Before we answer this question, we must keep in mind that the current laws against homosexuality in India are based on colonial laws, which are based on Abrahamic mythology. It involves a reading – some would say a deliberate misreading – of a tale where God destroys the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone because they perform acts that go against God’s commandment.

What these acts were is open to interpretation, depending on how you read the old Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek scripts. The anti-queer lobby says city dwellers indulged in homosexuality. The queer supporters interpret the story differently, that the city dwellers were not good hosts, and that they raped their guests.

Take your pick. What is curious is that shortly after this incident, the patriarch Lot, who flees Sodom and Gomorrah before they are destroyed, has sex with his daughters, and his incestuous act is not punished by God.

Such tales, of God prohibiting certain sexual acts but allowing others, are not found in Hindu mythology. While in many (not all) Abrahamic traditions, homosexuality is seen as an act against God, in Hindu traditions, homosexuality is seen as part of karma.

We are creatures of karma, and our actions contribute to our future karma. Thus homosexuality is seen as a manifestation of karma. We cannot fight it. We have to deal with it. Just as heterosexual desire needs to be regulated, so does homosexual desire. The extent of regulation varies depending on context.

Some believe sex must be only for producing children, some believe sex should only be between people in love, while some believe sex is just a form of pleasure and must not be taken too seriously.

The Vedas speak of Agni, the fire god, having two mothers! Must this be taken literally or metaphorically? Metaphorically, it refers to the fire-sticks that are drilled to create the fire for the yagna.

In the Puranas, God changes gender constantly: Every god has a female Shakti: thus Vinayaka has Vinayaki, Varaha has Varahi. Shiva becomes Ardhanareshwara, or half a woman, to make the Goddess happy.

He becomes Gopeshwar – milkmaid or cow-girl form of Shiva – to join Krishna in the raas-leela. When Kali decides to become Krishna, Shiva takes the form of Radha, as per Baul traditions. Vishnu becomes the damsel Mohini to enchant demons and sages.

In Tulsidas’ Ram-charit-manas, God says that he loves all creatures: plants, animals, males, females and queers (napunsaka), who give up malice and surrender to his grace. How does one read this? A comfort with gender and sexual fluidity? An acceptance of karma?

Medical texts, such as Shushruta Samhita, subscribe to the Tantrik belief that when a man and woman have sex, the gender and sexuality depends on the proportion of the male white seed and female red seed. If the male white seed is stronger then heterosexual men are born; when the female red seed is stronger, then heterosexual females are born.

When both seeds are equally strong, the child becomes queer (kliba, napunsaka, kinnara). Sanskrit texts on astrology, architecture and music all refer to three genders: male, female and queer. Thus the condition is seen as physiological, not pathological.

The Dharmashastras need to be located in this context. They were books that speculated on appropriate human conduct. They focussed more on “upper” castes and were relatively indifferent to “lower” castes.

Written by Brahmins in the period that saw the composition of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, they have a relatively casual attitude towards non-vaginal (ayoni) sex. This could even refer to anal/oral sex between adult consenting men and women, not just between men, or between women.

The Arthashastra of Kautilya, charges a fine, similar to fines for minor thefts. Women are fined more than men. The fine increases if one of the partners is not consenting. (IV.XIII.236)

The Manusmriti equates homosexual sex to a man having sex with a menstruating woman, or having sex during the day, and the punishment involves purification rites: bathing with clothes on, and fasting for a night, and eating specific cow milk and urine related products.

Failure to purify can result in loss of caste. The crimes of heterosexual adultery and rape, and deflowering a virgin, have much higher fines and more intense purification rituals. (XI:175)

The Dharmashastras clearly value heterosexual marriage and sex that results in production of sons. However, they do acknowledge, albeit grudgingly, the existence of other forms of non-vaginal sex, heterosexual as well as homosexual, and seek to restrain them with fines and penance, without overtly condemning them in religious or moral terms.

Not everything in Hinduism or India was governed by Brahmin texts and that is important to remember. In monastic orders like Buddhism and Jainism where celibacy is celebrated, sexual desire – be it homosexual or heterosexual – is seen as an obstacle to the spiritual path.

In Charvaka, or materialistic traditions, the intrinsic nature (svabhava) of living creatures must be respected and celebrated, rather than judged. Thus India has had a very diverse, generally liberal, range of attitudes towards all kinds of sex, including homosexuality, with warnings about addiction, attachment and obsession.

This article was originally published in DailyO. It has been republished with permission from the author.

Devdutt Pattanaik is an Indian mythologist and writer known for his work on ancient Indian scriptures.

Views are personal

Like most people, I watched the tragedy of the Titan submersible unfold with horror. We talked about it in cafes, jumped when news reports came in on our phones, and wondered why people would ever actually pay money to experience such risk. Are billionaires like this ultimately just vain or stupid? Or is reckless risk-taking in their DNA?

It turns out there is a good deal of research on why rich people take risks that encompasses a number of areas of psychology. One paper, published in Nature, investigated how the personalities of 1,125 people in Germany with a net wealth of at least €1 million (so not everyone was “super rich”) differed from the rest of us.

The study nevertheless showed that people on these compratively higher incomes were typically extroverts and, importantly, tolerant of risk. That means they might indeed be more drawn to thrill seeking and risk-taking, in terms of adventuring and extreme sports.

As an expert, however, my next thought is one of those chicken and egg conundrums. What came first? The huge wealth or the specific personality make-up? Does the money shape the personality, or does the personality allow the person to develop such wealth?

The answer here is a little of both. A risk-taking personality can most likely help you make money. But, when you have acquired an enormous amount of wealth, you most likely also have a lot of security in your life – never having to worry about where your next meal will come from, or whether you’ll afford heating your house in winter. Some may experience this as life being a little too safe.

The French sociologist Pierre Bordieau argued that our way of being in the world – our “habitus” – is part of who we are. People in distinct cultures or with specific histories tend to share a habitus – meaning society can ultimately shape the mind of a person.

Take, for example, how much money we have. The rich do not think of sportscars as unobtainable – more as a suggestion of what might look nice on their driveway. Their wealth in part shapes their view of the world and how they live in it. If taking risks is a part of the personality of the rich, it will be a relatively normal experience in their everyday engagement with the world.

But research has also shown that personality isn’t set in stone – it changes over a lifetime in response to experiences. For example, a new life experience, such as moving away to university or having a child, may alter your world view in such a way that your personality and the way you interact with the world change.

If you take a lot of risks in your everyday life, this becomes a reflection of what makes you who you are – boosting your risk-taking personality trait, which leads to more risk-taking experiences, and so on. This may explain why many rich people end up becoming risk-takers, whether it is in their genes or not.

Authenticity

Rich people may view risk-taking rather differently to those of us, like me, who regard ourselves as risk averse.

Dangerous activities for me are far from my own personality. So, when I do find myself engaging in something potentially risky, outside my normal habitus experience, I feel very uncomfortable. For the risk averse, “living life to the full” does not require base-jumping or free-climbing – these things are inconsistent with their experience.

By this logic, it makes sense that the rich engage in risky experiences. Driving fast cars, skiing and skydiving are normal expressions of this sort of risk acceptance for a lot of people. But if you’re very rich, even more extreme examples of very dangerous experiences open up, which may ultimately help them live an authentic life – being true to who they are.

Interestingly, a risk-averse form of living life authentically is not regarded with a great deal of social value. We often assume that a full life should obviously involve white-water rafting, horse riding and, if you can afford it, space flight.

Those who take risks are also often seen as desirable in business – as people who can move a company on. Again, risk-aversion is seen as less desirable here. Rather than viewing it as a reflection of solidity and stability, providing a calm and steadying influence, we often see it as holding things back.

I would argue that both ways of engaging with the world are perfectly valid and should be similarly valued. After all, our species has relied on a mix of the two to flourish: both explorers and risk assessors.

Eudaimonia

Capitalism is all about consumption – and it rules most of the world. From heavily branded handbags and sleek sportscars to expensive activities, it’s what we do and what many of us value. We even consume to fulfil our existential desires.

What might those be? “Eudaimonia” is about living life to the full in a satisfying way. Aristotle described it as the very highest of human virtues – a positive and divine state of being. Epicurus, his contemporary, argued that pleasurable living is the most authentic way to describe eudaimonia.

As such, I would argue that rich, risk-taking people are simply consuming in a way that satisfies them as much as possible in terms of eudaimonia. The risk-averse ultimately do the same thing, but in a very different way. Both are living authentically, pleasurably and naturally, with reference to their habitus.

It’s not weird that people would pay handsomely for the experience promised by Titan. Before we dismiss it on the grounds of greedy stupidity, we might want to consider the more respectable reasons behind such behaviour.

And if we want fewer accidents, we may want to consider how we as a society value risk-taking, and undervalue safety regulations, rather than blaming it on individuals who are just trying to live a fulfilling life – be they billionaires or otherwise.

Nigel Holt, Professor of Psychology, Aberystwyth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Social media can be a positive way for people to reconnect with loved ones, make new friends, or discover new hobbies. It’s been extremely important for mental health during recent world events.

Downsides include social isolation and health issues. Hackers can also use social media to find people online in the hope of scamming them, and Internet trolls scour the net for vulnerable profiles to attack verbally. 

Is social media inherently good or bad for society? Let’s find out.

The Benefits of Social Media

In recent years social media has been getting a bad rep for causing social issues such as isolation and anxiety. It’s been touted as a reason younger generations choose not to exercise as much as previous ones.

Everything changed in 2019 when the coronavirus hit the world, forcing many governments to enforce strict lockdown scenarios. For many people, social media came to the rescue.

A 2020 Harvard university study discovered that routine social media use benefits social well-being, positive mental health, and self-rated health.

An Isolation Cure

During the lockdowns of 2019–2021, the damage to the mental health of people who lived alone appeared to be not taken into account.

Going to work or school daily was the only social outlet many had. With that taken away, solo people felt lonely and depressed.

Social media has become a blessing. Medical professionals insist that social media use became the perfect emotional outlet for many people during lockdowns and continued to be afterward.

Social Anxiety or Awkwardness

For highly introverted or socially anxious people, social media can offer a safe space to connect with others at their comfort level.

The Harvard study showed that 20% of participants felt more confident and less socially awkward due to social media use.

Senior Citizens

One of the fastest-rising demographics of social media users is senior citizens. From only 2% exposure in 2008 to 42% this year, seniors use these platforms to keep in touch with family and as a way to feel connected to the changing world.

Some seniors claim that the transfer of many former print mediums to digital has encouraged them to get online. This demographic also joins interest groups with like-minded people on social media.

The Hazards of Social Media

Social media use has been held responsible for the lack of sleep and increasing obesity in young people. 

Cyberbullying, hackers, and internet trolls make social media unsafe for some.

Overuse and Addiction

Young people, in particular, tend to spend more time on social media than any other demographic. Overuse can lead to various problems, including addiction, social isolation, an inability to switch off enough to sleep, and physical laziness. 

Psychologists recommend becoming ‘mindful users’. Limiting the time spent on these platforms, being aware of who they’re interacting with, and combining online hours with an equal amount of offline.

Hackers and Scammers

Hackers often target social media accounts as ways to extort money through scams. Cyber-criminals prey on lonely or vulnerable people, posing as others to build trust and loyalty, then they cause harm.

Bullying and Trolls

Unfortunately, social media has also become a ‘safe space’ for bullies and trolls to hide out, as they can remain anonymous while inflicting damage. Playground bullying has moved online, where a single upload or share can destroy a reputation in seconds.

Internet trolls spend their days scouring through online posts, looking for any reason to attack or ridicule personally. They derive pleasure from insulting others.

Social Media and Society

There are good and bad with most things. Social media often makes headlines on both sides.

Positively, social media can help solo people feel less isolated and more connected. Socially anxious people can learn interactional skills, and senior citizens can keep up with family activities.

On the downside, overuse can lead to a lack of sleep and obesity. Attacks from bullies, hackers, and trolls can lead some people to have negative experiences.

With the proper controls, moderate use can make social media the best experience for everyone.

In recent years, it has become apparent that women’s empowerment alone may not ensure gender equality. Despite improvements in several development indicators, including women’s education level and age at the time of marriage, there are many other areas where improvements have not been as remarkable. Increasingly, there’s recognition for the need to address deeply rooted discriminatory gender norms, sparking new interest in working with men and boys in particular. Several interventions that address younger boys both within and outside schools have been introduced across India.

Programmes aimed at gender equality have been launched in colleges and universities. Fathers are being included in family planning and maternal health programmes. The issue of ‘toxic masculinity’ is also being discussed alongside violence against women. People have recognised that if men are part of the problem of gender discrimination, they have to be part of the solution as well.

Gender equality is not the only reason that men have been in focus. Farmers’ suicides have emerged as a recurring phenomenon in several parts of rural India. Crop failures, the inability to service crippling debts, and an utter sense of failure in being the provider and protector are understood to be factors that contribute to it.

The compulsions that men face in a rapidly changing world that continues to be deeply divided by gendered expectations are becoming increasingly evident. In addition to the changing roles, aspirations, and capacity of women, men are faced with a wide battery of other changes. Economic arrangements, livelihood opportunities, and traditional societal relationships are undergoing rapid transformations. Some men are able to cope and even thrive in this dynamic environment, but many are not. Signs of such failure are already apparent across society. School retention and scholastic achievement is falling among boys, and male violence doesn’t show signs of abating.

The focus of our work was on the violence and exclusion that women faced in rural communities, and it was possible to get many men concerned about this very ‘unfair’ situation. 

I have been working in the field of gender equality and with men for more than two decades now. We started this work in rural Uttar Pradesh with a simple question: Would men in the community join a programme where the benefits are supposed to accrue to women? We learned that it was indeed possible to bring improvements in women’s status through what is often called a win-win approach. The focus of our work was on the high levels of violence and exclusion that women faced in rural communities, and it was possible to get many men concerned about this very ‘unfair’ situation. We were convinced that the change in men had to be first within the family and in their personal roles and relationships. Despite their initial hesitation, women and girls began to welcome these changes.

Men were spending more time at home—they were helping out in the kitchen, fetching water, and looking after the children. Wives enjoyed a new-found intimacy and even encouraged their friends to get their husbands to join the same men’s group. Instead of being wary of their fathers, younger children now liked playing with them. These men also did not become as angry as earlier, and they reported that they were able to manage their temper in different ways.

We also noted some other changes that surprised us. In one study, we tried to understand the changes men experienced not only through their own stories, but also by examining the experiences of a female member of their household and a close male friend. The male friends reported that their relationship with the person concerned had also improved. We realised that men are part of a variety of relationships with other men inside and outside of the home. These social and positional relationships—determined by age, caste, religion, ethnicity, language spoken, educational attainment, organisational post—are also hierarchical. There are social norms that dictate how men relate with each other. Each male in a position of ‘superiority’ by virtue of any of these social or positional parameters is very careful that ‘subordinate’ males do not transgress boundaries.

We started learning more about the world of men and their expectations and relationships. The social construction of boys into men is a complex process because they have to be taught to negotiate the wide range of expectations that they have to fulfil and relationships they have to be part of. It is well known that boys are expected to toughen up and not cry when hurt. And men can’t express emotions other than anger, disgust, and hate. This is part of the training and conditioning boys receive to survive in the ‘competitive’ world of men. However, the world of men is rarely a level-playing field, and is carved up through a wide range of social hierarchies. Most of the men we worked with were poor, rural, and often from subordinate castes. They experienced many disadvantages as men belonging to a particular caste or class, and could thus empathise with the disadvantages experienced by women. This ability to understand someone else’s marginalisation and their own privileges as men was important in transforming their understanding of social relationships.

In our work with poor men, we realised that they experience different layers of privilege and disadvantage. We needed to empathise with their disadvantages so that they could empathise with those more disadvantaged than them (that is, women). We came to realise that the call for equality cannot just be a ‘demand’ by the disadvantaged and oppressed, but also needs to be acted upon by those who benefit from existing unequal social orders. All efforts at equality will otherwise lead to sharp contests and harder pushback because those who gain from the unequal social systems will rarely relinquish their benefits willingly.

How do men and boys deal with their failures when they have not been equipped with adequate emotional or social tools to do so?

If we are to build a more resilient future for our societies, we have to understand how our aspiration for equality gets challenged by the idea of ‘hegemonic masculinity’. In its essence, the idea relates to a ‘desire to dominate’ or ‘to win at any cost’ that is coded into almost all men. In successful men, these are seen as ‘good’ traits. However, not all men can succeed, which results in these desires remaining unfulfilled or getting thwarted when they fail. Today’s changing social and economic environment is causing an increasing number of men to be partial successes at best. How do they deal with their failures when they have not been equipped with adequate emotional or social tools to do so?

If we have to help men in coping with failure, we need alternate models of success. We need to bring up boys differently, and not limit it to boys from deprived families. We need to work with boys, parents, and teachers simultaneously. We need to build empathy, celebrate different kinds of success, and find ways to promote collaboration over competition. At home, both boys and girls need to learn to care for themselves and for others. The successful model for bringing up girls cannot be to bring them up like boys.

If we want to address persistent gender discrimination, increasing male violence, everyday sexism, and ‘problem’ men and boys, the answer may lie in redefining ‘success’. We have to develop alternate models of leadership where men can provide opportunities to others without worrying that it will take away their own power. We need to also celebrate ‘successes’ that are not accompanied by material wealth or authority over others. To do so, we need to build a collaboration with men who wield power over other men. Such a collaboration should encourage men, without blaming or accusing them, to understand how their own ‘successful masculinity’ may hurt themselves and others. Our experience shows that there are men who are willing to engage in this process. And this is how relationships between women and men, and between men and other genders, ultimately improve and larger social and institutional changes take root.   

—

ABHIJIT DAS

Abhijit Das is a public health physician with an interest in gender equality and understanding harmful masculinities. He has been a pioneer in involving men for gender equality and has written and spoken extensively on the issue. After 35 years of work in the development sector he is currently reflecting, writing, and mentoring younger development professionals. He continues as managing trustee at the Centre for Health and Social Justice, India, and clinical associate professor at the Department of Global Health, University of Washington, USA.

This article was first published on IDR Online

Most of the tools that corporate decision makers employ to validate ideas are based on predictive logic—the idea that if A leads to B leads to C, then in order to validate C, we look for A and B. This is the logical framework used by young entrepreneurs when they approach an opportunity by setting a goal, C, and then try to find A and B—the market demand, technical feasibility, competitive landscape, required resources, etc.—to predict the chances of C’s success. They use surveys, focus groups, expert interviews, analogue analysis, trial balloons, and other tools with which corporate decision makers are familiar.

But are there other ways of thinking about problems and opportunities that corporations can leverage? I was asked to participate in CEO Perspectives, a joint program between Chicago Booth, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and the Corporate Leadership Center, which brings together the most talented top executives of Fortune 1000–sized organizations in Chicago. This event attracts people headed for their company’s C-suite, perhaps even to the CEO role. I asked the organizers why they wanted me, an entrepreneurship professor, in this program. Their response: executives want to know what they can learn from the way entrepreneurs innovate.

What I talk to those executives about is effectual logic. When a concept is truly innovative, there’s no research that can effectively predict a market for it. One of the most-often-cited quotes on this subject comes from entrepreneur extraordinaire Steve Jobs, who said: “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.” It is important to note that Jobs didn’t say he didn’t do market research. He said he didn’t rely on it. He instead showed people things and got their reactions, feedback, likes, and dislikes. He didn’t use market research to predict; he used it to create a market and to improve what he offered to the market. This is where effectual logic comes in. Effectual logic leverages assets on hand, existing expertise, a network of stakeholders, and experimentation to create opportunities rather than discover or predict them.

Saras D. Sarasvathy of the University of Virginia coined the phrase “effectual logic” to describe a way of thinking that expert entrepreneurs rely on to create their ventures. Sarasvathy asked super-successful entrepreneurs—those with 15-plus years of start-up experience, multiple ventures both successful and failed, and at least one IPO—to solve the kinds of problems entrepreneurs face in bringing something new to market. She learned they relied heavily on their power to engage a single customer, experiment until they found the best solution for a problem, and drive that solution into the market they created for it.

The five principles of effectual logic

From her research with these expert entrepreneurs, Sarasvathy derived five working principles of effectual logic. Corporations can and do exhibit these effectual-logic behaviors in launching truly innovative initiatives, but examples are not easy to find and too often come largely out of the technology industry.

1. Bird-in-hand principle—start with your means

Expert entrepreneurs approach opportunity on the basis of who they are, what they know, and whom they know. They work from competence, expertise, and their network to envision possibilities, raazther than target opportunities according to the market size or expected returns.

A corporate example of using the bird-in-hand principle dates to 1996, when W. W. Grainger became the first major business-to-business firm to invest heavily in the internet as a sales engine. In 1996 the internet had only 70 million users, or nearly 2 percent of the world’s population. Just a year before, Forrester Research had written a report in which 50 percent of Fortune 1000 CIOs stated unequivocally that the internet had no applicability to business and, as nothing more than a consumer time sink and security risk, would never be enabled behind their firewalls.

Grainger took a different look at the internet and decided that what it was really good for was information. Amazon.com had launched in 1995 with the vision of making a vast catalog of books, too numerous to house in a store, accessible to anyone, anywhere. What Grainger had was the world’s largest catalog of maintenance, repair, and operations products. Why not put that catalog online and see if customers would use that information source to discover and buy more Grainger products? Despite a complete lack of data about the channel conflict this would create, the willingness of customers to adopt this solution, or the impact on business operations, Grainger forged ahead. Starting with its asset base of information, salespeople, and relationships, Grainger pioneered business-to-business e-commerce.

2. Affordable-loss principle—focus on the downside risk

A common stereotype is that entrepreneurs are risk takers, but entrepreneurs don’t see themselves that way. They say they manage or limit risk. One way expert entrepreneurs do this is by investing, at each step of the entrepreneurial journey, only the time, energy, and resources they can afford to lose. They choose actions and goals in order to learn specific things about their business opportunities, and they pivot, adapt, or cut bait on the basis of what they learn. They find the upside in their experiments, even when those experiments don’t end up becoming booming businesses.

3M is famously known for allowing engineers to spend 15 percent of their time on their own projects, just exploring ideas, whether or not those ideas are in line with the company’s mission. 3M’s management is betting that any loss of productivity is worth the potential gain of supporting ideas in their nascent stages. And that bet has paid off with products including Post-it notes, ScotchBlue painter’s tape, and a lens-manufacturing process that generates more than $100 million in annual revenue.

Google lives the affordable-loss principle by making frequent forays into the market with products that often seem well outside its core business model and retreating just as quickly if the market rejects them. For Google, the concept of affordable loss can involve an awful lot of money. If you google “Google’s biggest failures,” you will find myriad articles on the subject citing dozens of flops—among them Google Wave, Notebook, and Nexus Q, a spherical digital media player. But in every case, Google keeps whatever works from the failure while jettisoning the product itself. Aspects of Google Wave are found in Gmail; Notebook features infuse the very successful Google Docs product; and even Nexus Q, which was Google’s first foray into hardware, helped with the design and launch of Chromecast.

3. Lemonade principle—leverage contingencies

Corporate managers are often obsessed with “what if” scenarios, trying to create plans and define outcomes for every eventuality. Entrepreneurs instead embrace the fact that they have no idea what will happen next, and their very business models could have to change and adapt as they learn from the marketplace. As a result, entrepreneurs view surprises, both good and bad, as ways to make their business cases stronger. In its launch year, Cranium, the game company, missed the annual Toy Fair, where the vast majority of new toys and games are introduced to the market. It mitigated that bad luck by getting into a completely different go-to-market channel: Starbucks. Cranium became the fastest-selling independent board game in US history.

In the corporate world, Pfizer created the category of erectile dysfunction drugs when Viagra failed to treat blood pressure and angina, the conditions for which it was being tested. It was during those tests that volunteers reported significantly more and longer erections when taking the medication, and Pfizer decided to launch trials in that area.

Three quarters of a century earlier, conservative paper-product company Kimberly-Clark found itself with warehouses full of Cellucotton and no market for it. During World War I, Kimberly-Clark had developed Cellucotton as an inexpensive, soft, absorbent wood-based replacement for cotton bandages, but when the war ended, the company had no idea what to do with the stuff until they discovered that nurses in the field had used the Cellucotton to replace sanitary rags. Working with their marketing agency, Kimberly-Clark branded the new product Kotex—short for “cotton textile”—and the disposable-sanitary-products market was born.

4. Patchwork-quilt principle—form partnerships

Entrepreneurs face a lot of nos, especially when bringing really innovative solutions to market. Rather than try to convert the nos to yeses, expert entrepreneurs seek out people who buy into their vision and gather them into a self-selected network of stakeholders who cocreate an opportunity. This might even involve partnerships with organizations that could, from a traditional perspective, be seen as competition.

In 1953, two men sitting on a plane got to talking after they discovered they shared the last name Smith. One was a salesman from IBM, and the other was the president of American Airlines. American was, at the time, struggling with managing reservations, since each flight’s seats were represented by cards in a rotating file that airline employees would mark when a seat sold. When travel agents called in, operators would find a file to see if the flight had sold out. The company was rolling out an electromechanical computer system to track the seats so more operators could quickly learn whether a seat was available, but the system still required a person on either end of a phone line. Meanwhile IBM was experimenting with a communications system for the US Air Force that used computers and teleprinters to input information into a database system.

This conversation could have been dropped and forgotten; but, instead, the president of American invited the IBM salesman to see their reservation system in action to determine if the two organizations could benefit by partnering on a new solution. This is how SABRE (semi-automated business research environment) was born. Launched in 1960, it took over all bookings for American four years later. To increase the value of the solution, American opened it up to travel agents in 1976, which paved the way for the online travel industry. Travelocity spun out of the SABRE initiative in 1996.

5. Pilot-in-the-plane principle—control the future

Expert entrepreneurs don’t see the market as an inevitable tide in which they must catch the wave just right or be dashed on shore. Rather, they believe that the future is created by people, and they have a fundamental faith in their ability to control that future.

Anyone could have told Steve Jobs that there was no market for tablet computers beyond a few forms-based applications such as medical checklists or ruggedized field tablets for oil-rig and construction-site inspections. The technology for tablet computers had been on and off in the market since 1987, when the GRiDPad launched. That was followed in 1991 by the NCR 3125 Notepad. Microsoft got in the game in 1992 when it created Windows for Pen Computing, an operating system specifically designed for tablets. IBM tried with the ThinkPad 700T in 1992, and Apple made its big play with the Newton MessagePad in 1993, only to discontinue it in 1998. Through the early 2000s, products kept coming and going. There was no big market for tablet computers.

But Steve Jobs didn’t care. He decided to show the market something it never thought it wanted. Using Apple’s superior design expertise and massive marketing machine, Jobs brought iPad to the world. The reaction was mixed. Apple devotees lined up to buy it, while Windows proponents scoffed. Some reviewers said it was nothing more than a big, heavy iPhone that couldn’t make phone calls and didn’t have a camera. But it sold 3 million units in 80 days, and it wasn’t long before developers began to turn out new and interesting applications by the thousands for this “new” computing format. The Apple App Store now boasts more than 1 million apps specifically designed for the iPad.

Corporate innovation is hard. Corporations have to deal with competing projects and priorities, budgeting nightmares, existing products and customers, and the ever-present pressure from Wall Street to make the quarterly numbers. Yet, the imperative is there. In a 2013 PwC Pulse Survey of 246 CEOs worldwide, 97 percent of survey participants indicated that innovation was a top priority for their company. Patrick Whitney, design guru and dean of Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design, says corporate innovation requires three things: first, managers who know when their customers’ needs are not being served; second, fear or pain that drives urgency; and third, executive leaders who are willing to go down a path without knowing exactly where they will end up. Perhaps the tools of effectual logic and its framework of principles, used so frequently by the most successful serial entrepreneurs, can help these leaders overcome some of the obstacles to building innovation into their corporate practice.

Waverly Deutsch is a clinical professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth.

This article was originally published on the Chicago Booth Review.

What evidence should we take into account while addressing this question? The question is how the world has evolved, which is why we need to look at it from a historical standpoint. And because the subject concerns the entire planet, the answer must take everyone into account. The solution must take into account the history of global living circumstances, as well as the history of everything. Poverty on a grand scale is one of the world’s most pressing issues today. Is it possible to make progress against this issue? To understand where we come from, we must travel across time. Thirty or even fifty years is insufficient.

When you simply analyse what the globe looked like throughout our lifetime, it is easy to infer that the world is static (with better portions of the world here and poorer sections there) and that it was always this way. This will be the case. When you look at things from a different viewpoint, it becomes evident that the world is far from static. We have the power to transform the world. Just a few generations ago, the wealthy countries were impoverished. To avoid statically depicting the globe – the North is always considerably wealthier than the South – we must go back 200 years before living circumstances altered dramatically.

Living on less than $1.90 per day is considered ‘severe poverty’ by the United Nations. This is a very low poverty level used to highlight the world’s poorest people.

Non-monetary means of income are included in these poverty estimates, which is crucial for poor families now and in the past, especially because many of them are subsistence farmers who rely on their food production. The extreme poverty gauge is also adjusted for price fluctuations over time (inflation) and compensated for varying price levels in different nations; poverty is assessed in the so-called ‘international dollar.’ In 2011, an international dollar had the same purchasing power as a US dollar as a result of these modifications.

Estimates of the fraction of the world’s population living in extreme poverty are shown in the first graph. Only a small elite had improved living conditions in 1820, but the great majority of people suffered in what we now term abject poverty. Since then, the percentage of severely impoverished individuals has progressively decreased. As more parts of the world became industrialised, productivity grew, allowing more people to escape poverty: in 1950, two-thirds of the world lived in extreme poverty; in 1981, it was still 42 per cent. The fraction of the world’s population living in extreme poverty fell below 10% in 2015, the most recent year for which we have statistics.

The $1.90 poverty level is extremely low because it only applies to the world’s poorest people. In terms of the most impoverished people, the globe is likewise making progress. In reality, regardless of whose poverty level you choose, the number of people living in poverty has decreased internationally (see here).

For me, as a scholar who studies growth and inequality, that is maybe the most significant achievement of the previous two centuries. This is especially impressive given that the world’s population has grown by a factor of seven in the previous two centuries: disable the ‘Relative’ option in this visualisation to view the number of individuals in and out of poverty. Multiplying the population by 7 would have resulted in ever-decreasing earnings for everyone in a society without economic progress, and it would have been enough to plunge everyone into abject poverty. However, the exact reverse occurred. At a time when the world’s population was growing at an unprecedented rate, our globe was able to deliver greater wealth to more people and continue to elevate more people out of poverty.

Increased production was crucial because it reduced the scarcity of essential commodities and services such as food, clothes, and housing. Productivity is the link between the outcome of our work and the input we put into it. As productivity improved, we gained more output but also fewer inputs: weekly working hours were significantly decreased.

Economic development was also significant since it altered people’s relationships. During the long period when the world was stagnant, the only way to improve was for someone else to deteriorate. It was a no-win situation. Your good fortune was due to the misfortunes of your neighbours. Growth in the economy altered that; it allowed you to be better off while others were better off. Some people benefited from the inventiveness of those who created the technologies that improved productivity—modern transportation, manufacturing machines, and communication technology—while others saw their productivity and earnings rise. It is difficult to emphasise how different life is in a positive-sum economy versus a zero-sum economy.

Unfortunately, the media is too preoccupied with covering one-off events and mishaps to pay enough attention to the long-term trends that are transforming our society. We may outline what a medium for reporting on global development might look like using this empirical fact on poverty reduction. ‘The number of people in severe poverty has reduced by 130,000 since yesterday,’ the headline might read, and it would be repeated every day since 1990 when there were 130,000 fewer people in extreme poverty on average every day. The figures are considerably more stunning if you choose a higher poverty threshold.

For you basic best life 101, you need to do these things and it involves a lot of stopping. If you don’t know how to stop, then learn how to. Some things you just have to learn by doing.

Stop Comparisons

Stop comparing yourself to other people. Everyone is on their own journeys, replete with their own pitfalls and successes, big and small. There is no point to comparisons, everyone is unique, and also equally insignificant, none of this will matter in a hundred years.

Stop idealising

There is no one perfect life. You only live life once. There is no point living with negativity in your heart. Stop being negative. You don’t have to a creepy, toothy smile plastered on your face like a ‘toxic positivist’ but you have just have to lighten up and see the brighter side of things.

Don’t give a rat’s about what others think of you

Stop letting other people decide what your life is about, who you are. You don’t know them, they don’t know you well enough either. Their behavior and opinions stem from their internal issues. Know that. If it’s good, stick with them. If it’s bad, ignore it or walk away.

Health Is Wealth etc.

Start caring about your health. Health is everything we have, and you will realise it when your knees start to crunch in your 30s. When it starts fading, that’s when you become aware of just how lucky you are when you were in prime shape and well-being. Meditate, take care of your mind as much as your body.

Stop going after things that aren’t for you

Dream job, dream partner, dream house, dream car. Stop chasing, start living. What you have is what you need, keep the rest in your dreams. Stop wanting to impress people with material success.

Stop wanting to be perfect

No one is. Everyone ha flatulence.

Stop being on social media

Get out and be social for real. Social media wastes your time and makes money for influencers. Stop engaging with ‘content.’

Stay Open

Wanting to have a sense of control is the most common affliction for modern-day humans, and it is entirely not possible to have it all the time. Don’t sweat what you cannot control or you will be a slave to anxiety till you are dead.

Just Stop

Stop to do nothing once in a while. Stop, stare, you might just get some brand new ideas and ways to improve your life. In the end, it doesn’t really matter.