For those among you who still believe that little innovation can be expected to come out of Africa, check out AfriGadget every once and a while or catch up on Ethan‘s musings. It is a humbling experience, which forces one to see, realize and admit one’s ignorance with respect to the diversity of innovation throughout the world, especially in the less known – but often most stereotyped – corners of our planet.

The examples show once again how scarcity and constraints can be powerful drivers of change and stimuli for high-impact innovation. Now that modern communication technologies are taking over even the poorest and most remote corners of our planet, leapfrogging legacy systems of the West, their effect can be multiplied, scaled up more easily. Such endeavours show the immense potential of human creativity, no matter who you are or where you are born. We often block our own creative pathways, by looking for excuses: ‘it can’t be done unless we find a way to raise 30 billion euros’, ‘if only we were a multinational-sized company’, ‘it is impossible with the government organizing and/or orchestrating it’.

Of course, there are challenges which cannot be tackled using a cartwheel and a piece of rope (if you did get nuclear fusion to work in your basement using just that, drop us a line), challenges which do require large budgets, advanced organizational structures, etc. Yet all too often we use these arguments as but excuses in order not to ‘be truly creative’ & ‘try something’, ‘do something’, … In our spoiled context, it is easy to sense fear setting in as we realize that there is perhaps more to lose than to gain from trying. Risk management can be a killer as much as risk itself.

Massive change in terms of an increase in quality of life at personal & community levels can be but one mind and one pair of hands away. The driven individual is a powerful catalyst for change. Therefore, think again when installing elaborate innovation strategies before liberating the minds of individuals and breaking the shackles of their creative initiative.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 21:05 and is filed under design, future, society, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.