How To Become A Successful Inventor In Nigeria — The Crux Of Inventing, Getting A Buildable Idea 3

Image of open human head with various objects belongs to IPOwatchdog.com

By Kenneth Nwachinemelu David-Okafor

Welcome to the fifth installment of this post.

I hope you are having as much fun reading, reflecting and, hopefully, grasping as much insight from this super-lengthy post as much as I am.

In the fourth post, I elaborated on three prospective sources which even though a  prospective inventor in Nigeria might not readily have access to the following three ideas’ sources but they are no less valid as veritable source of "buildable" ideas.

The sources I considered in that post include: a) Reverse Engineering, b) University-Industry Collaborations, and c) National Science Festival/International Technological Exhibitions/Demonstrations.

There is so much more to write about National Science Festival/International Technological Exhibitions/Demonstrations however we would restrict ourselves to just whetting appetite rather than spooning feeding. I will prefer you to dig along with me, for more information and even more learning.

In this post I would consider a final source of "buildable" ideas as we conclude our thoughts on the big question is: HOW DO YOU SOURCE GOOD IDEAS? In this installment I rather which to elaborate on a less publicized source of ideas¾SPIRITUAL SOURCE. This should resonate in a country which portrays high levels of religiosity.

I observed that many inventors worldwide who are engaged in transcendental meditation and other forms of esoteric modes of spirituality are never shy of attributing their achievements to these beliefs but the Judeo-Christian faith was rarely referenced.

I particularly noted inventors and innovators engaged in transcendental meditation and other such modes of spirituality were never shy when attributing their successes to their spiritual observances. The case seemed obverse with the followers of the Judeo-Christian God who appeared less forthcoming in attribution of their accomplishment to their faith. As a matter of fact in some certain atheist/humanistic European countries, Asiatic countries predominantly inclined toward eastern religions/other esoteric spiritual worship and other nations with proclivities to other faiths, they do not even acknowledge the God of heaven and earth at all.

I realized the challenge were two-folds¾the first was that there was under-representation of the accomplishments of inventors of the Judeo-Christian faith in literature and the other was the issue of political correctness which made some people shy to speak up boldly about what they really professed.

In his seminal work published in 1973 "Art and the Bible" the respected Francis A. Schaefar wrote:

“The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.” (pg. 61)

This thought echoes the words of Robert Grudin who in his 1990 treatise "The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation" wrote:

“Creativity is worship insofar as it is, at its essence, a response…In the call to be creative, a call that goes out to all God’s children, we sense the call to listen to him and, in childlike naiveté, to imitate our father by creating works that will magnify his praise.”

Then Professor Gary Oster in his "Christian Innovation: Descent in to the Abyss of Light" wrote:

“Innovation may be redemptive. Scripture and the personal experience of Christians worldwide show that God uses innovation for humans to know more of Him, to communicate with Him, and to ultimately accomplish His earthly will for mankind. What makes innovation Christian innovation? . . . innovation is Christian when it is ultimately aligned with God’s purpose and methods. . . .We [Christians] are not satisfied to observe God’s innovative perfection, but seek to lovingly mimic Him...”

This makes complete sense to me and validates my personal experiences and testimonies. But I have thought it much more illustrative in an unbiased manner to tell the story of another man on this particular occasion. AT THIS POINT I WOULD AGAIN STEP BEYOND NIGERIA; REMEMBER YOU MAY DRAW RESOURCES FROM THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. The story of this African-American inventor should inspire a fresh consideration of the prospects of inventive ideas from the God of the Judeo-Christian faith.

George Washington Carver c1910 Image source: Wikipedia

Let me share the incredible story of George Washington Carver, the man whom some called "The Wizard of Tuskegee" and Time magazine in 1941 dubbed Carver a "Black Leonardo".

How did George Washington Carver receive his own prolific ideas?

His faith in God, by his own admission, was what inspired the Master inventor, George Washington Carver.

Carver was reported to have confessed that he once asked God to show him the secrets of the universe. However, according to Carver, God started him out with something smaller ¾the peanut.

Carver took those secrets and produced hundreds of inventions that are still in use today.  His research at the Tuskegee institute resulted in the creation of more than 300 products from peanuts¾products like cooking oil, paint and, yes, peanut butter. In addition, he created more than 100 products from sweet potatoes. Carver was also responsible for inventing synthetic materials, such as marble and plywood. He even invented the dye which is still used in Crayola Crayons. Also a talented artist, Carver created some of his own art paints using local clays. In deed he was recognized for his many achievements and talents.

Carver made a significant mark and admitted to friend, colleagues and brethren, faith in Jesus Christ inspired him. He believed he could have faith both in God and science and integrated them into his life. He testified on many occasions that his faith in Jesus was the only mechanism by which he could effectively pursue and perform the art of science.

Here is the story pieced together from multiple sources the Carver Museum. The Black Christian News.com website wrote (excerpting biographical information from the book, “100 Most Influential Black Christians in History”) a summary about George Washington Carver which read thus:

George Washington Carver said, “Our creator is the same and never changes despite the names given Him by people here and in all parts of the world. Even if we gave Him no name at all, He would still be there, within us, waiting to give us good on this earth.”

George Washington Carver, a U.S. agricultural chemist and agronomist, was born a slave in Diamond Grove, Missouri, around 1864. While he was a baby, he and his mother were kidnapped by raiders. His owner, Moses Carver, paid for their return, but only George was returned.

A frail child, George was late to talk but showed so great an interest in plants at an early age that neighbors brought him their problems with their plants. The Carvers taught him to read, write, and do math. When they could teach him no more, he decided that he would need to leave to find a school that would teach African-American students. He was about ten or twelve years old.

While working menial jobs, he worked on his education. He graduated from high school in his late twenties and earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Iowa State Agricultural College in 1896. Although he loved botany, Carver was a well-rounded student who excelled in music and art. Two of his paintings appeared in the 1893 Chicago’s World Fair. He participated in YMCA, debate, and the campus’ military regiment.

After graduation, Booker T. Washington invited George Washington Carver to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to be the director of agricultural research. Arriving at Tuskegee, he found that the agricultural department consisted of a barn, a cow, and some chickens. With the help of students, Carver scrounged and made tools and equipment. He taught farm management and programs on nutrition and health, even visiting farms and communities to help the people.

A devout Christian, Carver considered his laboratory “God’s little workshop.” He discovered that peanuts and soybeans would restore soil fertility, but farmers complained that they had no market for these products. To provide markets, Carver developed 300 products from peanuts and 118 from sweet potatoes. By 1940, peanuts had become the South’s second largest crop.

In 1916, he was honored by being appointed to the Royal Society of Arts in London. In 1923, he received the NAACP’s prestigious Spingarn Medal. In 1938, a feature film, Life of George Washington Carver, was made. Before his death in 1943, he received the Roosevelt Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Southern Agriculture. The Hall of Fame for Great Americans inducted him in 1977. The National Inventors Hall of Fame inducted him in 1990.

Carver’s dedication to God and his people led him to patent only three of his 500 agricultural inventions because he wanted his products to benefit all. He left his life savings to Tuskegee Institute.

During World War II, George Washington Carver worked alongside American industrialist Henry Ford to devise a way to make a rubber substitute from goldenrod, a plant weed Image source: atlantablackstar.com

However I wanted to also include the fuller story which highlighted certain details I think a prospective inventor in Nigeria would consider insightful. Here is what I learned of George Washington Carver:

George Washington Carver (by January 1864 – 5th January 1943), an American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor, became a Christian when he was ten years old. As a young boy, he was not expected to live past his twenty-first birthday due to poor and failing health. Nevertheless, he lived well past the age of twenty-one, and his belief deepened as a result.

Carver was often heard to say “The Lord has guided me,” and “Without my Saviour, I am nothing.”

George Washington Carver was born to slave parents near Diamond Grove, Newton County, near Crystal Place, now known as Diamond, Missouri, possibly in 1864 or 1865, though the exact date is not known. His master, Moses Carver, was a German American immigrant who had purchased Carver’s parents, Mary and Giles, from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855, for US$700. Carver had 10 sisters and a brother, all of whom died prematurely. When George was only a week old, George, a sister, and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders from Arkansas. George’s brother, James, was rushed to safety from the kidnappers. The kidnappers sold the slaves in Kentucky.

Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but he located only the infant George. Moses negotiated with the raiders to gain the boy’s return and rewarded Bentley. After slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife Susan raised George and his older brother James as their own children. They encouraged George to continue his intellectual pursuits, and ‘Aunt Susan’ taught him the basics of reading and writing.

When the Civil War ended a year later and times were hard for blacks¾something from which Carver and his family were not exempt. He grew up poor and was denied an education, because of his race. But that didn't stop him from learning. Carver fell in love with the wonders of nature. It was a passion that earned him a nickname that lasted a lifetime. Carver eventually went to high school and later attended college at 30. He earned a degree in agricultural science from Iowa State University.

“He was considered the ‘plant doctor’ as a youngster,” explained Tyrone Brandyburg of the Carver Museum. “He pretty much had a green thumb¾everything he touched grew.”

In 1896, he completed his master’s degree and was invited by Booker Taliaferro Washington to join the faculty of the Tuskegee Institute, a trade school for blacks in Alabama. This institute is now known as the Tuskegee University, a private, historically black university located in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States, founded by African-American educator Booker T. Washington.

His research at the institute resulted in the creation of more than 300 products from peanuts— products like cooking oil, paint and, yes, peanut butter. In addition, he created more than 100 products from sweet potatoes. Carver is also responsible for inventing synthetic materials, such as marble and plywood. He even invented the dye which is still used in Crayola Crayons.

Carver reputedly discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. Among the listed items that he suggested to southern farmers to help them economically were adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chilli sauce, fuel briquettes (a biofuel), ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder and wood stain. Three patents (one for cosmetics; patent number 1,522,176, and two for paints and stains; patent numbers 1,541,478 and 1,632,365) were issued to George Washington Carver in the years 1925 to 1927; however, they were not commercially successful. Aside from these patents and some recipes for food, Carver left no records of formulae or procedures for making his products. He did not keep a laboratory notebook.

Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. Together with other agricultural experts, he urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by practicing systematic crop rotation: alternating cotton crops with plantings of sweet potatoes or legumes (such as peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas). These both restored nitrogen to the soil and the crops were good for human consumption. Following the crop rotation practice resulted in improved cotton yields and gave farmers alternative cash crops. To train farmers to successfully rotate and cultivate the new crops, Carver developed an agricultural extension program for Alabama that was similar to the one at Iowa State. To encourage better nutrition in the South, he widely distributed recipes using the alternative crops. In addition, he founded an industrial research laboratory, where he and assistants worked to popularize the new crops by developing hundreds of applications for them. They did original research as well as promoting applications and recipes which they collected from others. Carver distributed his information as agricultural bulletins.

Carver’s research was intended to provide replacements for commercial products, which were generally beyond the budget of the small one-horse farmer. A misconception grew that his research on products for subsistence farmers were developed by others commercially to change Southern agriculture. Carver’s work to provide them with resources for more independence from the cash economy presaged the “appropriate technology” work of E.F. Schumacher.

Carver marketed a few of his peanut products. The Carver Penol Company sold a mixture of creosote and peanuts as a patent drug for respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis. Other ventures were The Carver Products Company and the Carvoline Company. Carvoline Antiseptic Hair Dressing was a mix of peanut oil and lanolin. Carvoline Rubbing Oil was a peanut oil for massages.

During his more than four decades at Tuskegee, Carver’s official published work consisted mainly of 44 practical bulletins for farmers. His first bulletin in 1898 was on feeding acorns to farm animals. His final bulletin in 1943 was about the peanut. He also published six bulletins on sweet potatoes, five on cotton, and four on cowpeas. Some other individual bulletins dealt with alfalfa, wild plum, tomato, ornamental plants, corn, poultry, dairying, hogs, preserving meats in hot weather, and nature study in schools.

His most popular bulletin, How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption, was first published in 1916 and was reprinted many times. It gave a short overview of peanut crop production and contained a list of recipes from other agricultural bulletins, cookbooks, magazines, and newspapers, such as the Peerless Cookbook, Good Housekeeping, and Berry's Fruit Recipes. Carver’s was far from the first American agricultural bulletin devoted to peanuts, but his bulletins did seem to be more popular and widespread than previous ones.

He created some of his own art paints using local clays. Unfortunately, in December 1947, a fire broke out in the Carver Museum, and much of the collection was damaged. Time Magazine reported that all but three of the 48 Carver paintings at the museum were destroyed. His best-known painting, displayed at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, depicts a yucca and cactus. This canvas survived and has undergone conservation. It is displayed together with several of his other paintings.

In 1948 and 1998, he appeared on U.S. commemorative stamps, and he was depicted on a commemorative half dollar coin from 1951 to 1954. Two ships, the Liberty ship SS George Washington Carver and the nuclear submarine USS George Washington Carver (SSBN-656) were named in his honour.

Carver viewed faith in Jesus as a means of destroying both barriers of racial disharmony and social stratification. He was as concerned with his students' character development as he was with their intellectual development. He compiled a list of eight cardinal virtues for his students to strive toward:

A monument to Carver at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis

o   Be clean both inside and out.

o   Neither look up to the rich nor down on the poor.

o   Lose, if need be, without squealing.

o   Win without bragging.

o   Always be considerate of women, children, and older people.

o   Be too brave to lie.

o   Be too generous to cheat.

o   Take your share of the world and let others take theirs.

Beginning in 1906 at Tuskegee, Carver led a Bible class on Sundays for several students at their request. He regularly portrayed stories by acting them out. He responded to critics with this: "When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."

In 1977, George Washington Carver was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. In 1990, Carver was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1994, Iowa State University awarded Carver Doctor of Humane Letters. In 2000, Carver was a charter inductee in the US Department of Agriculture Hall of Heroes as the “Father of Chemurgy”.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed George Washington Carver on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. In 2005, Carver's research at the Tuskegee Institute was designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society. On February 15th, 2005, an episode of Modern Marvels included scenes from within Iowa State University's Food Sciences Building and about Carver's work. In 2005, the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri, opened a George Washington Carver garden in his honour, which includes a life-size statue of him. Many institutions honour George Washington Carver to this day. Dozens of elementary schools and high schools are named after him. National Basketball Association star David Robinson and his wife, Valerie, founded an academy named after Carver; it opened on 17th September 2001, in San Antonio, Texas.

Remember one of my key interest is that I am keen on Nigeria pursuing the cultivation of inventiveness in whatever available platform whether formal, non-formal or informal learning platforms.

As I said in the first post, Nigeria sorely needs for the activity of inventing to take root and take off, explosively. I am hoping all the last three post would have inspired even a glimmer of the nugget of a "buildable" concept in your mind!

TO BE CONCLUDED

How To Become A Successful Inventor In Nigeria — The Crux Of Inventing, Getting A "Buildable" Idea 2

Image of open human head with various objects belongs to IPOwatchdog.com

By Kenneth Nwachinemelu David-Okafor

Welcome to the fourth installment in this serialized blog post.

The big question we began treating in the third installment is: HOW DO YOU SOURCE GOOD IDEAS?

How did some people who have gone ahead do it? Or even you perhaps, how did you do it the first time?

Various people have received great ideas through all sorts of sources and agencies — by accident, from technological exhibitions/demonstrations, from joint research (through working collaborations), through imitation (Reverse engineering may be considered here), by intuition, by studying local environment and observing missing links, by thinking and pursuing hunches, from reading books and other publications, through meditation and others. While some would not disclose how they got their own ideas.

A prospective inventor in Nigeria might not readily have access to the following three ideas’ sources but they are no less valid as veritable source of "buildable" ideas. They are namely: a) Reverse Engineering, b) University-Industry Collaborations, and c) National Science Festival/International Technological Exhibitions/Demonstrations

Reverse Engineering

From a review of literature, Reverse engineering is simply "trying to figure out how something works."

It is the process of discovering the technological principles of a human (or non-human) made device, object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation.

It often involves taking something (e.g., a mechanical device, electronic component, biological, chemical or organic matter or software programme) apart and analyzing its workings in detail to be used in maintenance, or to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without using or simply duplicating (without understanding) the original.

Reverse engineering is said to be fundamentally directed to discovery and learning, as engineers learn the state of the art by reverse engineering others’ products, and has been described as the important supporting technology which digests and absorbs advanced technology and shortens the cycle of product design development. It leads to creation of new goods/products, new processes and new knowledge, which are major sources of technical change.

The process is mainly undertaken with the end aim of learning how to build a technology or make improvements to it and It is one of the endorsed and legally acceptable means of extracting know-how or knowledge for creation of innovation from a human-made artefact or product, even if the intention is to make a product that will draw customers away from the original product.

In its purest form, an innovator following this path buys, begs, borrows, or steals a product or a system, takes it apart to understand how it works, and duplicates it, usually making it better or upgrading it. By doing this the innovator avoids the design and engineering phase of independent, new or original innovation by using a design originated by somebody else.

When a new product is created as a result of reverse engineering, same is regarded as innovation as well and can be protected by patent under intellectual property in order to generate profit which can be reinvested to create more innovation or channeled into other sectors of the economy to generally boost same.

It has therefore been seen as a source of vast development of technology all over the world, and an economically proven as well as legally acceptable way of boosting economic growth. Here, we recall, that it is well known that one of the influential factors that could lead to economic growth is the improvement of technology. This could increase productivity with the same levels of labor, thus accelerating growth and development.

In under developed countries therefore, reverse engineering is viewed as a short-cut method for access to technology, its development and completion. By use of this method, underdeveloped countries can decrease the technologic gap between themselves and industrial countries. This is because it has been shown to be one of the fastest ways to discover what is in a component, in order to improve on it and use the knowledge gained there-from for further advancement of technology. It thrives where there is a good working system that boosts Research and Development (R&D) and its existence helps nations to develop new technologies, create opportunities and improve their technological positions on the global scene.

Black and white sketch portrait of the famous inventor, physicist and engineer Nikola Tesla Image source: wespenre.com

University-Industry Collaborations

Individuals and countries can take advantage of the opportunities which University-Industry collaborations present. Though the university system in Nigeria, for a variety of reasons, is lagging here, yet prospective inventors who get into higher education and graduate studies when they travel overseas could chance upon this University-Industry linkage.

A review of literature indicates we are now living in a time of global business activity and knowledge economy. Capital, which was once the major constraint to growth, is now mobile on a global scale. Natural resources can be shipped to anywhere they can be used in the most efficient way. What really matters is the knowledge that enables a company to differentiate and generate competitive advantage. The advent of digital technology and biotechnology in the ’90s has amply demonstrated the way in which the nature of competition today differs from the earlier paradigm.

A high number of new information technologies originated from academic circles and venture businesses rather than from the laboratories of large firms. An increased call for the value of money and reduced time to the market added to the pressures on firms to use the output of R&D that takes place outside laboratories of companies. All of these forces came together to create growing incentives for firms to work with universities for research and development.

From the perspective of the universities, there is a growing interest to join forces with the private sector. Universities are being called upon to make tangible contributions to society. In many economies, governments are coming under the strain of allocating limited resources over divergent requirements such as providing for the aging population, combating environmental degradation, and maintaining education and social welfare. The university is no longer a sacrosanct investment, free from the critical evaluation of cost effectiveness. To work with industry is now a very attractive option for universities, as the laboratories of the private sector are often better funded and better equipped with research instruments. The level and quality of their research is as high as those of universities. In addition, students tend to wish to attend universities that have close working relations, since such universities offer chances of finding good jobs after graduation.

The experience of the United States has been examined carefully across the world. The US industry lost its leadership position largely to Japan during the ’80s, but revived since the middle of the ’90s. During the ’80s, the US introduced many measures to facilitate the commercial use of scientific knowledge that was in the hands of the universities. The Bayh-Dole act of 1980 was the best-known legislation for that purpose. The Act permitted the universities to retain their new knowledge that resulted from publicly funded research activities and where possible to commercialize such knowledge through licensing to industry or to start-up companies.

National Science Festivals/International Technological Exhibitions

Science and technology history is replete with science festivals, technological exhibitions and demonstrations.

I will not treat these exhaustively. Rather what I would prefer is to whet your curiosity and give you fodder to explore; knowledge is key.

According to the Encyclopaedia 2016, a science festival is a festival that showcases science and technology with the same freshness and flair that would be expected from an arts or music festival. Events can be varied, including lectures, exhibitions, workshops, live demonstrations of experiments, guided tours, and panel discussions. There may also be events linking science to the arts or history, such as plays, dramatized readings, and musical productions. The core content is that of science and technology, but the style comes from the world of the arts.

The modern concept of a science festival comes from the city of Edinburgh where in April 1989 the first Edinburgh International Science Festival took place. Edinburgh's success led to the development of science festivals in many other parts of the world. The British Science Association restructured its annual meeting, originally established in 1831 as a discussion forum for scientists, to turn it into the British Science Festival of today. The town of Cheltenham—famous for its jazz, music, and literature festivals—added science to its portfolio with the creation of the Cheltenham Science Festival in 2002.

The concept spread to Sweden in 1997 with The International Science Festival in Gothenburg which is an annual festival in central Gothenburg, Sweden with thought provoking science activities for the public.

The spread of science festivals within the United States is relatively recent. One of the earliest examples is Wonderfest, an annual Bay Area science festival that began in 1998. Additionally, the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science includes a number of public events. Focusing on one particular science, the physics festival "Mastering the Mysteries of the Universe", was held in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1999 in association with the centennial of the American Physical Society.

TO BE CONCLUDED

How To Become A Successful Inventor In Nigeria — The Crux Of Inventing, Getting A "Buildable" Idea

Image of open human head with various objects belongs to IPOwatchdog.com

By Kenneth Nwachinemelu David-Okafor

Welcome to the third installment of this post.

I had great excitement over the second part of this post which showed how the world economy had at various times benefitted from world-changing inventions. The point is unmistakable: INVENTIONS HAVE PLAYED A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN GROWTH OF GLOBAL ECONOMIES AND NATIONAL WEALTH.

What significance does this hold for Nigeria?

A lot.

Perhaps we should expatiate this significance.

I want to treat in this following post how you get an idea for a feasible and "buildable" idea for your invention. This is the most important part of this post so far.

The big question is: HOW DO YOU SOURCE GOOD IDEAS?

NAIJAGRAPHITTI BLOG has an excellent post although it was referring in the broader context to Africa (as you read think of Nigeria in your mind), I would share (please permit me) in its entirety here:

Source: "How Big Ideas Are Built" by Rowan Gibson

Creativity & Innovation — "Standing On The Shoulders of Giants"

By Kenneth Nwachinemelu David-Okafor

Ideas are ineluctable inputs and outputs of both the creative and innovative processes. Ideas in essence are the business of the blog on creativity and innovation; it would be a recurring theme and topic as long as NAIJAGRAPHITTI BLOG exists.

Starting March 10 to April 15, 2015, we posted three separate articles on how they emerge, preparing the ground for teaching blog readers and enthusiasts how to harvest their ideas. 

This post is the third of three posts which we wish to use to establish the collaborative nature of ideas birthing.

In the article, Where Original Ideas Come From, Greg Satell (CLICK HERE) made the point on the nature of and results of communal effort in the emergence of scientific revolution. With clear examples he defines the collaborative nature of ideas which have transformed human history across millennia.

Rowan Gibson established in How Big Ideas Are Built (CLICK HERE) that Einstein stood on the on the shoulder of more giants to revolutionize physics among other facts.  In this post, Steven Johnson in this 2010 TED talk Where Good Ideas Come From takes us through history to show even more examples of collaborative idea birthing and growing. People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web. 

In this post, I wish to build on the theme of collaborative pursuits for ideas birthing and highlight the gaps in the African ideas marketplace going back as far back as 5,000 years ago.

Winning Ideas – Outcomes of Collaborations

In his article, Where Original Ideas Come From, Greg Satell named Sir Isaac Newton and made reference to how Sir Newton, the greatest scientist of his age and not one known for his false modesty, acknowledged, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Newton wrote this line in his famous letter to his friend, Robert Hooke, himself an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath, in February 1676.

Several scholarly and mainstream studies and other works exist which were undertaken to establish the collaborative emergence of ideas.

Singh and Fleming (2010) in the work Lone inventors as sources of breakthroughs: Myth or reality? published in Management Sciences journal stated "The “lone inventor” is a myth: even geniuses benefit from exposure to ideas of others."

While a number of other scholars and practitioners in creative design practice including Dow, Fortuna and Schwartz agreed that "Seeing ideas different from their own broadens people’s perspectives, sheds light on obscure connections, and inspires people to come up with ideas they might not have thought of alone."

Scholars Pao Siangliulue, Kenneth C. Arnold, and Krzysztof Z. Gajos all of Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and Steven P. Dow of Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pasadena, USA reiterate the same point in their work Toward Collaborative Ideation at Scale—Leveraging Ideas from Others to Generate More Creative and Diverse Ideas.

Now let me elaborate on Sir Newton’s works. Science historians explain that Sir Isaac Newton’s work had built on a long chain of theory and works including those of Nicolas Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei.

Specifically, they believe that Newton's work represents the finale in a long chain of theory and discovery that evolved throughout the Scientific Revolution. The beginnings of progress had come in the sixteenth century. Nicolas Copernicus suggested that perhaps the ancient concept of the Earth's position in the universe was flawed. Giordano Bruno went one step further to claim that the universe itself was far different than the ancients and the Church perceived, and that it stretched out infinitely. Next, Johannes Kepler reduced the motions of the planets to intelligible mathematical rules. Galileo developed the system of earthly mechanics that he hinted might be applied to the heavens. Newton's work was the culmination of this chain of science, inspired by the ideas of these men and the methods and tools developed by them and others of his predecessors. Sir Newton’s seminal work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy") linked the last two remaining pieces of the puzzle—Galileo's physics and Kepler's astronomy—and emerged with the 'grand design' so many before him had sought. The design seemed not to have been established by any planning or simple geography, but rather by the interaction of the forces of nature, principally gravitation, on an enormous scale (SparkNotes, 2014). In the long run, Sir Newton set off FOUR scientific revolutions. 

In turn, Rowan Gibson in How Big Ideas Are Built wrote how Albert Einstein studied the work of his predecessors and peers—from Isaac Newton to James Clerk Maxwell, David Hume, Ernst Mach, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré, and Max Planck—either building on or refuting their ideas.

Culture Enables, Deters Or Euthanizes Ideas Emergence

What is less explicit from Satell’s and Gibson’s write-ups is the influence of culture in enabling or disabling ideas birthing.

Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From gives us a good expose to how culture fosters ideas birthing or leads to idea refining. He shares how the London’s coffee houses played significant role in the age of The Enlightenment.

From experience, this blog and its publishers have established that this has not been the case for efforts in the African ideas marketplace even from prehistoric times. It should bother every African.

Africa lost out on key advantages where great ideas are concerned. There are ample proofs ancient Africa empires’ lost their learnings, knowledge stores, sciences and wasted competitive advantage. How?

Did you know that this brilliant man Euclid who theorized Euclid’s geometry though Greek actually spent a lot of time in Africa at the Royal Library in Alexandria, Egypt, one of the most ancient places of learning in the world at the time?

Euclid was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He wrote the most enduring mathematical work of all time, the Stoicheia or Elements, a thirteen volume work. This comprehensive compilation of geometrical knowledge, based on the works of Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Menaechmus and others, was in common usage for over 2,000 years.

At the time of its introduction, Elements was the most comprehensive and logically rigorous examination of the basic principles of geometry. It survived the eclipse of classical learning, which occurred with the fall of the Roman Empire, through Arabic translations. Elements was reintroduced to Europe in 1120 c.e. when Adelard of Bath translated an Arabic version into Latin. Over time, it became a standard textbook in many societies, including the United States, and remained widely used until the mid-nineteenth century. Much of the information in it still forms a part of many high school geometry curricula (Encyclopaedia.com, 2014).

Euclid was active in Alexandria during the Ptolemaic Dynasty in reign of Ptolemy I (323–283 BC). Again from history we learn that Ptolemy I Soter I was the person credited with creating the Royal Library of Alexandria in Egypt. Ptolemy I Soter I was a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great, who became ruler of Egypt (323–283 BC) and founder of both the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Ptolemaic Dynasty. In 305/4 BC he demanded the title of pharaoh. The Royal Library was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. It was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. It functioned as a major centre of scholarship from its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. With collections of works, lecture halls, meeting rooms, and gardens, the library was part of a larger research institution called the Museum of Alexandria, where many of the most famous thinkers of the ancient world studied. The Library at Alexandria was in charge of collecting the entire world's knowledge, and most of the staff was occupied with the task of translating works onto papyrus paper. It did so through an aggressive and well-funded royal mandate involving trips to the book fairs of Rhodes and Athens (Wikipedia, 2014).

Euclid’s contemporaries include Archimedes (287 BC - 212 BC), Ptolemy I (born 367/366, Macedonia – died 283/282 BC), Egypt, Conon of Samos (280 BC - ca. 220 BC), and Apollonius of Perga (born c. 240 BC, Perga, Anatolia – died c. 190 BC).

Archaeologists have not found evidence that Euclid’s works enjoyed wide spread familiarity in ancient Egyptian society which was more interested in promoting aesthetics, mysticism and magical knowledge, and revelling in promoting the grandeur of these knowledge.

Euclid’s work was also not renowned in the neighbouring kingdom, Aksum.

Archaeologists have determined that the Kingdom of Aksum (or Axum), also known as the Aksumite Empire, was a trading nation in the area of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, which existed from approximately 100–940 AD. Historically, the ruins of the ancient city of Aksum are found close to Ethiopia's northern border. They mark the location of the heart of ancient Ethiopia, when the Kingdom of Aksum was the most powerful state between the Eastern Roman Empire and Persia. The massive ruins, dating from between the 1st and the 13th century A.D., include monolithic obelisks, giant stelae, royal tombs and the ruins of ancient castles. Long after its political decline in the 10th century, Ethiopian emperors continued to be crowned in Aksum.

The Kingdom of Aksum was ideally located to take advantage of the new trading situation. Adulis soon became the main port for the export of African goods, such as ivory, incense, gold, slaves, and exotic animals. In order to supply such goods the kings of Aksum worked to develop and expand an inland trading network. A rival, and much older trading network that tapped the same interior region of Africa was that of the Kingdom of Kush, which had long supplied Egypt with African goods via the Nile corridor. By the 1st century AD, however, Aksum had gained control over territory previously Kushite. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea explicitly describes how ivory collected in Kushite territory was being exported through the port of Adulis instead of being taken to Meroë, the capital of Kush. During the 2nd and 3rd centuries the Kingdom of Aksum continued to expand their control of the southern Red Sea basin. A caravan route to Egypt was established which bypassed the Nile corridor entirely. Aksum succeeded in becoming the principal supplier of African goods to the Roman Empire, not least as a result of the transformed Indian Ocean trading system (Wikipedia, 2014).

In spite of the greatness of these civilizations there are no records of educational and scholastic knowledge interactions, no exchange of learning between ancient Egypt, Kush and Aksum!  

Now what bothered me was why with all this rich resource of manpower, learning and viable platform of learning in ancient Egypt, Kush and Aksum, why did no African built on what Euclid did while in Egypt?

Gaps in the African Ideas Marketplace

The answer that came to me was an admixture of several concepts: culture; curiosity; purpose and access to the works of other great minds.

If you wish to stand on the shoulders of giants, you need to be curious, purposeful, collaborative and systematic; the prevailing culture must also engender clement environment and motivation.

There were other compelling reasons. A study of the historicity and social geography of Egypt reveal that the Royal Library of Alexandria and the whole notion of scholastic excellence was first and foremost a prestige factor to the grandeur and wealth of Egypt than anything else. Ancient Egypt’s elite and leadership were more enamoured of esoteric arts and mystical writings in that era.

Then there was the emergence of writing which did not spread uniformly for all the kingdoms, to enable their knowledge workers capture their learnings and knowledges. Some wrote things down and others still depended on oral history and folklores with confining limitations.

There were other reasons like atomistic ethnic cleavages, cultural alienation and linguistic barriers.

For me, curiosity is key; interestingly I recall the words of a controversial American advertising magnate Carl Ally of Ally & Gargano (formerly Carl Ally Inc) who had thoughts of why curiosity is vital in birthing ideas when he said "The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea." 

Still on curiosity, it was possible that others around Euclid in Africa were not interested in what he was doing, perhaps because they did not place much store by it. Or his African contemporaries did not have the same purpose as to add to the store of human knowledge.

Or, lastly, Euclid’s brilliant scholarship was not readily accessible to his contemporaries and scholars within his immediate environment, by geographical limitations or by language barriers.

Access is a big challenge for a number of reasons some of which are closely tied to language (Okafor, 2015).

Language as Barrier for Ideas Cross-pollination

Even from prehistoric times, Africa never has a language of tinkering, social thought and scholarship like Latin and later English. Arabic would come the closest in the last 5,000 years (Okafor, 2015).

Translation of foreign languages has proven to be a particular hurdle to scholarship (Okafor, 2015).

Sir Newton’s book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica was published in Latin, the language of scholarship in his day. Later when English would overtake Latin in importance, there were grants made available by wealthy patrons and governments to undertake massive translation projects which would make these books and their contents widely accessible.

Africa has endured many stitch-ups in this instance. African ideas exchange has been hobbled by strictures of mother tongue and foreign languages, with no structures and funding specifically for rapid translations (Okafor, 2015).

For instance, the Timbuktu manuscripts (large number of historically important manuscripts that have been preserved for centuries in private households in Timbuktu, Mali; the collections include manuscripts about art, medicine, philosophy, and science of the late Abbasid Caliphate, as well as priceless copies of the Quran; the number of manuscripts in the collections has been estimated as high as 700,000) written mostly in Hula and Arabic have yet been completely transcribed for African (and other) scholars!

Africa Rising?

We have new vistas to reverse the generations of wasted opportunities, if we should refuse to believe our own myth.

Try as much as you can, Africa cannot leapfrog critical thinking and problem solving. These are empirical.

Shimon Peres the former Israeli President gave an insight into Israel making oasis out of a desert, when he said "In Israel, a land lacking in natural resources, we learned to appreciate our greatest national advantage: our minds. Through creativity and innovation, we transformed barren deserts into flourishing fields and pioneered new frontiers in science and technology."

Now can you dust up your tucked away ideas and let’s head to the NAIJAGRAPHITTI BLOG "coffee house" or any other place we can keep these ideas conversation going?

NB: All reference to "Okafor, 2015" is part of ongoing research which findings would also be published here.

TO BE CONTINUED