Where Good Ideas Come From? The Origin of Good Ideas and Social Project Success

Good ideas are the basis of great realizations. The greatest scientific, political, and academic realizations have in effect been the concretization of ideas well thought, well designed, and well managed. Nevertheless, it can be hard to have even a little piece of a good idea, as well as it can be harder to turn it into action. Therefore, it is appropriate to discuss this subject that concerns the origin of good ideas. As social business is always linked to good ideas, this essay addresses the impact of good ideas on the success of social businesses applied to Haiti’s environment.

Keywords: innovation, networking, replication, imitation, hunch, serendipity, exaptation, adaptation, Haiti

INTRODUCTION

Many developing countries are facing critical and continuing issues in the world. The unemployment rate, low-income revenues, low GDP... are some of the indicators that show how these countries are coping with serious social and economic problems. The population of these countries, often young, can difficulty find a way to go through the issues, find solutions, even for themselves, and improve their situation. The youngest people are the most victims of the situation. As they are thinking about their future, they cannot see easily the way to follow in order to make sure they will get a hopeful future. Many solutions have been proposed and implemented. Believing that foreign investments can be a successful and sustainable solution to the problem of unemployment, low-income revenues, and low GDP. Some of them found a few results, but capitalism with its traditional principles blocked the sustainability of these results and these companies.

The emergence of a social and solidarity economy gave birth to new concepts of development strategies. The emancipation of the NGOs, the social organizations gave the opportunity to societies to develop new ideas and to implement them. Between the social and solidarity economy and the traditional capitalism, developing countries might find a way to find solutions to their critical problems.

Through his book “Building Social Business”, Muhammad Yunus thinks that the best way to cope with poverty issues is to build a social business. By “Social business” he doesn’t talk about social organizations like NGOs. According to Yunus Muhammad, there are two types of social business. Type I is a “non-loss, non-dividend company dedicated entirely to achieving a social goal”. Type II is a “profit-making company owned by poor people, either directly or through a trust that is dedicated to a predefined social cause.” (Yunus, 2010, p. 2). Thus, a social business must be self-sustaining and its owners “must remain committed to never take any dividend beyond the return of the original amount they invested.” (Yunus, 2010, p.19).

So, social business cannot exist without a social reason and social goals. Owners must enter into these predefined social goals so that they can push them through realization. Social businessmen may have some characteristics which make them unique and effective. Without them, they will face the same problems as traditional businessmen, and won’t be able to achieve their goals. Yunus defines six (6) main characteristics of the social businessman: Creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, the desire to make the world a better place, the ability to put his ideas into action, a strong work ethic, and an openness to new ways of doing things. Building and running a successful social business implicates obviously good and innovative ideas. As social business is always linked to good ideas, this essay addresses the impact of good ideas on the success of social businesses applied to Haiti’s environment.

GOOD IDEAS: THE FIRST STEP TO INNOVATE

Innovation is the “process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay” (Baregheh & al., 2009). According to a business dictionary, “to be called an innovation, an idea must be replicable at an economical cost and must satisfy a specific need”, (ESCWA, n.d.). Therefore, it is obvious that the process of innovation depends a lot on the kind of environment in which ideas are attempted to be translated. In effect, some environments seem to breed good ideas effortlessly, others can difficulty facilitate their extension. The “fertile” environments are social, political, and economic spaces where new ideas can easily flourish. In such environments, it seems that patterns, characteristics are shared among innovators or from one to others and an influencing process gets the replication easier than in non-fertile environments. So, if influencers draw these patterns and reflect the characteristics as clearly as possible, the process can be boosted since others choose to embrace them. The fact of embracing is important because it relates to work habits, hobbies, self-made. It can be applied in work environments, in the design of new software tools, in the conception of new artistic objects, in the development of new theories or new techniques, etc.

When this fact becomes effective, ideas are transformed into “mental diseases” that positively contribute to the social environment. Particularly, in countries with a young population, this infection is necessary since young people are the brain-masters of any environment. Therefore, they should be targeted for some initiatives and should be motivated to learn new ideas from the experiences of more experimented innovators. The more they embrace the patterns successful innovators have drawn, the more they will be apt to increase their capacities for innovative thinking. Patterns can relate to behaviors, slogans, beliefs, promotions, etc. Since others are close to them, they should be addicted to thinking and innovating.

Many spaces contribute to building good ideas. As the coral reefs create an environment where biological innovation can flourish, some environments contribute to inspiring new innovative ideas. How do people take advantage of coral reefs? The scuba divers are used to exploring them and by doing so, they feel inspired by this undersea structure, and can easily find new ways to address some problems and to create new values. Ideas can be generated using the same way when people explore some cities and the web. Cities like Dubai, Boston, and Silicon Valley can be considered great spaces facilitating inspiration. In these cities, innovation is palpable and it is possible to feel it through people's thoughts and talks. Then, just some days in these areas increase the mind's ability to generate new and good ideas. The web is also a great space for the emergence of such ideas. So many articles, online spaces, blogs offer the possibility to get knowledge and other resources necessary to build a brain canvas apt to give birth to good ideas. Moreover, some places tend to encourage innovative thoughts. For example, people can go for a walk in nice places like gardens, coffeehouses. These places can aim to meet other innovators or innovative thinkers and discuss projects. Thus, that could be an opportunity to share thought patterns or to embrace some characteristics identifying innovators.

TAKE IDEAS INTO ACTION: THE SECOND STEP TO INNOVATE

• The Importance of Networking

Networking is essential for the process of innovation. From its original sense, the word shows its key role in a business process generally, and in innovation in particular. In computer science, the word “networking” involves the application of theories from various technological fields such as IT, computer science, and computer/electrical engineering. Networking refers therefore to the mixture of various fields of competencies, various sectors, and various ages just like IT, computer science and computer/electrical engineering are. It is important to understand that networking doesn’t refer to financial assistance usually, but to competencies. By extension, networking can be an easy way to get money or materials in order to execute innovative ideas. To take ideas into action, it is indispensable to practice networking since this involves the application of multiple fields of competencies. For example, creating a business, which aims to solve the problem of organic waste by addressing it in an innovative way, suppose the consulting of various competencies owners: environmental specialist, IT specialist, Trash-to-cash specialist and so on.

It is necessary to accept the fact that others are valuable and key elements in the success of the project. Networking can open doors to many opportunities; that is the best way to discover new areas, new ways, new people, and new realizations. By that process, it is possible to get knowledge, create partnerships, to find investors. When a new idea or realization has been discovered, other steps can be over. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that a good idea is a network. It is perceived through a flow of information and inspiration. The sources of information mentioned above (web, coffeehouses, and big cities) can project this flow and create the possible connections between the different kinds of information built and the inspiration objects stocked in the mind. As the process is in progress, the innovator feels involved in many other issues, and becomes smarter and more competitive compared to other innovators.

• Replication or Imitation?

A range of new ideas is not really “new”. For example, Leonardo Da Vinci has drawn some recent realizations many years ago. Some “innovators” have just concretized the ideas of thinkers by ignorance. So, let us ask: is this replication or imitation? What is the importance of replication in the process of innovation? What is replication? What is the difference between imitation and replication?

The Oxford dictionary defines the term “replication” as the “action of copying or reproducing something”, “the repetition of a scientific experiment or trial to obtain a consistent result” or “the process by which genetic material or a living organism gives rise to a copy of itself” (Oxford, n.d.). That last one is a good definition that can be applied to the process of innovation. As the patterns become clearer, environments may become more fertile. Many ideas and realizations may rise and influence others. Then, a brand may take birth from multiple lines of tendencies and aim the creation of a big ecosystem of the same type of innovation. Let us consider the example of the system “cloud”.

The concept of “slow hunch” refers to a breakthrough; it often takes time to develop. Some people think their long incubation is also their strength because true insights require you to think something that no one has thought before in quite the same way. But, I believe it is not necessarily the case. Since a new idea is a new perspective on a problem or a recognition that has gone unexplored to date, hunch can take time to take place into the mind without giving birth to any kind of innovation. It is true that it requires time for the mind to construct a logical idea, with pragmatic hunches, but their long incubation does not guarantee their success.

However, because the pattern in which a hunch is fired must be an organized one, many ideas may constitute it. It requires an “active environment”, a brain constantly in activity. That is an excellent way to create new branches of thought, new connections for the hunch. Nevertheless, some cultural aspects, or beliefs, can face the evolution of this process. During that active stage, the brain can proceed by serendipity;

that means it can find happy hypothesis, happy facts, and happy data by accident, perhaps during a reflexive

time. This faculty is an important one in the process of innovation because it aims to deliver rapidly or to

improve the quality. Travel, coffeehouse, garden, sea cost and many other “soft” places increase the brain’s

propensity to proceed by serendipity. It can therefore reproduce other ideas with something new or some

better adjustment. Serendipity can just be the extension of a hunch. As the brain is focused on a given

intuition, many information can help it to build a logical concept or an adjusted idea. For example, the

project Edutech has been designed by the social Enterprise “UNDPP Group”, a Haitian company. The

primary goal was to promote the use of numeric tools for personal and professional development. The staff

working on the project were forced to modify the conceptual note repeatedly for months. By serendipity,

many new ideas were found and they improved the concept. Finally, the main goal was to connect schools

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throughout an online space and to optimize their value by offering to teachers training services and

marketing services. They were able to define a better operational plan.

The Outcomes of Innovation

The outcomes of innovation are palpable everywhere in the world. From the web system to the

smartphone, from the nursing skills to the microbiology theory, from the programming languages to the

robotic laws, every change in the world history is the result of good ideas transformed in actions. The

process of development implies the emergence of innovating theories and realizations. Many countries are

currently experimenting that fact. Rwanda, which is a country with an environment facilitating good ideas,

is a good example. So is the Dominican Republic. These countries have learned to take advantage of the

opportunities offered by globalization, and outcomes are getting deeper over years. It is essential to precise

that any country cannot pretend to be too unlucky by regard to innovation. These countries experiences

show that opportunities exist and it is just about looking for them.

Hunches play a relevant role in a given innovation success, because it aims to build ideas in an

organizational sequence. During this process, a large piece of information may persist inside the mind,

some may disperse allowing the creation of more space and the most relevant may recombine following a

logical shape, which will give birth to an organizational project building. Therefore, innovators should be

open-minded; he must accept suggestions, he must even attract suggestions, even from those who are not

specialists in the field concerned. For example, many online companies (Amazon, Netflix, Google…)

proceed by this way to improve the quality of the products they provide: they allow customers to rate them

and to share suggestions. Some others proceed by contents analysis. YouTube, for example, analyses the

customers’ preferences from their search history. That is an indirect way to involve others in the process

and to increase or improve the outcomes of innovation.

The best outcomes are more likely to be achieved in the most vulnerable environments, because they

usually contain big amount of noise and error. Understanding that reality, some people try to find them in

order to find an innovate idea. This reasoning can be inductive or deductive. Assuming that a doctoral

student is looking for an interesting subject for his thesis. He will try to find an environment where research

is scarce so that he can find more easily a creative project research. As people are facing many problems in

developing countries and research is rarely conducted, these countries may be convenient places for

conducting research. This approach is inductive since it comes from the idea that developing countries

usually contain a big amount of “noise” or many problems, facilitating people to find basic conditions to

develop an innovative idea: problems to solve - inexistence of solutions - lack of competitors. Now,

assuming that so many entrepreneurs offer an innovative solution to the problem of water quality

improvement, and that errors are often made. That situation could create an environment where a large

amount of error exists. A particular entrepreneur could take advantage of it, find the errors committed by

the other innovators and find an improved solution more easily than if he had to reiterate all the work done

before him. Therefore, outcomes would be better because of the cautions he was forced to apply in order to

avoid errors like his precursors. Nevertheless, one person can commit errors, learn from them and improve

the quality of its innovation.

THE ROLE OF DECISION-MAKERS IN THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

By allowing the developer of an innovation to reap the rewards of his efforts, decision-makers may

build an environment that encourages innovation, freethinking and hard work. It is their role to ensure that

people with innovative ideas find appropriate motivation by offering to them prizes, awards, events access,

gifts or anything apt to make these people feel confident. Many decision-makers organize workshops,

conferences, competitions so that they can achieve this goal. It is a good way to provide allowances to

thinkers and to make it possible to concretize their ideas. Initiatives such as Grand Challenges, Youth

Power, and Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) have been great opportunities for innovators to transform their

ideas into actions. Therefore, governments, private agencies, universities, scientific entities and all the other

institutions interested in the process of development should have a focus on the process of innovation.

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Nowadays, the world is facing many problems, as well political as environmental. Years over years, it

seems that people have been looking after leaders able to overcome major issues like climate change, trash

management, natural disasters and so on. For doing so, they may look after the fundamental drivers of

innovation; as it exists proper ways to create environments driving this process, they should know the

schematic way to cultivate it: how to interact, live and work in order to promote new ideas and innovate

realizations? How to “fertilize” the direct social environment? Decision-makers may be apt to answer these

questions. It is clear that the development is intrinsically connected to the process. Since governors work

to develop societies, people will achieve the process of innovation more properly. Nevertheless, they may

accept the adjacent possible that is an innovative way to achieve great results with few means. For example,

people have found a way to build big spaces with raw materials such as automobile parts; in Haiti, some

entrepreneurs make house furniture with automobile tires; others use the plastic as an intermediate product.

Why is innovation the best way to achieve the process of development? Because people usually are under

challenges when solutions come from outside. For example, according to Stevenson Johnson, 95% of

medical technology donated to developing countries breaks within the first 5 years of use because of local

problems: Power surges, tropical humidity, hospital staff’s inability to read the English repair manual.

Therefore, innovation should be an adapted process for specific environments; final users should be

able to manage the outcomes of any innovative realizations. Unfortunately, in some environments, critical

lost is usual. For example, let us consider the case where innovators work to facilitate resilience by building

modern doors with automatic functioning modules, using machine learning. They may send prototypes to

developing countries for testing and may observe during a given period the ability of citizens to use them.

They may observe that some countries do not have the necessary means (maintenance or functional) to

manage the outcomes of such innovation over the long term. Innovators pay attention to such hazards in

order to guarantee the durability of their products and services. Therefore, they should be able to replicate

some initiative projects in other areas without any risk of loss.

This evidence is also a significant weakness for the operationalization of the Sustainable Development

Goals (SDG). Developing countries are facing community issues that affect the application of the principles

of this vision. For example, the seventh goal refers to “Affordable and clean energy”. It implies an

educational process aiming to create a new scheme of thoughts (new ideas) and modify people behavior.

For instance, people should be reeducated through an approach including both awareness and training. They

may therefore think in another way which benefits to the whole community. So many people could find the

process too boring and try to pass over the new patterns derived from the educational process. It can be the

case in rural areas for instance. All of this can block the mechanisms driving to sustainable development

or, if it is not the case, make them slower to achieve the goals. In particular, the third goal of UNESCO’s

chart is facing this problem. In India, decision-makers need to increase the use of health care and services

by the households. For doing so, they combine the technology innovation with health systems in order to

optimize the marginal propensity of use. However, they observed that it is easier to develop an online

platform aiming to promote the efficiency of a drug than to force people to buy that drug. It is clear that

perception problem is a biggest one that must be addressed by decision-makers so that innovators can either

bring significant outcomes through their creation or observe the positive impacts.

THE “LIFE CYCLE” THEORY AND THE INNOVATION PROCESS: ADAPTATION AND

EXAPTATION

The “life cycle” theory (commercial) is a succession of steps a product- either good or service- knows

during its commercialization over a given period. These steps include:

- The birth, which corresponds to the stage of launching of the product in the market. During

this step, the innovator is obliged to face high costs due to the expenses of development,

marketing etc. He can also face the problem of low volume of sold, because of high prices,

and can register some lost.

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- The growth, which corresponds to expansion period into the market. During this step, there is

high volume of sold, reduction of prices because of economies of scale effects, profits

realization and market simplification.

- The puberty, which is the step where the product faces high pressure derived from market

turbulences. Troubles can be consequences of imperfect concurrence, scarcity, inflation or

any economic chock.

- The adult age or maturity age, which is the step where the product really grows up. This stage

can be the result of competitors’ elimination from the market, margin reduction, low

production costs, high promotion and customers service costs, maximum of sold amount,

high sensibility to market variations, important profits, relevant segmentation (multiplication

of brands for example), reduction of price, research and development outcomes.

- The old age or failure stage, which is always the result of a reduction in all the indicators of

growth of the product (amount, price, sold, profit).

As commercialization conditions tend to change through time evolution, adaptation is always a part of

the process. An innovator, particularly in business, always tries to adapt their product considering the

change in their direct environment. However, what is exaptation stands for? It is a selection adaptation. It

is a natural adaptation of the product itself to the fluctuations of the product. It often occurs in the

technological products. The system can be able to make a selection of the users’ preferences and find a way

to target those ones who are the most “valuable”. Therefore, innovators can adapt their product so well that

they can easily find a way to proceed by exaptation, which is the process by which they adapt themselves

to the market behavior. Therefore, the product can reach the stage of maturity without the direct intervention

of the innovator, as well as it can overcome the stage of puberty itself.

CONCLUSION

In this essay, the process of innovation has been discussed. Its role in the development is clear and the

steps that conduct to a successful innovative idea, pragmatic. Innovators may evaluate their direct

environment. A risky environment is one that makes it more difficult to achieve the goals fixed. Errors can

boost the relevancy of the outcomes. Serendipity, as an extension of hunch is essential to the development

of good ideas because it creates a logical frame in the mind and helps to organize the concept into it.

REFERENCES

Baregheh, A., Rowley, J., & Sambrook, S. (2009). Towards a multidisciplinary definition of innovation.

Management Decision, 47(8), 1323-1339.

Economic Commission for Western Asia. (n.d.). Innovation. UNTERM Portal. Retrieved December 10,

2020, from https://www.unescwa.org/innovation

Johnson, S. (2011). Where Good Ideas come from: The Natural History of Innovation. Riverhead

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Oxford. (n.d.). Replication. Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. Retrieved December 10, 2020, from

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/

Yunus, M. (2010). Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most

Pressing Needs. Public Affairs. New York.