A proper understanding of the unmet need.<\/p>\n
If you have children you will be familiar with that child telling you \u201cI need a chocolate chip cookie!\u201d And one translates that to mean that the child is hungry and tests the idea by giving the child a banana or some spaghetti.<\/p>\n
Sometimes incorrect needs-statements just jump off the radio and stick in my throat like a three day old, dry, stottie.\u00a0 On the Today program on BBC Radio 4 this morning, Dambisa Moyo, author of\u00a0 \u201cWinner Takes All\u201d said \u201cSixty percent of the population of Africa is under the age of 25.\u00a0 They need job creation.\u201d\u00a0 She is not the first to say it.\u00a0 It is something often said about the unemployed anywhere, not just Africa.\u00a0 But I feel that it is an inaccurate reflection on the need.<\/p>\n
Yes, I do respond to the world like this all the time.\u00a0 I hear or see, I experience an event and I feel an emotional punch and spend a moment in my local minimum, my dip in the road which is filled with \u201chow dare they\u201d or \u201cthat is amazing\u201d.\u00a0 Then, thankfully, \u00a0I think a little about what are they really saying and are they stating the truth, or a truth.\u00a0 Are they at least being helpful? \u00a0In this case, I don\u2019t think that they are being helpful.<\/p>\n
Do people need jobs?<\/p>\n
People need to eat, they need to care for their children and elderly, in our world they need to educate their children.\u00a0 People need food, shelter and hope.<\/strong>\u00a0 Jobs?\u00a0 They may even need love and singing or craft.\u00a0 Jobs?\u00a0 A job is one solution, one way of delivering money to those who want it so that they can use it to buy what they need.\u00a0 When \u201cmore jobs\u201d is the solution then \u201cno jobs\u201d is the problem.\u00a0 And that one metric, that inaccurate definition of the unmet need, closes down all other solutions.<\/p>\n Humans develop this type of shorthand to discuss all kinds of issues and end up a side stream. Then they spend so much time talking about a particular popular solution to a need, that the underlying need is not addressed directly.\u00a0 The solution is measured \u2013 it becomes the metric \u2013 and we drive that metric, we police the numbers of that one measure and forget to think.<\/p>\n It is not deep thought that is needed.\u00a0 Rather, we need simple thinking.\u00a0 The sort of thinking that I read about somewhere. \u00a0\u00a0It says that, if an alien landed in a part of town where young men are hanging out on the street seemingly unhappy and it asked why?\u00a0 Tell the alien that it\u2019s because there is no work and they alien looks at the peeling paint, cracked roadbed, weed grown garden… no work?\u00a0 There is a lot of work.\u00a0 There are many jobs to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A proper understanding of the unmet need. If you have children you will be familiar with that child telling you \u201cI need a chocolate chip cookie!\u201d And one translates that to mean that the child is hungry and tests the idea by giving the child a banana or some spaghetti. Sometimes incorrect needs-statements just jump … Continue reading I need a chocolate chip cookie!<\/span>