“Remember, where there is no solution, there is no problem.” - Shimon Peres
Everything exists in balance. A solution would not exist if there was no problem to begin with. This world full of human innovations comes with human mistakes. Solutions are driven by the need to do something better. Why? Mistakes are inevitable, but solutions arise from creative ways to fix problems that comes from those mistakes.
From taking Culture, Art & Technology (CAT) courses at UCSD, a common problem is survival. People need to eat food to survive. To get food, people need to either hunt animals (in the old days) or pay for it. During the caveman days, to hunt you need a tool and stamina to chase after the animal before you can cook and eat it. Sometimes, it might even take a whole day to find food or none at all.
Today, the best way to get food is to have an occupation. Like the caveman days, an occupation still requires the necessary tools and stamina to buy, then cook, then eat the food. However, instead of directly hunting the animal, people creatively thought of different ways to store food.
Instead of going to where the animals live and risk their lives, humans started farming. We began to cultivate the environment and raise animals. With farming, it became simpler to harvest crops and with raised animals, people rarely need to go hunting.
Soon farmers exchanged their surpluses for other goods. Since everyone has different skills, instead of exchanging goods that another person may not want, cash is invented. With monetary exchange, consumerism became common and is the driving force behind our economy. While consumerism is great for the economy, it came with human consequences that I am not going to discuss in this post.
Every solution comes with unforeseen problems. Why? Because no one can predict the future and the best way to avoid the problems revealed by the previous solution is if people never found the solution to begin with. But that cannot be because no one can go back in the past. Rather, people have to find another solution that patches holes from the previous solution.
From attending a Women 2.0 conference last February, the founder of Indiegogo presented several questions. Any ideas that you have experienced that offers a solution to a human problem can be improved if you do the following:
- Ask a lot of questions from different angles
- What is the main problem you are trying to solve
- Who does the problem mainly affect
- Who else gets influenced or helped in the process
- What kind of changes (culture, economy, society, technology) will take place
- What do those changes mean to you: values, beliefs, behaviors
- Why should we believe your solutions will work
- What kind of problems may occur and what are your remedies for those problems
- Why did you start your company
Be who you really are to attract those who can relate to the problems you have a solution for. Be aware of the community that your business affects and apply the solutions to your website. Why?
Websites allow businesses to reach their demographics at a faster rate than ever before. Back when the internet was not invented yet, you have to travel many miles to build relationships. Now, you can stay in touch with your customers wherever you are using your website. Websites are my solutions.
Like a home with a sturdy foundation, the foundation of society comes from the diversity of our culture. Culture creates a colorful and compelling story that should power every business’s goals. How you present your solutions onto your website should genuinely answer the questions provided above. What is your culture like and how do you want it to be perceived by your audience?
