In today’s fast‑paced business environment, hardly anything is more vital for growth and survival than innovation. And this is especially the case when it comes to technologies

IT innovation may sound like an area that’s purely the domain of IT companies, but really, it’s something that every business should be working towards. With new IT solutions coming out practically daily, it’s critical to find the ones that are going to boost operations, that are going to help companies to reach and exceed business goals. And it’s important to not just put innovative IT services in place, but to find the ones that are going to add the most value, and to find ways of using IT services in unique and innovative ways to enhance the way businesses are done.

Imagine IT innovation as a breath of fresh air into the sometimes stale corporate world, refreshing and reinvigorating business models, product development processes, and the very fabric of operational efficiency. Innovative IT breakthroughs like artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, or the Internet of Things (IoT), are not just buzzwords but actual business growth strategies.

The ways in which businesses can leverage innovative IT solutions are as varied as the businesses themselves. From using AI to offer personalised customer experiences, to using conversational AI as training aids for new team members, to taking advantage of platforms like Microsoft Copilot and enhancing humans’ daily workflows – the potential is limitless.

One of the real‑world IT innovation examples that showcases the power of forward‑thinking is the adoption of chatbots for customer service. With AI and natural language processing, chatbots can handle simple inquiries, freeing up human staff to tackle more complex issues. More than that, it is possible to feed chatbot information that it can learn from in turn, helping it to provide answers that are unique to a specific business. For example, it could upload responses to the most common questions received, and the chatbot will not only provide this information to potential clients and customers that ask those questions, but will adapt them to the client’s unique situation. This not only improves efficiency but also enhances the customer experience.

IT innovation doesn’t take a single form. Because there are so many different ways to take advantage of innovative technology solutions, the IT innovation types can be broadly broken down into two different categories, but even these aren’t definitive.

Businesses are always looking for ways to enhance the products and services that they offer, and using innovative IT solutions to both pinpoint new product offerings or enhance the services that companies are already specialised in can setting in an increasingly competitive market space. Using IT innovation in product development can involve finding new ways to analyse data to get more meaningful insights, finding ways to incorporate solutions into technologies like apps, smart watches, or IoT devices. 

The second category of IT innovation is improving the existing processes within companies. By taking advantage of innovative technologies, they can enhance their internal operations and help the humans behind business to work smarter, not necessarily harder. This will see efficiency at an all‑time high, and more being done in less time. Some examples of ways that innovation can improve processes include using machine learning and AI to automate tasks, streamlining workflows, and both simplifying and enhancing data management.

Internet: <www.solidsystems.co.za> (adapted).

Read text III to answer the following question.

TEXT III

Realities of Race, by Mike Peed  

        What’s the difference between an African-American and an American-African? From such a distinction springs a deep-seated discussion of race in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s third novel, “Americanah.” Adichie, born in Nigeria but now living both in her homeland and in the United States, is an extraordinarily self-aware thinker and writer, possessing the abil ity to lambaste society without sneering or patronizing or polemicizing. For her, it seems no great feat to balance high literary intentions with broad social critique. “Americanah” examines blackness in America, Nigeria and Britain, but it’s also a steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience — a platitude made fresh by the accuracy of Adichie’s obser vations. […]

        “Americanah” tells the story of a smart, strong-willed Nigerian woman named Ifemelu who, after she leaves Africa for America, endures several harrowing years of near destitution before graduating from college, starting a blog entitled “Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black” and winning a fellowship at Princeton (as Adichie once did; she has acknowledged that many of Ifemelu’s experiences are her own). Ever hovering in Ifemelu’s thoughts is her high school boyfriend, Obinze, an equally intelligent if gentler, more self-effacing Nigerian, who outstays his visa and takes illegal jobs in London. (When Obinze trips and falls to the ground, a co-worker shouts, “His knee is bad because he’s a knee-grow!”)

        Ifemelu and Obinze represent a new kind of immigrant, “raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction.” They aren’t fleeing war or starvation but “the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness.” Where Obinze fails — soon enough, he is deported — Ifemelu thrives, in part because she seeks authenticity. […]

         Early on, a horrific event leaves Ifemelu reeling, and years later, when she returns to Nigeria, she’s still haunted by it. Meantime, back in Lagos, Obinze has found wealth as a property developer. Though the book threatens to morph into a simple story of their reunion, it stretches into a scalding assessment of Nigeria, a country too proud to have patience for “Americanahs” — big shots who return from abroad to belittle their countrymen — and yet one that, sometimes unwitting ly, endorses foreign values. (Of the winter scenery in a school’s Christmas pageant, a parent asks, “Are they teaching chil dren that a Christmas is not a real Christmas unless snow falls like it does abroad?”)

        “Americanah” is witheringly trenchant and hugely empathetic, both worldly and geographically precise, a novel that holds the discomfiting realities of our times fearlessly before us. It never feels false.

(Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/books/review/americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie.html)

Read text I to answer the question.

TEXT I

Teachers in the Movement: Pedagogy, Activism, and Freedom 

        In this year's Presidential Address, historian Derrick P. Alridge __________ his current research project, Teachers in the Movement: Pedagogy, Activism, and Freedom. The project builds on recent literature about teachers as activists be tween 1950 and 1980 and explores how and what secondary and postsecondary teachers taught. Focusing on teachers in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, the project investigates teachers' roles as agents of social change through teaching the ideals of freedom during the most significant social movement in the United States in the twentieth century. Drawing on oral history and archival research, the project plans to produce five hundred videotaped interviews that will generate extensive firsthand knowledge and fresh perspectives about teachers in the civil rights move ment. By examining teachers' pedagogical activism during this period of rapid social change, Alridge hopes to inspire and inform educators teaching in the midst of today's freedom and social justice movements. 

(Disponível em: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1255911) 

Read the text by Brown to answer question.

        The question of whether or not to distinguish between native and nonnative speakers in the teaching profession has grown into a common and productive topic of research in the last decade. For many decades the English language teaching profession assumed that native English-speaking teachers, by virtue of their superior model of oral production, comprised the ideal English language teacher. Then, Medgyes (1994), among others, showed in his research that nonnative English speaking teachers offered as many if not more inherent advantages. Other authors concur by noting not only that multiple varieties of English are now considered legitimate and acceptable, but also that teachers who have actually gone through the process of learning English possess distinct advantages over native speakers.

        As we move into a new paradigm in which the concepts of native and nonnative “speaker” become less relevant, it is perhaps more appropriate to think in terms of the proficiency level of a user of a language. Speaking is one of four skills and may not deserve in all contexts to be elevated to the sole criterion for proficiency. So, the profession is better served by considering a person’s communicative proficiency across the four skills. Teachers of any language, regardless of their own variety of English, can then be judged accordingly, and in turn, their pedagogical training and experience can occupy focal attention.

(Brown, 2006. Adaptado)

Read the text and answer question.

        Education in a language which is not the first language of the learner is as old as education itself. As individuals from different language groups have lived together, some have been educated in an additional language. This is as true of Ancient Rome as it is of the increasingly multilingual societies being created through mobility and globalization in the 21th century.

        Two thousand years ago, provision of an educational curriculum in an additional language happened as the Roman Empire expanded and absorbed Greek territory, language and culture. Families in Rome educated their children in Greek to ensure that they would have access to not only the language, but also the social and professional opportunities it would provide for them in their future lives, including living in Greek-speaking educational communities. This historical experience has been replicated across the world through the centuries, and is now particularly true of the global uptake of English language learning.

        Researchers and educators have sought new practices in education that will suit the demands of the present day. Globalization and the forces of economic and social convergence have had a significant impact on who learns which language, at what stage in their development, and in which way. The driving forces for language learning differ according to country and region, but they share the objective of wanting to achieve the best possible results in the shortest time. This need has often dovetailed with the need to adapt content-teaching methodologies so as to raise overall levels of proficiency.

(COYLE, Do; HOOD, Philip; MARSH, David. 2010. Adaptado)