The first part of this documentary focuses on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Specifically the toilet they helped create for African countries in hopes of minimizing the deaths due to diarrhea. This documentary does a great job of trying to explain Bill's creative mind. When watching it I could not help connecting almost everything that was said to class. One of the things that stood out to me was what he does when he is faced with a creative block. He plays tennis, sometimes up to 8 hours. This acts as incubation where his conscious mind is preoccupied with playing tennis while his subconscious processes the issue at hand.
The documentary also makes it a point, through several testimonies, that Bill Gates reads a lot. To me, this is a form of collecting. In class we talked about how creatives collect information and experiences. This extensive amount of reading definitely appears to be a form of collecting experiences and information that fuel Bill's creative mind.
Another thing that should be taken into account in regards to Bill's creative process are his motivations. The first part of this documentary shows that Bill's mother and wife are a big motivators in his humanitarian work. All through his life, Bills mother always reminded him to give back to others. His wife also motivated him to assist the people in Africa because she brought the septic waste issue to Bill's attention. Melinda not only brought this issue to Bill's attention but expressed how it was their duty to help these people.
Bill had many obstacles that made it difficult for him to achieve his goal of reducing the death due to diarrhea. Perhaps the biggest one was cost. The governments of these African countries cannot afford to install typical waste treatment facilities. So he needed to devise a system that can cheaply be installed and still be sanitary. This toilet needed to "remove germs from human waste and recover valuable resources such as energy, clean water, and nutrients, operate without connections to water, sewer, or electrical lines, and cost less than .05 cents (in US dollars) per user per day" as stated on the Bill and Melinda Gates website.
Even though Bill figured what features the toilet needed to possess he still needed to engineer it. This is, in my opinion, his creative product. Bill made a contest amongst many engineering companies from around the world to see who can build the best product and they did this all for free. Bill Gates had some of the world's most brilliant engineering minds construct toilets that followed the parameters he created free of charge. Only a creative genius like Bill Gates would be able to devise a solution to such a complicated problem.
Hello Max,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your forum post about Bill Gates. Aside from the fact that he is a major player in the computing industry, I really liked how you emphasized his more humanitarian side, and focused on his problem solving strategies. It makes me wonder how he approaches problems in that sector, or rather, if he has various strategies depending on the problem at hand. His solution of incubating and facilitating an environment for great minds to collect and solve a practical problem is (at least to me) very reminiscent to Elon Musk. They both encourage a competitive environment that brings out the best ideas and allows for, ultimately, the betterment of society.
This was a really interesting post to read. I enjoyed reading the connections you made between what we learned in class and what you viewed in the documentary. It made it easy for me to absorb this information since I could easily build off of the prior knowledge we had learned in class. I think his toilet is a fascinating invention. When we watched the Frank Gehry film, we discussed limitations placed on creatives. Here I think Bill Gates used the infrastructural limitations of Africa to fuel his creativity. He needed to be creative to find alternative means around the challenges they faced. I think Bill Gates was creative in his approach to solving the problem too. By creating a competition, he brought awareness to the issue. He motivated creatives to put energy towards the cause. But most of all, Bill recognized that he needed help to solve the problem. He is truly a genius but in this situation he realized that a collective effort would create the most efficient solution. The best solution was created when ideas clashed and thoughts developed between a whole team of diverse thinkers.
ReplyDeleteI have also seen this documentary and I have to agree. The insane rate that Bill Gates reads books at is surely a method of collecting. I also found it interesting that he is such an avid tennis player. It does seem that by playing tennis for such extended periods of time, Gates is able to let his subconscious mind process information while his attention is elsewhere. This in turn leads to the intuition moments like we discussed in class.
ReplyDeleteI think this shows the power and even necessity of creative collaboration. Bill Gates is clearly a very smart guy, but he alone could not produce what a group of Big C/Pro c creatives could together--two heads are better than one! Also, I think the incubation of playing tennis for hours is really interesting, and I wonder how incubation works in my own domain, especially when learning music!
ReplyDeleteBoth Bill and Melinda Gates are people I consider to be role models of mine. It is incredible how they use their wealth to help others. I did not know there was a documentary, but I will be sure to watch it. What makes these two people, as a couple, so creative is their divergent thinking and ability to tackle a variety of issues, from AIDS prevention to sanitation to women's rights.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that reading is considered a form of connecting. Originally I thought of collecting, especially experiences, as a personal thing that you physically have to experience yourself. However, there is so much information and various events that are impossible to experience for yourself, so through reading you get a glimpse into experiencing those events yourself. Reading really does help you to collect those experiences.
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