Essay: Think Like A Freak

Last summer I attended Stanford’s Social Entrepreneurship course. In which a group of fourty of us spent four weeks trying to find practical creative solutions to many of the worlds most pressing social issues. Initially everyone spent a few hours brainstorming ideas after that we were split into groups five with similar areas of focus. The general theme of our group was internet access in Africa, which is at a shockingly low 13.5%. Initially we made very little progress as a team, everyone one wanted their own idea represented and didn’t like theirs being discarded, we were going no where. Having just read the book “Think like a Freak”, I was keen to look at the problem from a different angle. Instead of asking “How can we get more people online?” ask the …show more content…
Once we had identified this problem we spent a few hours brainstorming how to deliver this education. Would our start-up have to make school? Would we have to spend tens of thousands buying computers? After we had all thought of ideas, the best way forwards would be to let go of individual bias (i.e. treat all ideas the same). We spent a few hours debating the short comings of each idea and its merits and in this way we were able to blend and eliminate ideas until we had created a shortlist. After days of discussion we came up with the idea of working in partnership with local internet cafés to run computer literacy courses. Almost all African towns have internet café meaning that we would have minimal start-up costs as all our resources were already in Africa. We could initially rely on Volunteers to run computer courses in the cafés and train them up to a certain standard so that they would be able to obtain jobs in IT. This greatly benefits not only those being trained but also internet café owners who would benefit from increases in people using their cafés. Once users had completed the course we would form partnerships with local businesses who could employ these