The impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic on each of us is in all aspects. It will not only affect your food, clothing, housing and transportation, but also your living environment.
If you have lived at home because of the epidemic, you must have thought about your relationship with the environment. What should you do when the external environment changes drastically?
Tell a story that happened more than 100 years ago.
Before the baby incubator was invented, the mortality rate of newborns was very high, but at the time, no one could solve this problem.
Who solved this problem in the end? It was Stephen Taney, a 53-year-old obstetrician and gynecologist.
One day in 1881, Dr. Stephen went to the Paris Zoo to see an exhibition. Everyone else was watching animals such as lions and tigers, but he focused on the incubator where the chicks were hatched in the zoo.
He saw the newly hatched chicks bouncing in the incubator at a suitable temperature, and he was immediately inspired and had an idea.
He immediately found Uldir Martin, the poultry breeder who made the chicken incubator in the zoo, and the two began to cooperate. They learned from the model of the chick incubator and made an incubator for human babies.
A few months later, a baby incubator with a glass door and compartment thermos was made.
The advent of the baby incubator has had a huge impact on the entire society.
According to statistics, after using the infant incubator, the mortality rate of underweight newborns has been reduced from 66% to 28%. You have to know that behind every number is a living life.
Subsequently, the baby incubator began to spread in various countries, Stephen’s student Martin Cooney introduced the baby incubator to the United States.
After the Second World War, baby incubators became standard equipment in every hospital in the United States. This allowed the United States to reduce newborn mortality by 80% in the nearly 50 years from 1950 to 1998.
The origin of such a great invention is just the innovative thinking that a doctor was inspired by the chicken incubator when he was visiting the zoo.
In fact, in work and life, we can also use this innovative way.
This approach is very common in the business world, and many words refer to this approach, such as cross-innovation, cross-industry innovation, mashup innovation, and combination innovation. There are a lot of words, but no matter what word is used, the principle is actually the same, that is, recombining the old elements to form a new thing.
So, what traps you is never a problem, but thinking. When you find that the door you want to open is locked, you might as well look for the key elsewhere.
There is a follow-up to this story.
Although the popularization of infant incubators in developed countries such as Europe and the United States has significantly reduced the infant mortality rate, in many developing countries with poor medical conditions, the neonatal mortality rate is still very high.
In 2005, the second year after the Indian Ocean tsunami, the International Relief Organization donated 8 baby incubators to a city in Indonesia.
Three years later, when Professor Prestillo from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology visited the city, he found that all the eight incubators were out of order and were no longer in use. The newborns were useless at all.
Why did you stop using it?
Because the baby incubator at that time was already very complicated, if something went wrong, no one would repair it. Repairing such complex equipment requires not only professional technicians, but also spare parts for it. As a result, neither of these are available locally.
How to do it?
Prestilo immediately decided to design a baby incubator for developing countries. So he formed a team to do this.
Someone in his team found that in most developing countries, whether in cities or towns, there are cars, and they have the ability to maintain cars. So, they tried to make baby incubators with car parts.
Three years later, a new incubator for babies was made and named the baby incubator.
How did they do it?
The heating system of the baby incubator is modified from the front spotlight of the car, the air circulation system is the fan of the modified car dashboard, the alarm system is the door buzzer, and the energy system uses the battery of the motorcycle.
This baby incubator made of auto parts can not only find these spare parts locally, but also can repair it as long as it is a car repairer.
The new baby incubator has benefited more people.
Why should I tell this story?
Because your action is a reaction to the environment.
From baby incubators to baby incubators, from the United States to Indonesia, although the environment is worlds apart, those unmet needs have not changed.
If Prestillo complained about the bad environment in Indonesia from the beginning, can he make a baby incubator? He can’t do it.
The environment always changes. Complaining about the environment does not make you better. The real problem is not the environment itself, but your reaction to the environment. You can only control your actions and attitudes.
What ability is the most important for a person or a company? The ability to continue to evolve.
When the environment changes, you have to change with the environment, adapt to the environment, and continue to evolve.
At this time, I thought of a person, the famous Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist Victor Frankel.
His parents, wife, and brother all died under the clutches of the Nazis, and he himself suffered hellish torture in the Nazi concentration camps. After experiencing countless pains and thoughts, he understood one thing: “Anything that a person possesses can be deprived of, but the last freedom of human nature-that is, to choose his own attitude and life under any circumstances. Freedom of way-cannot be deprived.”
