Friday, April 17, 2009
Fish scales from my eyes
In Japanese, there is a saying "fish scales fell from my eyes" (「目からウロコが落ちる」）. It is a metaphor for being able to see clearly because something that was clouding your vision has been removed.
I had such an experience the other night, as a hodge-podge of MIT students, professors, and Net Impact members chatted over dinner in a semi-noisy bar. The conversation rolled on with interesting points of view, but the epiphany hit when my new acquaintance said, "All these social enterprises... they talk about scalability, but I think they've got it slightly wrong. Everyone has a technology or process and wants to replicate them in multitudes, but social enterprise is all relative and specific to each community. What you really need to 'scale' are smart entrepreneurs. An Indian social entrepreneur once said, 'You want scalability? Clone me. Have more of me working in communities. That's scalability and that's all you need!'"
I felt momentarily dumbfounded. I felt a little embarrassed that I haven't thought of scalability in that way - I was just as inclined to think that if a good technology or idea was created, it should be promoted as far as it could go. But if you slightly shift the idea of scalability to 'scalability of smart people who can do things', you have an improved strategy for development. I'm excited about this mini-discovery, because it changes the game a bit now.
// posted by sakit @ 9:32 AM 
