Focus, or Not

I have been working and studying in USA for a couple of weeks now. I revisited USA after a decade. I am looking at the country with more experienced and educated eyes now.

I don’t see these guys are genius. They are not more hard working either. But each individual here does very good at what he does. They focus on a single area, and be expert of that. When you have a working system based on trust, when components add up to form synergy, you are better off focusing on your niche.

In a developing economy where almost nothing is built you need to build everything from the scratch. You almost end up building every component of the system to reach to a sustainable model. Is this efficient? Surely not. But you have no other choice. That is why Muhammad Yunus, starting with micro credit, ended up founding so many businesses, and now talking about even more. That is why great entrepreneurs like Sir Abed, Akij and Samson H Choudhury built so many businesses. That is why Henry Ford ended up integrating from mining to retailing.

Now that they have other pieces of the system working, they can really focus on a single piece. Keep doing whatever they are good at. Excel on that.

We, on the other hand, are still at the Henry Ford phase. We got to be generalist, keep integrating forward and backward. You can’t imagine the first human being on earth, Adam, was a specialist, can you? He was a generalist!

When no working system exists you need a good number of generalists to build one.

God wants us to use technology

Whatever are essential for human race to survive and grow are abundant in the nature. The most available and free resource on the earth is air, which is absolutely free, without need of any effort to collect. That’s the most important ingredient for us to live. The second most valuable thing for us is water. This is also fairly available, but not as much as air is. After all that’s the second most required ingredient for us to survive. The list can go down to carbohydrate, to protein, to fat, to mineral, to cotton, to silk and so on.

How about the least most important element for us to live? Diamond? This is mostly used as ornament, as a luxury item. Unsurprisingly extremely rare. Uranium, or gold for example. Not that essential, not that abundant either. Iron, on the other hand, is very essential mineral. Moderately available too. And iron is recyclable.

How about electronic goods? The hardware those are required to push the civilization in this information age? Elements of information technology? Ingredients to make silicon chips? Hmmm, they are fairly abundant, too.

So, I was thinking on the other day, maybe God wants us to use technology. It was all in His plan, I guess.

Well, I am just suggesting. Think about it!