Worthless, Impossible, and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value by Daniel Isenberg & Karen Dillon

Author:Daniel Isenberg & Karen Dillon [Isenberg, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2013-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Solving Burning Problems

When Adversity Is the Opportunity

I have been to three dozen countries to work on something related to entrepreneurship, whether it has been advising policy makers or private-sector leaders, consulting to entrepreneurs, writing cases, teaching entrepreneurship, or looking at investments. To make a point, I will oversimplify:

Entrepreneurship = adversity + human capital

Of course reality is much more complex, but when I see unusual concentrations of entrepreneurship blossoming in places like Israel, Taiwan, Iceland, and Ireland, it seems to boil down to a simple formula: put smart, educated people in places with few resources where they have no choice but to solve tough problems, and you get lots of surprising value-creating solutions to those problems. In New Zealand, they call this resourceful spunk number 8 wire, referring to the time in the country’s history when there were few finished products and settlers adapted the prevalent wire used to fence in pastures to solve just about any problem that came up, kind of a predecessor to duct tape.

By now I am used to seeing people solve problems in surprising ways. But one of the biggest wonders I experienced was during my first visit to India in 2006 when an acquaintance invited me on the spur of the moment to attend the first Innovations for India Award in Mumbai.1 There I watched the silver-haired, elegantly suited Vinod Kapur receive the award for his Kuroiler “super chicken.”2 India, to be sure, has more than its share of adversity—poverty, illiteracy, social conflict, geopolitical tension, terrorism, and corruption. Kapur, a septuagenarian from Gurgaon (near Delhi), took the high level of poverty that wracks India as a chance to create a unique, for-profit venture that would use chickens to tangibly increase the income of some of India’s poorest people.

After ten years of tinkering with both genetics and business concepts, Kapur’s venture, Keggfarms, was producing a disease-resistant, bioconverting, fast-growing chicken for the villagers to grow and sell. A single Kuroiler rooster produced—no exaggeration—twice as much meat and the hen five times as many eggs as did the typical backyard broiler. Although the following attributes are not relevant to the business itself, the Keggfarms Kuroiler is a majestic bird, with bold, vibrant colors and a firm, penetrating gaze, as well as by far the tastiest poultry meat and eggs I have ever had. Kapur discovered, or invented, a business opportunity along the way. Kapur’s feat seems almost as far-fetched as Meron’s PillCam.

Kapur developed the Kuroiler for its ability to thrive in rural parts of India, where a dozen or so productive chickens can provide a source of income to villagers, and some extra nutrition to boot. The birds grow to marketable size about twice as fast as traditional broilers. Kuroilers are environmentally friendly “bioconverters” because they scavenge on household waste, insects, weeds, and even ground-up seashells, so they are also cheaper to raise because no extra feed is required. The dual-purpose Kuroilers are useful for both egg production and chicken meat—something that isn’t typical in industrial poultry production, where separate gene stocks are optimized for either eggs or meat, but not both.

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