to say I’m going to build my manufacturing plant but i’m also going to figure out a way to get reliable electricity and I’m also going to get reliable water and I’m also going to fix the roads to get here….that infrastructure is too much for any one company to say I’m going to do all that just for my plant”
“It’s this notion of critical mass to spread the fixed cost of this infrastructure”
“It’s not just about the big idea, I mean, the big idea has to be there, for instance – I want to process Mangoes, but how do we conduct ourselves on a day-to-day basis to be good at that; and to appreciate how important it is, and what a difference it makes takes immersion in it..”
“…and someone has to start making it possible for young men and women to have that immersion and come out with the habits of day-to-day running of  a company that are absolutely necessary for success”
[kpakpakpa.com] What are your thoughts on labor-intensive manufacturing because of unreliable power supply in African countries?
“It’s not about having people busy, for the sake of being busy and producing just enough to get a wage that barely allows them to live, it’s about making them productive”
“The trouble with labor-intensive stuff is that when you start to succeed and you create more jobs, the cost of labor goes up, now your labor-intensive method is too expensive”
“Productivity and dignity go together”
“To be good at manufacturing is not thoughtless work”
“In Africa, the untapped potential for productivity is very large but there are just a lot of hurdles to overcome to reach that potential”
