[MUSIC] Well instead of talking about overcoming natural constraints, I'd
rather talk about living within natural constraints.
And so here it's really not about that we're going to have some kind of mindset
that oh, we can trample nature, we can control it, we do all sorts of things.
But really is to say how do I actually live within it?
Because if I don't have to expend energy, you know, taming nature.
I can use that energy for other parts of my innovation other, maybe more important
parts of the innovation. So if I can understand how to live within
it. I might have a better chance of getting
my innovation real, and getting my innovation produced and adopted in the
world. So one thing is to use what's available.
That there are materials around that we might be able to use.
In some developing countries to, to irrigate fields, what farmers might do is
go buy a, a diesel powered pump and try to come up with the diesel somewhere to
be able to run that pump. And so, a pump is very, very expensive,
it's heinously expensive, and it'll require many months of a family's wages.
And then also, where to get the diesel from since the diesel has to be brought
in from far, far away, especially if you're in a rural area like this.
And so what Paul Polak came up with, and Paul Polak wrote a book out of poverty
where he describes this and he describes this company, IDE, International
Development, Enterprises. They develop this $20 pump that was
actually human-powered. And so in these places where they don't
have a lot of diesel sitting around, they certainly have a lot of people sitting
around and so, he made this pump. It's basically a cast-iron pump and it
has, you put two bamboo poles in it and you're able to use it like, you do the
step master motion. Which uses the big muscles in your legs
instead of the small muscles in your arms to pump this thing.
It's, and it, and by, because of the leverage, when you put these let me show
you a picture of one. W, w, by way of leverage, you can
actually have small children. You know, kids can do this and, and pump
fluid in just a good a way as the diesel engine can, and you can do it at a price
that's actually affordable, and that's actually works within that context.
So again, using what you have at hand can be an important thing.
My next piece of advice is to come in from the wind and rain.
And so here, I really did think about what, when I cite my area for
transformation, so I have a innovation that's going to be produced or going to
make something somewhere, how do I think about where I put it?
You know, these things, like I said before, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires,
floods, avalanches. All those things are going to happen, and
so, let me think about them ahead of time, and say, to what extent are these
going to be problematic for me? In the tsunami in Japan in 2011, there
was a big problem because, here's a picture of a clean room.
The, the, the one on this side, picture of a clean room, where they're making
computer chips. And the problem with computer chips is a
very time-dependent, sequence-dependent process that is, cannot be interrupted.
And when power went out and when the floods came in, the, the processes were
interrupted and they lost millions and millions, and millions of dollars worth
of production that was in process because of this.
And so we don't think about it, if I have a process that's super succeptible or
super vulnerable to that kind of thing, how do I think about where it is I
want to put that process? So this is something important to think
about. If I'm, it goes from anywhere from baking
bread, if you need a certain level of humidity and things like that.
Where can you put it? To something as complex as making
computer chips. In her book Biomimicry, Jane, Janine
Benyus, in 1997, she wrote a book that described how it is that we might use
models in nature, we might mimic things in nature it's called Biomimicry.
You'd mimic things in nature to create new innovations that actually work to
sustain life, and sustain it in a way that's consistent, or that's more easy on
the world. So take this example of a termite mound,
this is a gigantic termite mound. these things are tall, and high, and one
question has always been, how do these things cool themselves?
Because there's a lot of insects in here, and they're in really hot places, and
this thing is sticking up in the air. But it's often where there's not a lot of
wind, how do they cool themselves. Well, through careful study some people
figure it out. And in fact, McPherson Architect in
Harare, Zim, in Harare, Zimbabwe, he created this building, Eastgate of,
Eastgate office buildings, Eastgate Center.
And this building, because the way it's designed, it uses the cooling, the idea
of how the termite mound cools itself, is able to use 90% less energy for
ventilation than other buildings of comparable size.
And so, that's pretty amazing, 90% less energy just by having modeled it on a
termite mound. And probably is, inside it probably is
like a termite mound, if you think of any high rise building, full of little people
scurrying about, it has that, that sense. Another thing we might do is get smart
about our supply chain. That is, understanding when people, where
it is we put the outputs in a way that actually is helpful.
Starbucks, you know Starbucks, they make a lot of coffee, and a lot of coffee
throws off a lot of coffee grinds. And the coffee grinds really are not that
useful to them. It's something that they probably would
have to pay to have taken away. One thing they do is they put a, often
there's little basket inside the Starbucks where they put the coffee
grinds, the used coffee grinds. And they put them in these big bags and
as the customer you're just able to grab a bag or grab five bags, grab whatever
and take it home and use it as compost. So you can spread it out in your garden,
it's actually very healthy kind of compost.
And so what they're doing is, they're able to take this thing that's normally a
waste, waste product, and get the customers to take it with them.
And that is actually very, well that's, that's good thinking, because they're
able to get the waste product out of their store.
And get it to a place where it's actually much more useful than had they trucked it
off into a big landfill somewhere, where it wasn't actually being used as a
compost. It was a real high value thing.
And from the customer's perspective, the customer also gets access to compost
through this composting material, and doesn't have to go buy some more
themselves. And so there's a, a virtual cycle in
there through that whole thing. Another example like that, is with Martin
Guitar Company and, and their pretty space and the SmartWood program.
Martin joined the SmartWood consortium. And what the SmartWood consortium does is
they certify the use of woods, of basically hardwoods, inside of companies.
And what they certify is that the wood will be sustainably harvested fairly
purchased and, and, and bought and, and, and used and, and, and audited through
it's lifecycle. The value to Martin is first of all,
there are some people who play guitars who actually care about the environment,
and who like to see this. And those are people who are set up in
this way, emotionally. And that they're going to pay more money
for one of these guitars. These guitars probably start at, like,
3,000 dollars. The other thing that it does, is, it
ensures for Martin that they actually have a sustainable wood supply.
Because if they know that the wood supplies, that they were buying these
certified trees and they're sustainably grown.
That they're going to be around for a long time they'll be able to get access
to these. And so at their factory, they're not
going to be likely to idle it. That is, they have these highly paid,
highly skilled crafts people, who build these guitars and the worse po, possible
problem you could have is a bunch of people sitting around but no wood.
And so by sustainably getting the wood you ensure that you have a nice supply
chain. And by doing the Smartwood part it
actually helps the customer, the kinds of customers that you want to buy your
products. And so it becomes a virtual cycle there
as well. So why are some things just hard?
Well it may have to do with the ecology of it, because the distribution of the
natural resources, and our ability to sustain life, within the context of our
innovations occur. To wrap this week up on technological
constraints, let me just leave you with an example that harkens back to the one
from last week. Last week we talked about the Segway, and
about the sort of this idea of the self balancing scooter.
Well I ran across this interesting article where, written by Trevor
Blackwell, released on a website where he de, he chronicles his building of one of
these self-balancing scooters. And, you could, by the end, he said he
spent about 5,000 bucks. He spent about a week, he spent another
week tweaking it and writing it up, but basically spent a week making this thing
happen. So clearly, here's a case, unlike the
A12, where technological constraints were not the problem.
And often, we want to jump right to technological constraints.
Especially if we're oriented as an engineer, we think of ourselves as, you
know, sort of a technical person. often the technology is, is concrete,
it's easy, we can test whether it's working or not and it's a lot easier to
sort of jump into than it is to deal with the human aspects of the constraints that
we're talking about. So again, so don't be tricked, and don't
just jump right into thinking that every problem is a technological problem.
But this is not to say that not every problem, that every problem is not a
technological problem as well. And so here again, we require a little
bit of judgment though. We to actually use our brains to figure
out is this the constraint that we suffer from given the innovation we're trying to
do or not. So ultimately, these kind of constraints
why some things are hard. They're hard because physics, because we
don't know how to manage matter. We don't know how to make matter behave
beacuse of time, because we may not have time.
We may not have windows of opportunity. We may think of time in the wrong way
inside of our organization. In, in unproductive ways and then because
of ecology. Because there's not a good place to get
the inputs we need, there's not a good place to do the transformation we need.
And there's not a good place for the outputs, both the valued outputs and also
the byproducts of what it is we're producing, in terms of our innovation.
And it's all open source, people who've given me lots of images that I can use in
my class[MUSIC]
David A. Owens, PhD, PEProfessor
Jim RosenbergIndependent Consultant and Senior Advisor at NAS
