Lessons on Innovation from the Poor

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What companies or products come to mind first, when we speak of innovation?  For me, it’s Apple and Google.  It’s the iPod as a platform for iTunes, and iPhone followed by the iPad, all of which have put music, communications and computing on-the-go.  It’s about the sophisticated search algorithms that millions of us use everyday to get hordes of information we look for, at literally fractions of a second.

This TED Talk by Anil Gupta tells a different kind of tale, one that to me is no less compelling (albeit far more unheralded) than what Steve Jobs presents in a big-stage product launch or what the Google boys, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, cook up for the web.

“People may be economically poor, but they’re not poor in the mind.”  

So goes Prof. Gupta, and in a short stretch of time he offers numerous practical illustrations of his point.

I’ve heard this said many times:  ‘Nothing is impossible’ … ‘Anything is possible, if you put your mind to it’ … ‘Impossible is actually I’m possible.’  Many people may believe this, and find it quite motivational.  I don’t.  When we stop to think about it, there are so many things that we as human beings simply cannot do.  For example, even if I had the best of basketball coaches training me, for years and years, I will never have the legs to jump like superstar Michael Jordan.  Scores of people cannot, either.  Have me tutored by the best scientists in the world, around the clock, and still I can assure you that I will never have the intelligence of Albert Einstein.  Vast swaths of us have just average-functioning brains.

But within the nebulous boundaries of our talents, there are indeed very clever, useful, even artistic things that we can come up with.   Things that make our lives more livable, and others’ lives a bit easier and more productive.  The “we” I refer to are among the poor in India, and not just in India but in other countries where impoverished villages exist.  For us who live in industrialized, corporate or wealthy sectors of the world, herein lie lessons for innovating.

How does this innovation happen?

First, it comes from within those very villages, where hardships are a defining way of life.  Where income may hover over the bottom ranges of a country’s currency (e.g., rupees).  Where everyday devices at their disposal are no where like a computer, handheld or desk bound, but more a matter of low-tech (e.g., a bicycle, powered by muscle and bone alone) or even no-tech (e.g., your head, on which you carry water)!

Second, it comes from people living in those villages.  Who think, who reflect.  Who solve common, day-to-day problems, such as grinding small amounts of grain or washing clothes at costs that villagers can afford.  They say, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’  True, very true.  Moreover, it requires a ‘mother,’ symbolic of someone who knows her culture (home) and people (family) intimately.  Can someone like me, who grew up in suburban Chicago in a middle-class family, do what these local innovators have done?  Maybe, or maybe not.  I’m smart, but I’m wholly foreign to their way of life.  My mind is entrenched on Google, and how to get quick answers to my queries.  Not on grinding or washing anything.

Third, it comes from an organization like the Honey Bee Network, which facilitates such innovation, encourages the villagers, and finds a way for them to get some income.  Now I’m not familiar with HBN, but my sense is that they grasp the culture of these people and they know how to help them in ways that recognize, not undermine, their way of life.

Finally, it comes from what I feel is the warm, encouraging spirit of a man like Prof. Gupta, who believes in the very things he says, “Creativity counts … knowledge matters … innovations transform … incentives inspire.”

Solving poverty is complicated, even overwhelming, but I believe it’s a responsibility of us more privileged people to help in this effort.  I believe this TED Talk offers a key algorithm in such a solution:  that is, encourage and-or recognize useful innovations within these impoverished villages.

What do you think, in what ways do you innovate?  What are the common problems you face everyday, and how have you solved them?

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD