Hippos love tomatoes (& pumpkins)

Ernesto Sirolli has worked for almost 30 years on local economic development in Africa, Australia, and North America. He has a wonderful story about his early days working on economic development in the Zambesi. Click here to find his TedTalk

Briefly, the economic development group commissioned by the Italian government decided that a parcel of land was incredibly fertile for growing tomatoes. As much as they tried, the Italians couldn't get the locals engaged in the effort, so the Italians decided to do the project themselves. After a few months, the tomatoes were ripe, delicious, and ready for harvesting. One morning the team went to the fields and found that they had been destroyed; all the tomatoes were gone. Shocked, they went to the villagers and asked who did this. The elders replied, "the Hippos - that's why we don't grow food on those fields." When asked why they didn't tell the Italians that before all the work, they replied, "you didn't ask us."

This story is a reminder that unless we work hard at understanding the local context before proposing a top-down solution, we risk embarrassment by targeting the wrong problem. We become so sure of our expertise and our beliefs, and in our eagerness to find solutions, that we don't take the time to truly understand the issues. Impatience becomes an obstacle to successful innovation.