C J Meadows traces how good ideas happen through two stories: Jawahar, a Nokia employee who created the ringtone market worth $2 billion by partnering with Sony Music, and Sister Cyril, who opened her school to street children and eventually helped over 450,000 kids through the Rainbow Program. Both innovators connected internal skills with external needs.
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Cj Meadows. Years ago, when teaching entrepreneurship, a student asked me a question: "Hey, prof, I see how to turn a good idea into a product or service, but where do good ideas come from? I thought they were all around us and everyone could see." But maybe not. We finished the course, and with some good ideas of my own, I left to walk my own yellow brick road. Doing what entrepreneurs do. 15 years later, I came back to academe to teach and learn, and someone asked me a question: "Hey, prof, I see about innovation and startups and big companies, but where do the good ideas come from, the ones they start with?" Hmm. So I decided to learn more. I designed a research project listening to world-leading innovators in the arts, business, startups, science, inventing, social activism, and education. Today I'd like to share with you two of their stories, one in technology and one in education. There's something underneath that's useful for our lives today. First, I'd like you to meet Jawahar. He was an employee of a mobile phone company in India, and with mobile technology always at the back of his head, his job was to create new products and services. One year, the new phone coming out had a model number starting in 51, and it was India's 51st year of independence. He thought we must make something of this so he signed a deal with a composer and had the company embed a special song into the Indian version of the phone—a unique ring you might recognize the song— <LYRICS>Naanana</LYRICS> The year was 1998, the composer was Ravi Shankar, and the phone was the Nokia 5110. Now, Jawahar didn't invent the technology, but he did use it to set Nokia on a path to growth in India. Now, a little while later, he turned on MTV, and he watched a song which was the theme music for a new movie which would come out in 6 months' time. Now, with mobile technology at the back of his mind, and now mobile music in his head, he thought, "Wouldn't it be useful to Bollywood to have their new movie songs played on crowded buses and trains and marketplaces when someone's phone rang?" Now, multichannel movie promotion had a new channel: digital. Now, the year was 1999. There were no ringtone services yet. It was long before Napster and Kazaa. And nobody would want to buy a new phone every time a new song comes out. But whenever he dialed a phone, he heard something like this: Aha! So the telephone keypad is also a keyboard, a musical instrument. So he wanted to print a little booklet with instructions to program songs into your phone and put one in every new phone box. Well, so he went off to all the Bollywood producers and the music companies. They all thought it was a great idea, and they all said, "No!" Ahh. Why? Okay. It turns out every song has a myriad of rights attached to it: publishing, recording, territorial. It changes by country and by channel: TV, radio, cassette, CDs, and more. No one wanted to go over their contracts and write new rights for Nokia. So what to do? After the last "no," he said, "Fine, I don't need the rights. Let's make a win-win. You print the booklet with all your terms and conditions. I'll tell you the look and feel. We'll craft consumer promotion together." Sony Music loved it. So the legal teams on both sides worked over 6 months to create the first deal ever between a music company and a mobile phone company, and the first digital music deal. They called it "tones on your phone," which later became ringtones. And Nokia grew from a few hundred employees in India back then to over 15,000 today. The ringtone market, of which this was a part, grew to $2 billion. In 2011. Now, phones are a great way to connect people, and now I'd like to tell you a story of people connecting. This is the story of Sister Cyril, longtime principal of the Loreto Sealdah School in Calcutta. When she took over the school, she wanted to expand the base of non-fee-paying students, so she needed a survey to find out how many poor, poor children are nearby. She sent a student team over to a bridge under which she knew there were street children living. The team came back and said, "Oh, Sister, there are no poor children under the bridge. They're all quite fat." Ah, they didn't have the knowledge of the latter stages of malnutrition when the body swells. So they couldn't see the poor children. For their school service project, they went off to the villages to teach the poor children there. 3 years later, they came back to her and said, "Oh, Sister, why do we go so far away on a bus every week when there are poor children nearby?" "Oh, really? Where?" "Just under the bridge." So she let them craft a program to teach the poor children nearby that they couldn't see before. And then Sister's eyes were opened one day when she heard the news of a 4-year-old girl who was raped one night nearby while the school was empty and the doors were closed and the gates locked. She was devastated. She said, "Dear Lord, dear Lord, what am I doing here? What are we doing here if this is to happen nearby?" So she opened the gates and let the street children sleep in the school at night where they would be safe. Later, she added food and an education, and the Rainbow Program was born. Over 35 years, Sister Cyril and her teachers and volunteers and her students started 15 different programs for children in the streets, in the slums, in the villages, migrant brick workers, child domestic laborers and more. And today, over 450,000 lives are the better for it. Is there something that ties these two very different stories together? Yes. Both Jawahar and Sister Cyril had something on their minds, saw or heard a need, connected them, and walked off into the unknown. Good ideas like theirs come from connecting something inside your head with something outside, and that requires openness within and without. But if something's missing, you won't be able to see, like the students who said the poor children were fat. So, we collect things into the workshop of our minds: ideas, people, skills, technologies. Sometimes through our everyday lives, sometimes we actively seek them, like Jawahar, always learning new technologies before he had a use for them. With this unique workshop, we sense the world in a unique way. Sister Cyril sees the world through the lens, "We educate children." She says yes to everything that comes through that, but no to everything outside. She doesn't let adults sleep in the school, but she did extend the school to children without fees or food or a safe place to sleep. So, your unique lens on the world can both restrict your vision and expand it. Finally, we make a connection and act. Now, you might have a full solution and then act, but more commonly, we need to just act and craft a solution along the way. There will be rules to break, like opening the gates or locking them at night. Sometimes there's no rules, like digital rights. There will be boundaries to cross, like music and mobile phones, rich and poor, welfare and education, and we'll need to be flexible along the way. Fine, you print the booklet. And we gain mental flexibility by exercising it. Are Jawahar and Sister Cyril representative of the other innovators I studied? Yes. Are their stories relevant for us, or are they just different? Well, as I look at this portrait gallery of world-leading innovators, I see a 13-year-old school dropout who became a celebrity chef, an insurance salesman turned entrepreneur who built a billion dollars of business, A squash player who learned psychology and crafted Harvard's most popular course ever. So here I stand, feeling very, very ordinary, but comforted by the beginnings and very inspired by their extraordinary journeys. There are 3 small things we can do today to take the first steps too. First, define what inspires you. And what have you collected into the unique workshop of your mind? Next, notice one thing today, something you saw, something you heard. Then write them down, connect them. What boundaries do they cross? Play with a "what if?" and just start, just start walking. Start making a difference in the world. As I look back on this picture I chose, of a yellow brick road. I realize I can't see the destination. Can you? Maybe it doesn't matter. Let's just start walking. We'll see and innovate along the way. Enjoy your journey to extraordinary. Thank you.
