Think Big

July 28, 2012

Every night 12 year old Olivier comes to visit. He walks around the house to where we are all congregated in the dark in the back and he says, "Teacher, I am ready." By headlamp we spend some time practicing English. We have studied African geography, Rwandan history, and the American states together. A few nights ago, he pointed up at the stars: "Teacher, how big is the solar system?" How am I supposed to answer a question like that?

As I counted the planets in my head (I forgot Saturn), deliberated the morality of telling him that Pluto is still a planet (I decided it was ok), and contemplated how to represent the scale of the solar system with pen and paper, I also thought of my design team. The theme of the week has been "Think Big," and I have been challenged to find creative ways to encourage my team to think of possibilities as expansive as the universe. We are continuing to build out a financial model to save sufficiently for secondary school fees. We debate the assumptions of the model, but the hardest part has been that I have become increasingly anxious that many of our solutionss seem simply to be different combinations of existing ideas. How can I dare my team to reach for the stars?

A credit office from SACCO, a government-run basic financial institution for savings and loans in the community, spoke with us this week, and I think this is exactly what he wants us to do. He mentioned the difference between entrepreneurship and innovation in passing, and he challenged Think Impact scholars to strive for the latter. We use these words all of the time, but I have been reflecting on the definitions of both terms ever since. What exactly is the difference? While my design team is eager to start a business, they are less certain of how to do so in a truly innovative way. In a culture that values order and an education system based on memorization, the notion that you can create something that does not exist rather than replicating what you see around you is hard to understand. Yet this is precisely where I believe we can find real opportunity.

I was thinking of these things in a prototyping workshop with my team yesterday when suddenly something clicked. The workshop was intended to push people to think of how to make new things out of materials we already have. When I first asked the team how we could keep food overnight using a tomato can, a Pringles container, a tissue, a rubber band, and markers, they looked at me (again) like I was crazy, and I asserted that they must build something without me. Fifteen minutes later though, they had rearranged the materials to hold a serving of cassava bread.

Even more impressively, when we returned to the discussion of our project, they came up with a handful of new viable options to generate revenue to to save for school fees. Beyond the ideas of raising goats and trading sorghum that we have already debated exensively, we began sharing ideas like growing flowers, selling gutters, raising chickens, and more. When we started to story board these ideas, they all claimed they could not draw, and yet 20 minutes later, our poster board was filled with visuals. Putting the materials and the crayons in their hands had unleashed a new wave of creativity.

I still do not know which option my team will choose for our model, but I left the meeting feeling re-energized by the group. It is easy to tell people to Think Big, and it is much harder to figure out how to make them (and myself) believe it is really possible. I still don't know that I have actually figured it put, but I am trying. It is hard to know or measure when that mind shift happens, but I know that my team is moving in a good direction. Also Olivier went home with a map of the solar system. Slowly the view of the world is changing for all of us.

Team brainstorming during a meeting this week

Preparing for a meeting with Gilbert (translator)