Everybody is an Innovator
Join Thrishantha and other experts on the World Bank Sri Lanka Facebook page on April 2nd at at 4PM Colombo Time for a live chat on innovation!
One day, I was driving in a remote town in Sri Lanka, when I saw this encouraging scene. A few school kids were playing cricket on a rainy day, and they had made a wicket out of three umbrellas. It might look simple, but a very powerful message about innovation is hidden right there. An innovator in my view is somebody who practices to ask two simple questions: 1) is there a better way to do this, or simply, is there a way to do this? 2) why did it happen that way? The second question is driven by the curiosity to learn the rules of nature, while the first question is driven by a very healthy attitude to get things done by exploiting the rules of nature. The kids who used the three umbrellas for a wicket simply asked if they could find something in their environment to serve the purpose of a wicket. Quite subconsciously, these kids, by embedding in nature, by walking barefooted on mud, grass, and sand, have mirrored natural laws of nature in their brains, that provided them with the basis to change the utility of an umbrella to a stump of a wicket. Therefore, in my view, best innovators are those who are active outside the classroom as well as in the classroom and laboratories.
A common belief in rich countries is that people in Africa are poor but happy. This image is time and again confirmed by popular reality shows on Western television, in which the rich-and-famous visit little-known tribes in the most remote villages of rural Africa, only to concede, in front of a dozen cameras, that despite all their hardship, the people they visited really seemed happier than the average burnt-out desk-warrior in their home countries.
“If you think the most important thing you need at a startup is capital, you will be wrong. It’s the wealth of mentoring and handholding you will have getting your business up and running.”
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facing: subprime lending, the credit crunch, banking, Greece, the euro zone’s woes, and so on. Soul-searching about the political and economic status quo ensued. This year, with leadership transitions in the two largest economies completed, the euro zone no longer facing imminent break-up, and China growing at 7.8%, Davos resumed some normalcy. Some even claimed optimism.
