My perspective on social entrepreneurship and the power of privilege evolved entirely after attending the Development Dialogue conference in Hubli, India a few weeks ago. Leaders from around the world gathered to discuss the conference’s theme: Reimagining impact. The conference focused on looking at impact through a lens of social entrepreneurship, which is the use of start-ups and entrepreneurial energy to develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. While it’s impossible to encapsulate all of the lessons I derived from my visit to India in anything short of a novel, I’ve summarized the main take-aways from my experience in this article.
My hope is that by reading this, your understanding of the differences between the problems experienced by developing nations and developed nations will become clearer and you may be inspired to take action towards this disparity in some capacity. At the very least, I hope you’re able to tease out some inspiration from the vital, enthusiastic and innovative energy pumping through India, and are left thinking about how we can all contribute to building a greater future for youth in India and around the world.
Lessons Learned
1. Do more with less for more
The underlying theme to innovation in India is to do more with less for more. From the extraordinarily wealthy individuals building empires in Bangalore, to rural farmers using farm ponds to increase the dependability of their crops each season, everyone is attempting to follow this guideline in some way. This principle breaks down to three main components:
DO MORE WITH LESS FOR MORE.
While in Canada and other developed countries, we are often ideating around creative new solutions, in India, there is a potent bias towards action which drives them to do more. Instead of talking about it, thinking about it, writing about it, as we tend to do a lot of in developed nations, India moves to action quickly and begins by solving problems as soon as they are identified. India’s relentless determination to be continuously creating, and the magnitude of the problems they’re working with, drives innovation at a rate vastly exceeding that of many developed nations.
DO MORE WITH LESS FOR MORE.
Another area where India is thriving lies in their ability to make more with less. Due to the nature of living in an environment like North America where nearly everything we need is immediately accessible to us, we tend to live in a culture of more instead of a culture of enough. Thus, it’s easy when building something to try to make it the most beautiful, sleek, nuanced product possible. While this is occasionally appropriate (i.e. when building a product specifically for the top 1% where the prestige of the product is a metric it will be evaluated against), we must remember to shift our focus to creating things with less when we want to create solutions for the masses.
The definition of ‘the masses’ changes from nation to nation. While in India, an example of the masses is the 100 million children who go hungry every day, in Canada the masses is largely defined by the middle class population. While making a solution ‘with less’ in both cases may differ drastically, the idea is that we should always try to scale down solutions to their simplest possible version to make them accessible to everyone - which brings us to our third point:
DO MORE WITH LESS FOR MORE
The question: how can we scale this? was the most frequent discussion topic when brainstorming how to create a better future for India. With a population amounting 1.3 billion people, it’s nearly impossible to make any major impact on the nation without considering how to scale the solution they’re working on. Thus, as soon as a solution works for a small number of people, heads are immediately put together to focus on how this can be recreated to impact more people, which will bring India closer to becoming a fully developed nation.
In India, we visited the Akshaya Patra Kitchen which feeds 150 000 children daily. Across India, there are 35 more kitchens like this one, collectively feeding 1.7 million children daily. While that sounds - and is - amazing, that’s only solving 1.7% of the problem. There are 100 million children going hungry in India every day - so instead of stopping at 1.7 million children and applauding that amazing feat, they are focused on how to scale that up to 5 million, then 10 million, then 100 million.
The point being: in India, no one is satisfied until their solution has reached everyone.
While in Canada, we are extremely privileged to live in a safe, equal and developed country, we still have 5 million people that live in poverty - that’s 1 in 7 people. Most of us look around the communities we exist in every day (for me, a university classroom), and this statistic is not immediately obvious. This disparity between what we see in our daily lives compared to what exists in reality often blinds us to the need for scaling solutions to help more people by making something less expensive, more accessible and more convenient.
In Canada, there is less of an emphasis on scaling, which is somewhat natural considering Canada’s population is about 3% the size of India’s. However, if we can place a greater focus on scaling our solutions by making more of them with less for more people, we can solve problems for more Canadians, efficiently and effectively.
2. What matters is not what you have but what you do with what you have
It’s challenging to come face-to-face with children growing up in a nation where the daily privileges at our finger-tips in North America are completely out of reach for them. However, instead of spending time feeling guilty about growing up in a developed country, we can use the privileges and opportunities accessible to us to spread impact and opportunity more evenly.
At the Development Dialogue conference, two of the highest net-worth individuals in India, Gururaj (“Desh”) Deshpande, founder of the Deshpande Foundation and one of the wealthiest (and most generous) self-made businessmen in the world, and Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys and the “Father of the Indian IT Sector” as described by Time Magazine, were discussing how to create and scale impact. They emphasized how important it is to use whatever you have to do something impactful - whether that’s distributing $15 billion amongst the most important problems in the world or volunteering for 3 hours at a kitchen for the homeless - everything and anything counts. Do what you can with what you have, and you’ll be surprised by how much impact you can create.
3. Each person is brimming with insight and intelligence, but you’ll never see it if you don’t ask them to speak up
In the middle of a layered conversation amongst conference delegates on the topic of social impact and entrepreneurship, we turned to the two lovely women who were our tour guides for our day trip in a rural village near Hubli, and asked them what they think about social entrepreneurship. They went on to share some of the brightest, most insightful and unique thoughts on the topic with complete confidence and conviction. Their perspectives totally shifted the lens through which I processed the rest of the conference, and it was an inflection point in my experience in India. From that conversation, I learned that every individual in ear-shot of a conversation will have an opinion to share and value to add, but that insight will be kept away from you unless you ask.
A significant problem with people coming from a different background trying to solve problems they’ve never experienced first-hand, is that they never ask those experiencing the problem what they think before bringing in a solution. Asking for the perspective of those inside the problems you’re trying to solve should be a requirement, as it’s impossible to create a valuable solution to any problem you’ve never experienced without the understanding of a perspective different from your own.
4. Empowerment is everything
A consistent theme throughout the conference was empowerment and the power of self-confidence. When asked what the key to success was for young people with big career aspirations, the answer was almost uniform across all panelists and speakers:
Believe in yourself. Have utter confidence that you are capable of what you want to achieve and don’t let anyone shake that confidence for you. There were panels made up entirely of women creating enormous impact, mainly in male-dominated fields including technology and entrepreneurship. These women were charged with a purpose to empower other women to dive into entrepreneurship and leadership roles with complete confidence in their ability. This unavoidable emphasis on empowerment made it impossible to walk out of the conference without the belief that you could do anything - which was exactly the point. Encouraging young people to solve the problems they interact with and find interesting is India’s super-power, causing their economy to blossom as investments in educating and empowering youth continue to expand.
Encouraging young people to solve the problems they interact with and find interesting is India’s super-power, causing their economy to blossom as investments in educating and empowering youth continue to grow.
5. Developed nations are built by reinvesting in smaller communities, not by fleeing to big cities
The conference, which was stationed in Hubli, a rural “Tier 2 city” in India, emphasized that the brightest, ripest talent coming from Hubli must make Hubli more developed by investing their talent, energy, money, etc. back into the community. Currently, Bangalore signifies the ‘promised land’ of opportunity for the talented and educated youth who grow up in rural cities in India. Many talented individuals aspire to get comfortable, prestigious jobs in Bangalore - a sign of success and achievement - instead of remaining in their communities and solving problems they grew up experiencing first-hand.
This was a connection I hadn’t made before: developed nations are made up of mutually developed cities.
Sure, it’s clear that New York or Toronto are ‘epicentres’ of development, innovation and opportunity compared to other cities in the US and Canada, but the reality is that there are still very few cities and towns in these developed nations which have the same gap in development which exists between a Tier 1 (most developed) and a Tier 3 (least developed) city in India. Thus, the way to bring developing nations closer to becoming developed nations is to educate youth within these less developed cities, and encourage them to either cultivate success in a Tier 1 city before returning to reinvest in creating opportunity within the communities they came from, or to stay in their towns and build a community of innovation and development from within.
6. Investing time in learning new languages will provide more returns than most skills which seem “important” in the context of our own communities
Learning languages is an incredibly useful and powerful tool of communication which can amplify our ability to make impact anywhere in the world. It’s nearly impossible to solve someone’s problems if you can’t have a competent conversation with them, and it’s often those who don’t speak English whom need their problems solved the most urgently. Attending this conference was just a reminder of the massive returns which come from learning useful and versatile languages in the world, opening doors which no amount of knowledge in business, entrepreneurship, problem-solving, etc. could provide access to.
7. Children are willing to work very, very, very hard when they understand they’re creating a brighter future for themselves
I wish everyone could see face-to-face the radiant energy emanating from a child charged with a desire to learn - it’s truly a magical thing.
As part of a day trip to a rural village, we were able to visit a school which had additional programming sponsored by the Deshpande Foundation to accelerate the children’s studies of English. The children enrolled in this program study for four additional hours per day just to learn english more efficiently. I spoke to children ages 6-14 with exceptional proficiency in english and complete confidence in their conversational ability. I was incredibly impressed by their knowledge, fluency and the questions they were asking, but the thing which impressed me most was the intense enthusiasm they exemplified towards their studies. They viewed education as what it was always meant to be; an opportunity to learn and work towards a brighter future.
They viewed education as what it was always meant to be; an opportunity to learn and work towards a brighter future.
Their eyes gleamed with excitement as they asked us about what we learn in university, hopeful at the thought of reaching that level of education one day. While the other children in their school were studying from 10 am - 4 pm, they were coming in at 8 am and leaving at 6 pm, using these additional hours to accelerate their learning in English, providing a platform to develop established careers where fluency in English would help immensely. Seeing their excitement for education in person was a direct display of the power of educating youth. The rarity of this kind of educational programming in a rural village also acted as a reminder that there are so many children who simply won’t experience this same love of learning if we don’t give them the opportunity to cultivate it.
8. Some of the most generous (and successful) people are humble, driven and eager to share. To become one of those people, act like you are one now
As I mentioned in Lesson #2, you don’t have to be massively wealthy to give. We can give whatever we have in an impactful way - whether that’s skills, time, money, resources, a spare room, anything! Raw humility, curiosity and a willingness to share characterized some of the wealthiest and most accomplished individuals at the conference. Social impact leaders like Gerald Chertavian, founder of Year Up, Desh Deshpande, founder of the Deshpande Foundation, and Aranya Murthy, founder of Infosys, demonstrated how to create impact selflessly by using their wealth to shrink the opportunity divide between those who were born intro privilege and those who were not as lucky. Their mindsets inspired reflection on how we can create impact on a smaller scale, despite not having the same resources accessible to us now.
9. Nothing compares to experiential learning
It’s critical to take advantage of opportunities which excite us and align with where we want to take our lives, even at the cost of what seems urgent in the present. When making a decision between 2 options, ask: which one of these choices will matter more to me in a year? That will help demonstrate which feels more important to you. While I missed more than a week of school to attend this conference, the education I derived from being in India for less than 5 days provided an education which could not be obtained from any amount of time in a classroom. The returns of pursuing experiential learning are tremendous and they create a positive feedback loop made up of opportunities, connections and a network which bring more experiences like this back to you.
10. Always get the garlic naan
No explanation needed. Indian food puts North American food to shame, and their garlic naan is simply unparalleled.
That’s it for this long-winded post about what I think we can all learn from the vibrant, innovative and forward-moving culture in India.