Kim Min: Bill Gates and I delve into the secret of innovation

The message that Bill Gates wants to convey is that we shouldn't be waiting for the rabbit, sitting on our minds with a revolutionary idea like silly. Innovative ideas are everywhere: in the poorest countries, in the private sector, in international organizations, in government, in academic institutions, in civil society groups, you can find its traces.

Bill Gates and World Bank President Kim Min Jong

As the President of the World Bank, my position has given me the opportunity to interact with many of the world's most influential people, including some of the most creative political and business leaders. In every conversation I have with them, some topics are bound to be mentioned, and one of them has been recognized by everyone: we must promote innovation to eliminate extreme poverty and make the economy a kind of The way people can share results grows. What we lack is to build a clear consensus around the best ways to motivate and scale new ideas.

Recently, I was able to have a long discussion with Bill Gates. Naturally, our topic turned to "what factors can stimulate innovation." Bill and his wife Melinda founded their first foundation in 1994. Since then, they have gradually changed the vision of the world's development, and people have begun to pay attention to health, education and poverty alleviation.

The generosity of the Gates and the help of many people, I am one of the lucky ones. In 2000, the Gates Foundation allocated $44.7 million to the Health Partnership, and I was the co-founder of the organization. When the vast majority of people in the global health sector denied the existence of MDR-TB, the Gates provided an unprecedented amount of donations to the Aeras Global Tuberculosis Vaccine Foundation to help Patients in three world countries have found a cure for this disease. Such a visionary and innovative spirit of charity, repeated in the process of the Gates efforts to solve some of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.

When we had dinner in Washington, Bill Gates talked about how he and Melinda built an innovative institutional culture across business and philanthropy. In this regard, he mentioned three main points:

Innovation stems from the talents

“It’s no miracle to build a car behind closed doors,” says Bill Gates. Recent research has shown that creativity is more of a prominent feature (biological terminology, when the number of individuals in the environment reaches a certain level, the entire group will exhibit a more complex behavior) rather than individual attributes, when a group When people try to solve problems together, creativity will emerge. Therefore, the challenge for organizations is to build a culture that encourages new ideas while providing a platform for brainstorming.

As the writer Steven Johnson mentioned in his work “Where is the inspiration from?”, we tend to imagine innovation as “Eureka moments”, a term that refers to the talented individual after falling into meditation. Suddenly inspiration, the moment to get the answer.

We have talked about why, although it takes a long time, the most powerful innovations often come from giant institutions. These innovations are mainly due to the combination of many experienced and knowledgeable people, and after intensive exchanges and cooperation, they are finally born. Such resources are scarce, so this model is difficult to reproduce elsewhere. Bill's personal commitment to understanding a problem is evident.

More than a decade ago, when the Gates Foundation began to focus on global health, Bill immediately immersed himself in the state of the art. The conversation with Bill's new drug development for treating HIV in 2006 is still fresh in my memory. The existing molecules, the way they work, and the stage of industry development at the time, all the relevant information he knows well, is simply a film. Moreover, he spent a lot of valuable time on the research questions, which also made me very grateful.

I was very clear at the time, and it is even more obvious now: Bill’s attitude towards excellence, even the tiniest details, affects everyone in his team, making him a benchmark for everyone, which in turn creates A culture that inspires innovation.

Perseverance

Bill Gates is a full-time person. He acted with perseverance and was convinced that the most successful people he knew had three common decisive qualities: the determination to act, the norms of conduct, and the perseverance of action. Steven Johnson used Charles Darwin as an example to draw the same conclusion. The latter spent many years collecting data in a meticulous manner and eventually summed up his own evolutionary theory in 1838.

We turn to talk about whether these qualities can be helped by parents, teachers and institutions (such as educational institutions or military institutions) to help young people develop. The Korean education system allowed students to live on a campus that was seven to eleven at a very young age (and getting smaller).

Students trained through such a system have achieved very good results in international exams (such as the International Student Competency Assessment Program (PISA) test sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Some observers point out that this level of rigor may help foster the willpower and resilience of young people.

On the other hand, Korean society has been controversial about the collateral damage caused by this education system to Korean teenagers' mental health. I and Gates agree that the relevant evidence in this field is just about to surface.

From Roy Baumeister (Director of the Graduate Program in Social Psychology at Florida State University, specializing in social science simulation techniques to study a wide range of psychological issues), we learned that it is very difficult to reliably and sustainably improve the IQ of a specific population. But "willpower" can exercise almost like muscles. This raises the question: Can countries, companies, educational institutions, and even families be able to develop their innovative capabilities by helping young people (and even older people) become methodical and tenacious?

Scale innovation

As Bill Gates showed to the world in business and philanthropy, producing great ideas is only the first step. It is more important and more difficult to put these ideas into practice and turn them into an equally great outcome. For example, the transformation of the idea of ​​“improving global health conditions” into “increased global sanitation conditions” requires a rigorous assessment of the localization of the specific environment and, in particular, a plan on how to scale up.

When I left the dinner that night, I became more optimistic about the prospects for innovation and effectiveness in our development work, even if our work would be in the most unsatisfactory and difficult situation.

The message that Bill Gates wants to convey is that we shouldn't be waiting for the rabbit, sitting on our minds with a revolutionary idea like silly. Innovative ideas are everywhere: in the poorest countries, in the private sector, in international organizations, in government, in academic institutions, in civil society groups, you can find its traces.

If we can work together, focus on the details and stick to it, and focus on scale, we are likely to find some great innovations that will lead us to a healthier, fairer, and more productive world.

I want to hear from readers about innovation and whether some of Gates's insights are consistent with your real experience. I will pick some of the best responses, and I will write a special one in the column in the future. (Translator: Dong Bin)

(The author of this article: The 12th President of the World Bank Group, MD.)