Positive Creative Destruction!
So back in the 30’s Josef Schumpeter described economic growth as creative destruction. You tear down the old and use creative forces to rebuild it better then it was in the past.
This is what I am trying to teach to the students here with a little twist: positive creative destruction.
It is evident here that people can use creative destruction to keep the corruption going and even make it worse if they choose. If they could just keep the creative juices flowing in a positive direction maybe through a lot of baby steps they can destroy old system and replace it with transparency and justice.
It is hard trying to find a way to explain to the people that it is in their own interest not to be corrupt when the chances of getting caught are so low and the rewards so great. How to you explain to someone that they will be better off if they don’t take the million Naira when they know that no one will ever catch them. How would you explain that to someone in Canada let alone here?
The school takes the moral approach. I am trying both that and talking with them about their reputations. How if they take the money it may benefit them in the short term but then it has the potential of ruining there reputation. Not that they will get caught but that other people will suspect them of doing it. If that is the case then anyone who wants to do business with people who are not corrupt would not want to do business with them.
They can’t control the poor reputations of Nigerians at large but they can control their own individual reputations. My best advice for them getting a good reputation is doing what they say they will do. Don’t make false promises and don’t take bribes. Keep everything above board and it will open up doors for them in the future.
Keep your reputation, keep things moving positively to a better place, but don’t be afraid to destroy what was there before you. Schumpeter would have told them that it doesn’t need to be a brand new technology to do this, it can be as simple as using the resources they have at their disposal a little better. Can you get the work one with 9 people instead of 10, can you find a way to get production done one day faster. Can you actually motivate people to do a good days work!
All these are ways of using ingenuity with the local resources to take incremental positive creative destructive steps to improve themselves and their world around them.
Go and DESTROY!
