Problem: Within the next 10 years, older people are expected to outnumber children for the first time in history. By 2040 there will be double the number of people over the age of 65 that there are today.
This means, if you are 25 now, by the time you retire there will be more than a staggering 1.3 billion people who are too old to work—that’s the same number of people currently living in the whole of China.
If you have enjoyed a successful career and invested wisely, you have little to fear. Most elderly people, however, will be a burden on societies and governments.
In response to this challenge vexing policymakers around the world, a group of enterprising undergraduate students at Nottingham University Business School China recently came up with extraordinary business ideas. They identified some ways to create money-making opportunities while at the same time helping society provide welfare to their elderly citizens.
One of their novel, if controversial, solutions was to offer free healthcare to the elderly in return for a donation of healthy organs upon death. The proceeds from organs would be used to fund the free healthcare. Mindful of the ethical minefield in this sensitive area of healthcare, the students identified the need to create two companies—and keep the management separate and closely monitored by regulatory authorities.
Of course, trading in organs is currently banned, and doctors might argue about whether there is any point transferring organs from the elderly to the young. But with astute planning, strict regulations in place, and medical advances that will keep our elderly healthy enough to live for so much longer, this may feasibly not be out-of-bounds in the future.
So how did the students get to this unusual, creative idea that has the potential to make a real impact on the lives of people as well as the financial bottom line for their business idea? They harnessed a unique problem-solving technique that we have developed and use for educational training at our campuses in Ningbo, China, in the United Kingdom and Malaysia. We recently shared this technique with some of our peers in the Philippines.
The Ingenuity Guide, for clear thinking, is the name given to this creative problem-solving model to encourage students and professionals to think differently about innovation. The approach is successfully applied in a team approach to create and apply new, and more, ideas to problems and—if used as an executive training tool—to come up with new ideas to outsmart competitors.
The model has proved so successful that we have taken it out of the lecture rooms and into the business community where professionals and entrepreneurs dig deep within themselves and tap into their own creativity.
A case in point is a recent workshop at the University of the Philippines in Baguio City, where access to water is a seasonal—and very serious—problem. There, a group of young professionals and entrepreneurs came up with an innovative idea of conserving and saving water in households by using dirty water to flush away dirty produce.
Delegates got as far as planning—for the city’s urban planners—how the pipes should be laid, over a weekend of intense brainstorming and discussion. And not only did they address their city’s water conservation concern, they left the workshop with new skills that can be applied again and again to other difficult issues.
Not all “Ingenuity converts” are looking to solve the world’s biggest challenges. Most are hunting for new business ideas; others would like fresh inspiration to reconfigure what they already have to make their operations more efficient.
In broad brushstrokes, the “Ingenuity model” focuses minds on:
identifying root problems;
exploring the dynamics of those problems;
discovering multiple solutions; and
effectively evaluating solutions.
Teachers are facilitators or mentors, providing tools for each step, whether it is using wild imagination, relying on divergent thinking skills, or logical and judgmental evaluations. Brainstorming, lateral thinking games and assessment controls are all at hand. “Ingenuity” has been described as a structured way of enabling unstructured thinking.
These workshops promote an experiential and integrated learning approach where individuals actively engage in the processes of developing tacit knowledge and awareness about opportunities, or problems. They develop the habit of applying problem-solving strategies in daily lives as well as work situations.
Such entrepreneurial inspiration creates gales of creative destruction, leading to economic development and—so far, for us as humans—continued survival and progress. Ingenuity allows us to think the unthinkable and introduce change which transforms rather than just improves.
The authorities in China and elsewhere may have less of a problem dealing with a greying population, and other looming crises, if we can encourage all young citizens to use an approach which encourages the somewhat crazy or outlandish, but contributes through innovation.
Dr. Maris Farquharson is assistant professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the business school of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.