During
early 1970's, before I started my own business, I worked in a factory
that manufactured heavy trucks. In those days, unlike today's
vehicles, almost no electronic gadgets were incorporated in the
vehicles by the manufacturers. Our Electronics development section
was involved in trying to figure out if any small gadgets can be made
and used in our company trucks. There were a few leads and one such
lead was to incorporate an electronic flasher device as a turning
indicator, instead of prevalent bimetallic mechanical flashers used.
The main problem as we experienced in these electronic flashers, was
that their frequency of flashing would keep varying with the vehicle
battery voltage. When the vehicle was running at a fast speed, the
battery would be charging at a high rate with the result that its
voltage would rise and this would make our flashers flash rapidly.
When the vehicles were standing still and engine idling, the flashers
would flash very slowly. Clearly this kind of performance was not
acceptable. We managed to secure some German flashers and opened them
to find that they had a mechanical component incorporated to get rid
of this problem. This was not acceptable to us as we wanted a flasher
that had no moving parts and was purely solid state.
One
morning, I received a handwritten letter forwarded to me by our
director. The letter was from a young engineering diploma holder
staying in a small town in hinterland of Maharashtra state. He
claimed in his letter that he has developed an electronic flasher and
wanted to sell it to our company. I discussed the matter with our
director and a letter was sent to the young man to visit us. We
agreed to pay all his travelling and boarding expenses during the
visit.
The
young man visited us on a later date with his gadget. We put it on
one of our trucks in his presence and gave one of our technical hands
to him and sent him for a day's ride on various roads facing all
kinds of driving situations. In the evening, I checked the report of
our own engineer, who was on the truck and had taken detailed
readings of the battery voltage and flasher frequency throughout the
day. Most surprisingly, this young man from a small town in
hinterland, had solved the problem of varying frequency of the
flasher, which well trained and highly qualified engineers employed
by our company, have not been able to solve.
This
is the power of ingenious innovation. A person is normally born with
it. I do not think that it can be acquired with training or
education, though it perhaps can be sharpened if right environment is
available. This kind of innovative minds have built up silicon valley
in US. But by no means, such innovative minds are restricted to US or
developed countries. An innovator would come out with something
unbelievable, whatever may be constraints or whichever part of the
world, he is from.
I am
reminded today about this small incident from the past after coming
across a story of a barber or a hairdresser as they are referred to
these days, from mainland China. 37 year old Wang Qiang is a
hairdresser from eastern China’s Zhejiang province. He grew up
spreading manure and picking corn on a farm. Now, throughout the day,
he works trimming and shaping hair of his clients in his hair salon.
Most of his neighbours in the countryside spend their evenings
playing mahjong after finishing work. Wang never joins them as he is
obsessed with an idea that normally would be impossible to achieve
for a person in his circumstances. Wong loves flying and that too in
his own aircraft.
In the
initial days Wang took design ideas from foreign websites. He
downloaded pictures and looked at them again and again. Finally he
decided to build his own aircraft. After eight months and spending
30000 Yuan (US$5000), he finally managed to finish his flimsy-looking
craft, which has a stainless steel frame, wheels from a motorized
wheelchair, and a seat scavenged from a go-kart. However rickety,
Wang's one-seater craft may look, the most important thing is that it
flies and flies well.
Buzzing
like an oversized electric razor, Wang's home-made airplane skids
over grassland before soaring into a vast blue sky, to reach
altitudes of 3,500 meters and speeds of 90 kilometers an hour (56
mph), a performance that is absolutely unbelievable.
Flying
a private aircraft in China is something that is considered extremely
difficult and expensive. China’s military controls nearly all of
the country’s airspace, and despite promises of reform has only
opened a few areas to private flights. One can barely fly anywhere.
Wang has somehow managed to secure a special permission from
authorities.
During
his flying adventures, Wang had few near-misses or near-death
experiences of his own, his engine cut out several times in mid-air,
forcing him to glide down to earth. He says: “I told myself:
there’s no time to panic, just land! I once performed an emergency
landing in a lake.”
I just
feel amazed at Wang Qiang's innovative spirit and capacity and the
way he has found the way through all the odds and difficulties to
achieve, what he always wanted. This is a perfect example of the
power of innovation we should all try to emulate.
3
August 2013
