Innovation by SIT

It often seems that being innovative is a privilege of the wealthy. Those who have the time to invent and innovate are most probably not busy with everyday survival. Or are they?

Constraints enhance creativity. When resources are limited or have been exhausted, constraints have a ball; and so does creativity.

For example, lack of access to safe drinking water is a critical problem in poor countries around the world. Every year, thousands of people die from infectious diseases, brought on by polluted water. PlayPumps International has come up with a successful, creative solution to the problem: a merry-go-round that pumps water into a storage tank, while children have fun riding it round and round. What is so brilliant about this idea is its simplicity. Kids at play spin the merry-go-round anyway, so the system uses an existing resource to achieve a new objective, improving the quality of life for the entire village.

In SIT’s Contribution to the Community project, we work pro bono with non-profit organizations, which always face very rigid and restrictive limitations. It is quite fascinating to see how inventive thinking leads them to good ideas in spite of (or maybe because of) these constraints.

I recently came across a great example in a very successful initiative of a non-profit organization. The organization runs a program designed to train and empower unemployed non-skilled women to join the work force. The project provides classes where the women learn basic computer skills, standardized language, current affairs, and receive professional training as telemarketers. The project required purchasing an expensive computer laboratory along with a practice room equipped with a telemarketing system. Since the women could not pay tuition to return this investment, the initiators had to find creative ways to pay for it. They came up with the idea to fund the women’s morning classes by employing them in the afternoons at the practice telemarketing center, where they exercise their newly acquired telemarketing skills to secure contributions for the center itself.

One of the indications that an inventive solution is a good one is that beyond achieving its desired goal, it creates other welcome side effects. In this particular case, besides funding the project, the women’s entry into the work force is more gradual, in a supportive environment, and enhances their sense of self worth.

The organization’s creativity does not end there. Nowadays, the computer lab and practice center are rented out in the evenings and weekends to other organizations as study and practice rooms.

It is most likely that if such clear-cut constraints were not imposed on the project’s development, such innovative thinking would not have been required and these ideas would not have come up.

Sometimes, constraints are our excuse for being non-innovative: the budget is too low; the consumer is not ready yet, and ideas are nipped in the bud. In systematic thinking processes, we will always direct attention to our constraints. They are the trigger to our ideas.