Dec 2019
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
– Margaret Mead
“Growing up in India, I knew all I needed to change the world was one good opportunity, and I prepared myself for it. When that opportunity came – in the form of the chance to earn an engineering degree – I was ready.”
– Naveen Jain
A really clever way of changing the world I tell people who have lots of money and want to is to find an area you know a lot about that not a lot of people are focusing on and not a lot of capital is flowing into. Then funnel all your money into there, into that one area that you know the most about, to get force multiplication. You will have a disproportionately big impact and thus change the world. Because you will have funnelled capital with expertise into an area with few resources.
The second thing I tell people is to focus their area of impact. You can’t really change the world if your aim is to change the world. It’s too big a goal. You don’t change the world by trying to change the world. You change it by solving a really niche problem in a niche area that has a cheap to implement solution that easily improves upon past solutions – that when you zoom out actually affects a lot of people and your solution for this one problem, can then be replicated and applied all over the world by lots of different people in different ways.
If we put it all together. What is something you know a lot about, that few people are looking at, that you can create change for not a lot of money, in a place that your efforts will have a big impact, that is better than previous solutions, that can be replicated in other places that face the same problem?