The world has realized the positive returns that crises can have on enhancing human performance. In Brussels, we find the headquarters of the "International Crisis Group"; a legal entity with branches in Washington, Moscow, and London, and coordination operations with Beijing, along with analysts in over 60 countries facing crises. Among the issues deemed as crises are energy, climate change, and the HIV virus (AIDS).
Below, we present various models before moving on to the chapter we dedicated to the mechanism of working with crises to produce a developmental or reformative project.
- Microfinance initiatives that began in Bangladesh in 1980.
- The drink "Gatorade," which was developed from a medicinal beverage to combat cholera in poor countries in 1960.
- Completing banking operations through mobile phone networks within trailers instead of opening a bank branch, which started in Kenya and then spread globally.
- Low-cost surgical operations, where the cost of a single eye surgery amounts to $30, and heart surgeries cost $2,000 in India.
- Gaza; the economic blockade and the development of weapons that threatened the enemy's "Iron Dome."
- Fabric products made from pineapple plants; some Southeast Asian countries have pioneered the production of clothing and shoes from unconventional materials, moving away from traditional industries that relied on conventional materials, such as shoe products made from cork and corn, and fabric products made from cabbage plants!
Thus, we face an unprecedented achievement when opting for innovative elements instead of traditional methods in clothing production, which means that if the same community adhered to conventional thinking patterns, it would have felt the crisis. However, its audacity in relying on other elements placed it at the forefront of what it accomplished.
There are several examples that illustrate the positive returns of crises, such as:
- The Salt March and Gandhi:
- Context: British occupation of India.
- Project: Non-violent resistance; extracting salt by evaporating seawater, which Indians were forbidden to produce.
- Germany and Adidas:
- Through leather remnants from shoes and leather bags during World War II, "Adidas," a sportswear company based in Germany, was organized. The Olympics were held in Munich, Germany, in the summer of 1936, and "Adolf" decided to produce athletic shoes with spikes on the bottom for competing athletes as a way to promote his product.
- When he was a teenager, Germany was experiencing an economic downturn following World War I. "Adolf" grew up in that era in Germany and did not succumb to the harsh circumstances surrounding him; he helped his family make "slippers" from leftover materials from the bags left by the army during that war.
He was passionate about sports, especially football. In 1920, he began making sports shoes and reached out to a group of doctors and coaches to develop suitable shoes for athletes. He managed to develop a range of shoes based on the type of sport, including tennis shoes, football shoes, and walking shoes. Adidas shoes were worn in the Olympic Games in 1928.
Adolf took the lead in developing sports shoes and was keen to ensure that they were made from suitable and innovative materials for this purpose. He subjected the shoes and their materials to thousands of tests to ensure they achieved the desired benefits in the desired manner. He experimented with various materials, including shark skin and kangaroo leather, and ultimately his experiments led to the invention of "nylon" shoes.
3- Henry Nestlé:
Henry Nestlé was born in Switzerland in 1814. He studied chemistry and gained experience in pharmacy through work, never imagining that one day he would be a man who would change the world!
When Nestlé was 29 years old, he raised money and bought his first modest factory to produce walnut and hazelnut oil. He was greatly affected by the deaths of infants at that time due to their inability to take their mothers' milk and their rejection of breastfeeding. He worked tirelessly to invent an alternative milk to replace mother's milk, by drying cow's milk and mixing it with some nutritional supplements, successfully achieving this in 1867.
However, people opposed his idea at the time. Nestlé's invention was able to save a child who was born prematurely and was deemed hopeless by doctors. This discovery then received unexpected popularity, to the extent that the factory could not meet all the demands during that period. Indeed, it became the first company to sell food for children, the first to sell condensed milk in Europe, the first to produce chocolate milk, and the first to sell instant coffee (Nescafé), as well as the first to sell iced coffee, among many others.
4- Korea... Building Schools from Plastic Bottles:
It was not easy to launch high-cost schools in Korean villages, which led their poor communities to recycle plastic bottle waste to establish buildings for their educational facilities.
