A Lesson from Mario Kart
I have been playing Nintendo's Mario Kart with my grandson; and getting a lesson in humility. My problem is that I struggle to get a feel for steering; I am constantly bumping into walls or falling into the abyss along the racetrack - falling further behind with each interruption. My grandson, on the other hand, pretty much stays in the middle of the lane. His velocity made good is much better than mine because he doesn't make the unforced errors that constantly slow me down!
I first learned about the concept of velocity made good, or VMG, in sailboat racing. A sailboat can't sail directly into the wind, and VMG indicates the vector of the speed towards the direction of the wind. If the direction of the wind is aligned with the location of your destination your VMG might be slow, but fast enough to win a race over others unable to make an optimal VMG.
The concept of VMG is an apt metaphor for research and development activities in the pursuit of innovation to address complex challenges. For example, the biopharmaceutical R&D pathway for new medicines follows a proscribed pathway from discovery to market authorization based on long-standing regulatory requirements and well-accepted patterns of research. This proscribed sequence of studies and decision-making milestones brings discipline, transparency, and accountability to the R&D process. It is also optimized to maximize the velocity made good – regardless of whether a drug candidate succeeds or fails, the requisite information to approve or disapprove further investment is available at key decision-making milestones.
The concept of VMG is at the core of the pursuit of getting better at getting better - learning how to make progress against difficult challenges without making unforced errors that waste time, money, and the opportunity to advance innovation.
One of the complicating factors in trying to make VMG in Mario Kart is that there are many different tracks to choose from - and the number of choices and their complexity continue to multiply.
This situation is familiar to global health researchers. Each challenge can feel like a different racetrack and the more we learn about each challenge the more we are struck by the previously under-appreciated complexity.
Any VMG that we make in thought, theory, or practice innovation will be enhanced by evolving maps of the routes we need to navigate. Drawing on the science, tools, and processes of collective intelligence we can create the conceptual schemes that can be the source of those maps.
The schemes become a navigational aid to reasoning cogently, coherently, and collaboratively in the present day and, as they mature over time, they constitute a multi-generational gift providing an ever expanding knowledge base for researchers of the future.
