MEET OUR INDUSTRY GUEST
In this edition of "Conversations with Market Mosaic", we sit down with Regina Clarkson, Founder | Managing Partner, Smart Impact Consult.
Regina is an impact investment consultant, 3x founder and ecosystem builder mobilizing smart capital for African founders through Smart Impact Consult.
Regina shares her insights on Strategic Consulting & Market Intelligence.
Enjoy the full interview below!
Photo: Regina Clarkson
Market Mosaic: In your first conversation with a new client, what’s the question, or the observation, that tells you more about the organization than anything they’ll deliberately share with you?
Regina Clarkson: I listen for who they don’t mention. I ask: “Who else is working on this problem, and what are they doing differently?” If they go quiet, get defensive, or pivot to why their approach is superior that tells me everything. They haven’t done real market mapping. Leadership is operating in an echo chamber. And the “strategy problem” they’ve brought me in to solve is usually a leadership problem wearing a strategy coat.
Market Mosaic: Most engagements start with the wrong question, not because the client is unsophisticated, but because the real problem is harder to admit than the presenting one. How do you navigate that gap in the first few weeks without losing trust?
Regina Clarkson: We never name the real problem before the client is ready to. This is because by week two of the client engagement, the room may go cold. Instead, we create conditions for the client to discover it themselves faster than ever. We then use data as a mirror. We ask questions that stretch their own thinking. Then reflect back what I’m hearing without editorializing. By end of that same week, we’ve mutually landed on a solution.
Market Mosaic: The data is pointing one direction. The client’s instinct, or their internal politics, is pointing somewhere else. How do you hold your position without losing the room?
Regina Clarkson: You need the story the data is telling, delivered in a way that gives leadership a dignified path to a new position. Sometimes that means presenting findings incrementally. Sometimes it means finding the one internal champion who already suspects what the data is showing and letting them carry some of the weight. Strategic consulting is all about holding your position through a careful terrain with the client in their best interest.
Market Mosaic: A belief about strategy or market intelligence that was conventional wisdom ten years ago, that you now think was either wrong or incomplete. What changed your mind?
Regina Clarkson: The narrative was that African markets needed to be “de-risked” before serious capital would flow, making Africa legible to fund managers in London or New York. I believed that framing longer than I should have. What changed my mind was doing actual ground-level work with founders building logistics platforms and last-mile health solutions. African markets aren’t high-risk. They’re high-context. The intelligence gap isn’t in Nairobi or Lagos. It’s in boardrooms that still treat Africa as a monolith.
Market Mosaic: A founder or first-time CEO wants to build their first serious strategy or intelligence function. Not which software to buy, how to actually think about it. What do you tell them?
Regina Clarkson: Stop treating strategy like a document and start treating it like a discipline. Before you hire anyone, get clear on three questions: Where is the market moving? Where are we relative to that movement? What are we willing to stop doing to keep pace? If you can’t answer those from existing data and team conversations, no software will save you. And most critically, your intelligence function must have a direct line to whoever makes decisions. Strategy buried in an analytics team is just expensive documentation.
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