A recent TED talk by Tim Brown attempts to bring the industry of design from simple aesthetics to mainstream innovations and accelerated human progression.  Are you a designer?

(photo from Boston Globe Article)

I am passionate about entrepreneurship and individual empowerment, it is no secret. Part of my personal mission is just that, to empower individuals for societal advancement through value-based entrepreneurship. I believe profit is an important indicator of impactful ideas and a resource for continued development. I have written on the “selfless-ness of entrepreneurship” here.

I recently came across an article here about a man with a similar vision who is doing some fantastic work in moving the vision forward. His name is Iqbal Z. Quadir, founder of the The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT. Quadir founded Grameenphone in Bangladesh, a company valued at $3 billion that brings telephone service and prosperity through employment to millions who have not had it until now. He teamed up with the Grameen Bank to bring about the company. Grameen Bank was founded by Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Prize recipient. A large part of the profits going to Grameen Bank help fund the powerful micro-credit business it helped popularize that brings additional prosperity by giving opportunity and expecting responsible action with micro-loans (I’m a fan of Grameen as well…). The Legatum Center’s purpose follows suit, to bring technology and development to impoverished countries through for-profit ventures. There are powerful advantages to private action such as this:

MIT Economics Professor Bengt Holmstrom, a member of the Legatum Center executive committee, said there is merit in Quadir’s view that pouring more aid money into Third World governments will simply feed and empower politicians and fuel corruption. Holmstrom said the center’s “focus on entrepreneurship and self-help, and its bottom-up approach, are really distinguishing features.’’…

Productive Resistance?

In any productivity system, you have a certain level of added friction and resistance that is introduced by the system itself, i.e. you have to carry a planner, spend time writing/typing, recording, marking complete, etc.  All of these tasks would not exist if it weren’t for the system.  Daily and weekly reviews, etc. also often add several hours to your week of unproductive (directly unproductive) minutiae.  So why, in our pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness would we add a book of practices that simply add resistance?  Well, obviously we think the added resistance will be accompanied by a higher level of productivity.  We are willing to welcome the increased resistance in an effort to achieve improved results.  Compare it to giving up gas mileage on a car for increased speed and power.  It may require a bit more fuel to push through the resistance of a more powerful engine, wider tires, etc. but the increase in performance is worth it to us so we buy the car.

So the question is now raised… and I will illustrate with the car comparison: