Living in Peru : your everyday companion

When Woody Allen studied at New York University, they asked him to withdraw after the first semester and one of the courses he had problems with, was movie production. He preferred to go to stores and observe people than to go to class. Today, Woody Allen is still a free spirit who prefers to work as a writer or comedian than as a movie producer. When he won the Oscar for “Annie Hall”, he preferred to do the same thing he did every Monday: Playing jazz with his band.

Learning from the experience of geniuses can be useful in identifying and fostering the necessary conditions to become innovative at a country level. The latter examples – drawn from studies performed by Harvard Business School Professor Teresa Amabile – show that both for Einstein and for Woody Allen, avoiding external evaluation was important. They both depended on their intrinsic motivation to be able to create. An intrinsic motivation that feeds on trusting that one is capable of generating alternatives, on a passion for their work and on the perseverance that results from both.

Sutaining intrinsic motivation requires a minimum level of self-esteem. Those countries whose population has a low self-esteem could hinder their own capacity to innovate. Freedom is also important. In Sillicon Valley – one of the most innovative places in the world – this freedom is expressed in a free market for talent, financial resources and information. But one cannot imagine a Sillicon Valley in a society that is not meritocratic, that lacks in a culture of success or in one that is very bureaucratic. Bureaucracy, the interest groups that fluorish in it, the prejudice and jealousy that some feel for successful people, are a great intangible liability in many developing societies. They are operational and mental barriers that keep us from innovating and from developing at a more accelerated rhythm – even though, thank God, innovative people or sectors always exist.

If our objective is to unchain our country’s potential, we must first begin by analyzing and identifying those conditions that foster innovation, taking into account that the objective of innovating in business is to create wealth. Second, we must evaluate our current versus our desired situation. Third, once we have identified the gap between our objective and reality, we must draft a plan to create the desired conditions and finally, enter the most complex part of it all: implementation. Without a doubt, this would require designing a strategy to manage knowledge systematically, at a country level – like Malaysia did – since it is considered to be one of the basic factors of production in the twenty first century and one that fuels innovation.