Interview with Andreas Widmer
| “If we as a society want to make progress on the issue of poverty (and pursue wealth-creation, the solution) we have to alter the currently prevailing mindset of looking for aid based, one-size-fits-all government-led solutions and pursue an integral approach to the issue which takes into account the various domains of the human reality.”—Andreas Widmer |
Interview with Andreas Widmer
Q: Your current research work most closely related to the Templeton Foundation is entitled “Building Linkages between Prosperity and Progressive Human Values for Citizens of Developing Nations.” What do you think is the most essential component of that exercise?
AW: Culture. We identify seven forms of Capital—the highest of which is Cultural Capital. It informs the intent of our use of any of the other forms of capital. Culture is how people attach meaning to their lives, look at nature, time, and other people. We are most interested in how they view competition and innovation, create wealth, and tolerate people unlike themselves.
Q: What was the most significant point that has so far emerged from the essays submitted to your competitions?
AW: If we, as a society, want to make progress on the issue of poverty (and pursue wealth-creation, the solution), we have to alter the currently prevailing mindset of looking for aid based, one-size-fits-all government-led solutions and pursue an integral approach to the issue which takes into account the various domains of the human reality. This is why we introduced the concept of “exclusion from networks of productivity” as a means to define poverty—to shift the perspective away from purely financial measures in our first essay competition. We asked students to reflect on this idea and suggest ideas and thoughts on the topic by integrating various fields of human sciences and domains. The graduate level essays demonstrated a sophisticated grasp of this idea and a high level of integration. The essays demonstrated a promising variety of ideas and integration across various fields. The issue seemed to be too abstract to the undergraduate writer. Many undergraduates looked to the status-quo of development-solutions and retro-fitted, sometimes rather awkwardly, the “networks of productivity” concept. We conclude that in the future, we will continue to pursue the open-ended, concept-driven questions with graduate students, but offer the undergraduate students a more structured approach in which we will supply some background reading along with the question. This approach is aimed at explaining our concepts and frameworks a step further to them, to offer them a stronger foundation for the development of their own thoughts and ideas. One key learning that has emerged is how critical these essay competitions are to exposing students to ideas related to enterprise-based solutions to poverty. Many expressed it was the first time they had thought about this issue in a systematic way, and explored new ideas and learned through the process of participating. For others, just the process of participating is affirming. One of our graduate finalists writes “I was just informed that my essay did not win a prize in the SEVEN competition. However, this has given me the courage to come more out of my shell as a writer in general, and that’s one of the greatest prizes I could have asked for.”
Q: How optimistic are you that promotion of the entrepreneurial spirit in poor countries can provide sustainable solutions to poverty?
AW: Very optimistic. Our Pioneers of Prosperity project was a resounding success in Eastern Africa. Both the amount of successful local entrepreneurs we found, and the enthusiastic response the project received indicates that we have identified a great need in the field and have the opportunity to develop a powerful and effective vehicle to encourage and promote entrepreneurs in the developing world.
Q: Can you point to any specific instances in which the influence of the Seven Fund has made a concrete difference to people’s prosperity?
AW: We are not a direct philanthropic organization—we do not fund projects on the ground. But the fact that hundreds of thousands of TV viewers across Africa have seen the Pioneers of Prosperity coverage leads us to believe that we have inspired many to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams and given them credible local role models. Over the first six months, we have had over sixteen thousand visitors to our website. Given that the average visitor has clicked through three pages of what we offer and has spent about three minutes reading it, way above the internet averages; we can safely assume that our ideas are receiving increasing exposure and are hopefully inspiring some of the readers to think of wealth creation as poverty alleviation in a new light.
Q: Do you believe that spiritual values and entrepreneurship can comfortably be made complementary?
AW: Necessarily so: both in the realm of entrepreneurship and enterprise-based solutions to poverty. We see entrepreneurship not simply as a line of work, but as a vocation (see Acton Institute’s “Call of the Entrepreneur”) it is a creative vocation that can be a key ingredient in the build up of our world and society. If approached with spiritual awareness, entrepreneurship is the participation in God’s creative power, making the entrepreneur a co-creator (reflecting the idea that entrepreneurship is not a zero-sum game). An entrepreneur with that mindset will undoubtedly perceive the fragile balance of contribution and needs across the various stakeholders in his or her endeavour: the consumer, investor, worker and the general environment around him or her (society and creation). Acting with a long-term view and sense of opportunity and responsibility, the entrepreneur becomes a positive protagonist in this equation, pursuing and enabling a long-term, fruitful equilibrium among these stakeholders. On the development side, we suggest that if the human person is solely regarded as a means of production, no sustainable economic solution will be devised. Integral humanism is called for in order to stimulate the advent of sustainable increases in economic prosperity. The full, transcendent human person must be taken into account. Each person is a complex reality that goes beyond the physical. It is our strong conviction that it is exactly the ignoring or disregard of the spiritual and psychological reality of personhood that ails the current aid paradigm. Current development solutions are in a certain way a “self-serving” approach by Western donors, reminiscent of the co-dependency model of psychology. If the approach of the donor is one of telling “the poor people” what to do to get out of poverty (almost dictatorial), if our aid is born out of a sense of guilt for history, then our actions are in pursuit of redemption for ourselves, to clear our collective conscience, not for the true benefit of the recipient. Giving aid makes us feel too good for us to ever give it up. This paradigm is demeaning of the dignity of the recipient. It does not take them as full persons. It uses them as a means to an end: our redemption from past injustices done to their ancestors. In this way, aid is a misguided spiritual issue in an economic cloak. A mature spiritual approach to the issue of development will recognize the dignity of the person in need; will make them the end, not the means.
Q: What are the big questions you want to ask in your field?
AW: SEVEN will run RFP competitions that seek answers to some of the “big questions” that the Foundation poses to the world:
1. What are the most significant qualities
of a successful entrepreneur (in a developing economy)?
2. Can entrepreneurship be taught, inspired, and diffused through a society?
3. And perhaps most critically, could support for the entrepreneurial spirit serve as harbingers of sustainable solutions to poverty?
Our work will also touch on other fields, concepts and realities that are of interest to the John Templeton Foundation: creativity, curiosity, emergence, entrepreneurship, future-mindedness, generosity, gratitude, honesty, humility, human flourishing, progress, purpose, reliability, self-control, spiritual capital, thrift and wisdom. Indeed, our long-stated view is that these are features of Cultural Capital that are requisite to innovation, prosperity and strong society. The overarching approach that SEVEN uses is the heuristic of Seven Forms of Capital (RE: Culture Matters, Chapter 20). There are forms of capital that are easy to see and measure. These include Natural capital, Man-made capital and Financial capital. These three are, overwhelmingly, the focus of the major development banks and institutions. There are four other forms of capital, which are more difficult to see and measure, but are, perhaps, even more important to the development of a region and its people. These are Institutional capital (i.e. rule of law, democracy), Knowledge capital (R&D, international patents), Human capital (skills and capabilities), and Cultural capital (pro-innovation thinking; RE: Harrison). SEVEN’s mission is to foster a discussion, spur innovation, and invest in these four higher forms of capital and their linkages with improved standard of living and progressive human values (i.e. interpersonal trust, tolerance for those unlike ourselves, a future orientation, self-discipline, rational risk-taking, etc.).
Q: Is your contrarian approach of improving prosperity by encouraging private-sector innovation from the bottom-up, at the level of the firm, attracting converts either in the developing world or among traditional aid donor nations?
AW: Mike Fairbanks—one of the two founders of SEVEN, can be considered one of the key pioneers in the field of enterprise-based solutions to poverty. Mike wrote the first book ever on firm-level strategy and economic development, in 1997. Both Mike and I have applied and further developed these theories during eight years at OTF Group. Now, we see the multilaterals and think tanks finally coming onboard. What makes us different from them is that we have “think and do” experience for a long time, some regard us the first ones in the field; and we are entrepreneurs who actually built companies.
Q: Can you briefly outline the significance in eradicating poverty of the four types of capital you have identified in addition to the three recognized by conventional economists—Institutional, Knowledge, Human and Cultural?
AW: Institutional capital means, according to Nobel laureate Douglas North, norms of behavior, both codified and not-codified. Examples include democracy, rule of law, and punctuality which, in increasing order, are all correlated with prosperity.
Knowledge capital like international patents, R & D efforts, and data bases are correlated with growth in nations. Paul Romer at Stanford talks of the “idea gap” between nations.
Human capital is skills and abilities, knowledge capital that walks around. The only investment with infinite potential for returns is the investment in children, according to Nobel laureate Gary Becker.
Cultural capital is how we attach meaning to our lives, whether or not we possess pro-innovation traits: tolerance for new ideas and people unlike themselves, belief in competition, high amounts of interpersonal trust, a future orientation. Adherents to this are Larry Harrison and ourselves.
Q: Your current research work most closely related to the Templeton Foundation is entitled “Building Linkages between Prosperity and Progressive Human Values for Citizens of Developing Nations.” What do you think is the most essential component of that exercise?
AW: Culture. We identify seven forms of Capital—the highest of which is Cultural Capital. It informs the intent of our use of any of the other forms of capital. Culture is how people attach meaning to their lives, look at nature, time, and other people. We are most interested in how they view competition and innovation, create wealth, and tolerate people unlike themselves.
Q: What was the most significant point that has so far emerged from the essays submitted to your competitions?
AW: If we, as a society, want to make progress on the issue of poverty (and pursue wealth-creation, the solution), we have to alter the currently prevailing mindset of looking for aid based, one-size-fits-all government-led solutions and pursue an integral approach to the issue which takes into account the various domains of the human reality. This is why we introduced the concept of “exclusion from networks of productivity” as a means to define poverty—to shift the perspective away from purely financial measures in our first essay competition. We asked students to reflect on this idea and suggest ideas and thoughts on the topic by integrating various fields of human sciences and domains. The graduate level essays demonstrated a sophisticated grasp of this idea and a high level of integration. The essays demonstrated a promising variety of ideas and integration across various fields. The issue seemed to be too abstract to the undergraduate writer. Many undergraduates looked to the status-quo of development-solutions and retro-fitted, sometimes rather awkwardly, the “networks of productivity” concept. We conclude that in the future, we will continue to pursue the open-ended, concept-driven questions with graduate students, but offer the undergraduate students a more structured approach in which we will supply some background reading along with the question. This approach is aimed at explaining our concepts and frameworks a step further to them, to offer them a stronger foundation for the development of their own thoughts and ideas. One key learning that has emerged is how critical these essay competitions are to exposing students to ideas related to enterprise-based solutions to poverty. Many expressed it was the first time they had thought about this issue in a systematic way, and explored new ideas and learned through the process of participating. For others, just the process of participating is affirming. One of our graduate finalists writes “I was just informed that my essay did not win a prize in the SEVEN competition. However, this has given me the courage to come more out of my shell as a writer in general, and that’s one of the greatest prizes I could have asked for.”
Q: How optimistic are you that promotion of the entrepreneurial spirit in poor countries can provide sustainable solutions to poverty?
AW: Very optimistic. Our Pioneers of Prosperity project was a resounding success in Eastern Africa. Both the amount of successful local entrepreneurs we found, and the enthusiastic response the project received indicates that we have identified a great need in the field and have the opportunity to develop a powerful and effective vehicle to encourage and promote entrepreneurs in the developing world.
Q: Can you point to any specific instances in which the influence of the Seven Fund has made a concrete difference to people’s prosperity?
AW: We are not a direct philanthropic organization—we do not fund projects on the ground. But the fact that hundreds of thousands of TV viewers across Africa have seen the Pioneers of Prosperity coverage leads us to believe that we have inspired many to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams and given them credible local role models. Over the first six months, we have had over sixteen thousand visitors to our website. Given that the average visitor has clicked through three pages of what we offer and has spent about three minutes reading it, way above the internet averages; we can safely assume that our ideas are receiving increasing exposure and are hopefully inspiring some of the readers to think of wealth creation as poverty alleviation in a new light.
Q: Do you believe that spiritual values and entrepreneurship can comfortably be made complementary?
AW: Necessarily so: both in the realm of entrepreneurship and enterprise-based solutions to poverty. We see entrepreneurship not simply as a line of work, but as a vocation (see Acton Institute’s “Call of the Entrepreneur”) it is a creative vocation that can be a key ingredient in the build up of our world and society. If approached with spiritual awareness, entrepreneurship is the participation in God’s creative power, making the entrepreneur a co-creator (reflecting the idea that entrepreneurship is not a zero-sum game). An entrepreneur with that mindset will undoubtedly perceive the fragile balance of contribution and needs across the various stakeholders in his or her endeavour: the consumer, investor, worker and the general environment around him or her (society and creation). Acting with a long-term view and sense of opportunity and responsibility, the entrepreneur becomes a positive protagonist in this equation, pursuing and enabling a long-term, fruitful equilibrium among these stakeholders. On the development side, we suggest that if the human person is solely regarded as a means of production, no sustainable economic solution will be devised. Integral humanism is called for in order to stimulate the advent of sustainable increases in economic prosperity. The full, transcendent human person must be taken into account. Each person is a complex reality that goes beyond the physical. It is our strong conviction that it is exactly the ignoring or disregard of the spiritual and psychological reality of personhood that ails the current aid paradigm. Current development solutions are in a certain way a “self-serving” approach by Western donors, reminiscent of the co-dependency model of psychology. If the approach of the donor is one of telling “the poor people” what to do to get out of poverty (almost dictatorial), if our aid is born out of a sense of guilt for history, then our actions are in pursuit of redemption for ourselves, to clear our collective conscience, not for the true benefit of the recipient. Giving aid makes us feel too good for us to ever give it up. This paradigm is demeaning of the dignity of the recipient. It does not take them as full persons. It uses them as a means to an end: our redemption from past injustices done to their ancestors. In this way, aid is a misguided spiritual issue in an economic cloak. A mature spiritual approach to the issue of development will recognize the dignity of the person in need; will make them the end, not the means.
Q: What are the big questions you want to ask in your field?
AW: SEVEN will run RFP competitions that seek answers to some of the “big questions” that the Foundation poses to the world:
1. What are the most significant qualities
of a successful entrepreneur (in a developing economy)?
2. Can entrepreneurship be taught, inspired, and diffused through a society?
3. And perhaps most critically, could support for the entrepreneurial spirit serve as harbingers of sustainable solutions to poverty?
Our work will also touch on other fields, concepts and realities that are of interest to the John Templeton Foundation: creativity, curiosity, emergence, entrepreneurship, future-mindedness, generosity, gratitude, honesty, humility, human flourishing, progress, purpose, reliability, self-control, spiritual capital, thrift and wisdom. Indeed, our long-stated view is that these are features of Cultural Capital that are requisite to innovation, prosperity and strong society. The overarching approach that SEVEN uses is the heuristic of Seven Forms of Capital (RE: Culture Matters, Chapter 20). There are forms of capital that are easy to see and measure. These include Natural capital, Man-made capital and Financial capital. These three are, overwhelmingly, the focus of the major development banks and institutions. There are four other forms of capital, which are more difficult to see and measure, but are, perhaps, even more important to the development of a region and its people. These are Institutional capital (i.e. rule of law, democracy), Knowledge capital (R&D, international patents), Human capital (skills and capabilities), and Cultural capital (pro-innovation thinking; RE: Harrison). SEVEN’s mission is to foster a discussion, spur innovation, and invest in these four higher forms of capital and their linkages with improved standard of living and progressive human values (i.e. interpersonal trust, tolerance for those unlike ourselves, a future orientation, self-discipline, rational risk-taking, etc.).
Q: Is your contrarian approach of improving prosperity by encouraging private-sector innovation from the bottom-up, at the level of the firm, attracting converts either in the developing world or among traditional aid donor nations?
AW: Mike Fairbanks—one of the two founders of SEVEN, can be considered one of the key pioneers in the field of enterprise-based solutions to poverty. Mike wrote the first book ever on firm-level strategy and economic development, in 1997. Both Mike and I have applied and further developed these theories during eight years at OTF Group. Now, we see the multilaterals and think tanks finally coming onboard. What makes us different from them is that we have “think and do” experience for a long time, some regard us the first ones in the field; and we are entrepreneurs who actually built companies.
Q: Can you briefly outline the significance in eradicating poverty of the four types of capital you have identified in addition to the three recognized by conventional economists—Institutional, Knowledge, Human and Cultural?
AW: Institutional capital means, according to Nobel laureate Douglas North, norms of behavior, both codified and not-codified. Examples include democracy, rule of law, and punctuality which, in increasing order, are all correlated with prosperity.
Knowledge capital like international patents, R & D efforts, and data bases are correlated with growth in nations. Paul Romer at Stanford talks of the “idea gap” between nations.
Human capital is skills and abilities, knowledge capital that walks around. The only investment with infinite potential for returns is the investment in children, according to Nobel laureate Gary Becker.
Cultural capital is how we attach meaning to our lives, whether or not we possess pro-innovation traits: tolerance for new ideas and people unlike themselves, belief in competition, high amounts of interpersonal trust, a future orientation. Adherents to this are Larry Harrison and ourselves.
