Big bets that pay off

Stimulation

My wife, Kate, runs an interior design studio and has a lovely ritual that has turned out to be more valuable than she originally intended. Her team has an ‘all hands’ meeting every day, first thing, but each Thursday is a bit different.

On that day, team members take turns presenting something. It doesn’t have to be an interiors project, but anything at all that strikes them as meaningful, striking, interesting, or curious. Today, Jess, whose family is of Indian background, showed buildings and landscapes she’d photographed in Rajasthan. She talked about how her Indian-ness affects her view of architecture and interiors. Which led to a deep discussion about how to overcome the monochrome blandness and utilitarianism of much Australian domestic interior design.

This half-hour once a week takes the team on a journey, away from their practical project work, but opens up parts of their thinking, and feeling, that nourishes their ability to work on client projects with new perspectives.

Question: What can you do to stimulate creative thought amongst your colleagues?

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Free IP

See if you know the answer to this question: What single innovation, just over 100 years ago, reduced mortality rates by almost half in every city where it was introduced?

John Leal was an American public health physician whose father, also a doctor, contracted amoebic dysentery in the American Civil War in the 1860s, and later died from its after-effects. His son made it his mission to do something about the water that was typically piped to early 20th-century city homes: often polluted by sewage, typhoid and other water-borne diseases were common, and it meant many people, babies especially, became seriously ill, and died.

Leal’s bizarre and controversial ‘a-ha’ was to introduce minute quantities of a potentially toxic substance into water supplies. That was chlorine, and it’s almost certainly used as a disinfectant in your water right now. Leal worked for the water authority of Jersey City NJ, which at the time had 200,000 people and, unknown to his government overseers, he pumped chlorine mixed with lime into one reservoir.

When the public learned of it, the proverbial hit the fan, and Leal was summoned to court.

The judge determined that Jersey City’s water was ‘pure and wholesome’ and, immediately afterwards, Leal made a momentous decision. He would not patent his innovation, and therefore no city would have to pay to license his invention. That led to a rush to chlorinate and, by 1930, tens of millions of people were drinking disinfected water and, by the 1940s, deaths from typhoid (which, by the way, killed both Prince Albert and William the Conqueror) were virtually eliminated.

Question: What intellectual property should you be giving away freely?

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Big bets

Speaking of polluted water, into the 1970s, Singapore still had these: night soil men who disposed of human waste on foot. But, how things have changed since.

From the moment of its independence from Britain in 1965, Singapore was fixated on becoming one of the first true globalisers. They had no natural resources, and virtually no land. What they had was position (at the crossroads of historic trade routes) and people (who were upskilling rapidly).

So, they made a series of big bets. One of these was, in 1972, opening a port solely for container shipping. Now, remember that the standards for shipping containers were only agreed in 1970, so this was not just a big bet, but a fast one too.

From there, Singapore made a series of further big bets (think Changi Airport, public housing) which have created the fastest transition from ‘third’ to ‘first’ world in history, all without debt or aid. In my lifetime, their prosperity (the nation’s per-person PPP GDP is now close to USD$100k) has grown to almost double Australia’s (USD$52k), and 150% of the USA’s (USD$63k). And, they haven’t stopped. By 2040, with its Tuas Mega-Port expansion, Singapore will regain (from Shanghai) the mantle of world’s biggest port (65m containers a year), 75 years after its initial ‘big bet’.

Question: What’s a big bet your organisation should be making?

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In the meantime, enjoy the weekend and I’ll be back with you next Friday.

Andrew