How problemsolvers can help save the world

If you are a good problemsolver - how can you best help address the major social problems faced in the world today?

One answer - which I will explore today - is this: By identifying the "bottleneck" factors or barriers that limit our effectiveness in responding to these problems, and developing and promoting ways of removing or reducing these bottlenecks.

That's way too abstract - so let's rephrase it.

Part of my point is that we need to realize that most problems are already being addressed. Look around and you will find lots of efficient, smart, hard-working people and organizations already addressing most of the world's major problems. However, since the problems are still problems, something must be limiting or constraining our effectiveness in addressing them.

As a problemsolver, you can have the most impact by identifying the stuff that is stopping "everyone else" from already having solved the problem. Show them how to do this, and they will do the rest. In other words: You have your greatest impact by unlocking effectiveness in all the others.

The nature of the constraint or bottleneck varies from case to case. I won't pretend to have the full list, but some of them may be

• awareness issues - where the awareness of the problem and its
  scope is grossly inaccurate, leading too few people and resources to be
  spent on it. This may be because some cultural, psychological or other
  factor makes it difficult for people to talk about or understand the
  issue and its solutions. Sometimes an issue may be difficult to embed
  in psychologically
  compelling and arresting stories or pictures, and may thus lose out in
  the attention market. Distasteful as it sounds, it has been claimed
  that rich, white people in the west find it hard to identify with poor,
  black people in the south (part of the reason why the typical Hollywood
  movie taking place in Africa is focused on the life and experiences of
  a white person). At other times, religious or social taboos or customs
  can make it difficult to spread awareness and start discussions about
  certain issues.
  For instance, some religious groups try (with some success in the US)
  to fight discussion of and information on the use of condoms in the
  prevention of HIV infection. Or the problem may contain horrors that
  most people would prefer to avoid knowledge of (which may be part of the reason why there is so little attention on the problems of the Democratic Republic of Congo).
  
• technical knowledge issues - where we don't know how to achieve some result. For instance, when we don't know how to prevent or treat some new illness, how to produce clean energy cheaply enough to compete with trees (leading to deforestration) or fossil fuels (leading to global warming), how to effectively and ethically change people's cultural traditions (regarding, for instance, female circumcision)
• information issues - where the link between people's actions and their impact on the problem is long, complicated or features long delays. In other words, if you see a man falling out of a window and you call 911, you know that you're the reason why the ambulance came and you can grasp the importance timely, medical help had for the patient. If you give money to a charitable organization, understanding how that money will be spent and what kind of expected and actual impact it will have on the problem is more difficult. It seems - in my personal experience - quite common for people to use this as a major excuse (for instance, people on TV and in the press will say stuff like "I don't believe the money reaches the starving children... it's lost on organization overhead and pocketed by corrupt politicians in the third world...")

An important thing to understand about the bottlenecks/constraints is that often, what is required is identifying a way of removing or relaxing or avoiding the constraint and demonstrating that it works by taking the first step. If you as a problemsolver do this and show the way, others will say "hey, that's a good idea - I'll do the same."

In other words, your task as a problemsolver is to

1. understand the rough, main structure of the "problem complex": What is the problem, what are the main ways of addressing it, where are the funds coming from, where is the public support coming from (and where is it not coming from) and so on
2. Identify the biggest limiting factors/bottlenecks/constraints that is limiting the size and impact of our response to the problem
   
3. Develop simple, easily taught ways of removing, reducing or avoiding these constraints/bottlenecks
4. Make your solution work in practice and spread it

Finally, some successful examples of this:

• Awareness issue: Al Gore's movie "inconvenient truth," or Michael Moore's film "Sicko" are both quite successful attempts at raising the public awareness surrounding specific issues
• Technical knowledge issue: Can be low tech, such as the search for economically viable alternatives to highly polluting and environmentally unsustainable cooking fuels (see this interesting TED-talk by MIT engineer Amy Smith). Can be high tech, such as the $100 laptop project. Can be organizational, by improving monitoring, organization and transparency such as the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, or by improving purchasing expertise as discussed in a TED talk by Bill Clinton.
  
• Information issues - such as http://www.kiva.org/ which links your specific loan to a specific person taking up a micro-loan in the developing world - and allowing you to follow his progress over time.
  

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