No abstract

No abstract

Globally Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have become engines for growth and most of these successful entities have grown into bigger companies through innovation. From the emerging economies perspective literature is scant on innovation especially in manufacturing SMEs and how they can leverage on it for success. This study sought to assess innovation in SMEs into furniture manufacturing in Zimbabwe. As SMEs seek to grow into larger firms, their ability to innovate becomes their key achievement if they remain operational. Though it is difficult to understand and collect information about SMEs innovation capabilities in the emerging economies it is important to try and unpack how they can leverage on some inherent characteristics they have as SMEs in developing economies. The study adopted a qualitative multiple case study approach where a total of 24 SMEs were interviewed after they were purposively sampled from the available database from the parent ministry. This study highlights the need for SMEs to invest in design education, register industrial designs, and improve social media presence, creation of clusters to lobby government support, and also training employees so that they can add more value to the design activities during production. The study also advocates for more support from government through design policy formulation that calls for active participation of all the SMEs concerned. The study findings will assist to develop special programmes for manufacturing SMEs to be innovative.

The study sought to investigate the nature of issues facing the graphic designers with regards to software usage and upgrades. Technology has changed the way graphic designers do their job and this has brought some challenges and opportunities to the creative design industry in Zimbabwe. In depth interviews were carried with graphic designers currently in practice and also an open ended questionnaire was used to solicit for views from the designer perspective. From the findings it was concluded that younger designers are enrolling for the graphic design qualification in institutions of higher learning across the country. Most designers highlighted that they prefer using Adobe suite as a software package of choice even though they do not acquire the official proprietary software license. To a larger extent the graphic designers make a choice on software to buy depending with their hardware capabilities

Natural dyes have been used since long back in various areas such as textiles, craftwork, food colouring and also as medicine. This work was based on expansion of the colour shade that can be obtained from natural dyes for use by the small scale users. The natural dye was extracted from three naturally available plants locally in Zimbabwe using the cold extraction under gravity method. An alcohol was used to extract the dye using a vacuum pump and left to dry. The extracted dye was then used to dye fabric strips using different metals as mordants. From the colour charts generated from the various dyeings it was shown that the shades can be extended for certain plants and in some cases they are not easy to expand. Application of the metal mordants at different concentrations was also found to have an effect on the hue of the dyed fabric strips. The results show that the natural dye from the Mukwa (Pterocarpus anglonesis) gave a wider range of shades as compared to the other two dyes.