Here’s why we need to think BIG

Mr Chandrasekhar saw a huge board about saving water. It said: Wash your cars less often and save water. He thought this was a wonderful idea. There and then he decided that he will wash his car only twice a week; this decision made him feel quite happy – he had contributed his bit to a national concern.

This is a great message and sensitises people to the use and wastage of water. But it only considers a small incremental improvement on the whole problem of water shortage. It does not consider the larger context and concerns regarding water or the far-reaching implications of not addressing concerns related to water. Washing cars less often may save a few gallons of water but it does not address the problems of water-guzzling industries, wastewater treatment plants, contamination of river water and groundwater levels, climatic changes and the problem of floods and droughts.

This is essentially a mindset problem. The problem of not being able to think big, hence not making a significant difference through innovation.

Mr Chandrasekhar is happy for having contributed at an individual level. However, he is also a global citizen and a creative human being. Imagine what will happen if thousands of Chandrasekhars are satisfied with nothing less than clean water; imagine what if at least some start creating awareness through creative communication and some start creating innovative solutions to address the concerns? What if not just individuals but institutions, organisations and government bodies address them innovatively?

When I was teaching at a design institute in Toronto, I also happened to visit the institute without boundaries and they were also addressing the problem of water. The institute was inspired by Bruce Mau who is known for his book on Massive Change. Design and innovation are often easily satisfied with small and incremental changes and turns a blind eye to larger concerns. Can our innovation create a big difference?

We need innovations for affordable effluent plants. We need innovations for alternate sustainable industrial processes and practises. We need innovations which will clean our rivers, help rainwater harvesting-the list is endless. We also need to have policy frameworks which will take into cognisance large issues and effective modalities for mapping innovative ideas and implementing them.

A vision-led approach requires sensitivity to concerns, a holistic approach to systematically studying those concerns and imagination to solve them, a study systematic and detailed enough to understand the impact of key variable factors and holistic enough to address the issue from the perspective of all stakeholders.

There are many lessons to learn from this:

1. Think BIG. Have concerns.
    
2. We need not use innovation only for being com petitive in the market, we need to use innovative thinking to cooperate and transform practices and systems.
    
3. Develop policies which enable and leverage resources to drive transformative innovations. We need to move from an incremental problem-solving approach to developing a vision led ap proach to innovation.

As they say, there is no point applying band-aids to deep wounds and fractured bodies.

The writer is a senior faculty at the National
Institute of Design. She wonders how a small puddle of water can hold the entire moon.