Jone, Gannan, Gansu, China
The Curious Path Issue #1
The Tibetan plateau is a remote region of the world, perched atop its highest point, it is a world unto itself. A landscape that humbles the senses and ignites the imagination. A place where the air is thin, water never boils and life moves a little bit slower. A region that has evolved in relative seclusion from the rest of the world. A land that throughout its history, has often found itself situated on the periphery of the global tide of knowledge production.
Recently I found myself on 5 day trek along the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, in a region called Gannan (甘南), in southern Gansu province. While on this very remote trip I stumbled upon a unique solution to an unexpected problem, one that prompted me to reflect on some recent reading I’ve been doing on the topic of innovation…
Innovation, both in the present and throughout history, has often arisen from the collective effort of groups of people working together towards a common goal. In recent years, the field of cognitive psychology has put a term to this - "collective brain." This research has confirmed something we've intuitively known for some time now — that innovation is a collective endeavour. The work within psychology has come to understand that individual brains have evolved not only for personal cognition but also as instruments for cultural acquisition. In this view, the intake of cultural information becomes embedded with knowledge, and as this process occurs across a society, it gives rise to a cumulative and enriching pool of shared knowledge—a rising tide of collective knowledge interactions. This “collective brain”, woven from the threads of individual learning and cultural exchange, scales and as it grows bigger the serendipitous moments for creative sparks increase which ultimately lead to an increase in the rate of innovation within a society.
This understanding of the power of the collective, along with our ever-increasing competition for innovation, has led to the distillation of innovation into specific mindsets, methodologies, and work processes that we know today as the practice of innovation. This practice that we all know and use today has been designed to orchestrate and ritualize our collaborative work in such a way as to boost creative output and focus this output towards the right problem. Much of my work over the years has been based on this very premise and its methods. But it was on the Tibetan plateau that this understanding took a little jolt of reality… and so I ask what happens when a region is isolated from the collective brain?
When keeping weight down is a priority, a clean stone can make for a perfect frying pan.
Tashi our trek leader making it look effortless.
After picking up the last of our supplies in the city of Lanzhou, we drove 430km to the village of Zhagana, at an altitude of 2500m, we were spending two nights there to help the team acclimatise to the altitude. Our second evening in the village turned into quite a special evening that entailed much of the village coming out and spending an evening dancing and singing around a large fire pit in the village square, the commotion was almost enough to draw much of the attention and stares away from the only foreigner in the village - me. The third day was upon us, from our starting altitude of 2500m, we slowly ascended 1700 meters — conditions quickly began to cool, all settlements dissapeared, and the ethnicity of locals shifted from a mixture of Han and Zang, to entirely Zang (which is the Tibetan minority of China). Interestingly in conversation with our trek leader, his name was Tashi, he went on to explain how he didn't use a surname. His people did not use surnames, because as he explained they were spread across only four villages, so if someone would be given the same name then you would simply add your village name to clarify which Tashi you were.
Taking a gentle incline on the first day meant our first day took over 12 hours of trekking to reach our first camp at 4200m. so we celebrated with a much needed dinner of dry flatbread and some grilled yak meat, and a stunning view of the valley and plateau ahead. While the slow ascent did help with acclimatisation, most of the team struggled and the grilled yak meat not sit easy that first evening. From this first day on, we would not encounter other humans or settlements for the remainder of the trek. A major surprise on this trip, was that for the entirety of the time in the mountains I had no mobile connectivity — just to put in context, I was living in Shanghai and had travelled to many remote parts of China in the past and I'd never experienced anything less than 4G, So the 5 days ended providing a forced, and probably very much needed, digital detox.
It was the sixth and final day of our trek, the group had not dropped below 4,500 meters for the entire six days, and fatigue was beginning to set in. We were now all eagerly scanning the horizon for any sign that we were descending. By midday on this final day, I began to notice a subtle increase in humidity and vegetation. Looking to our trek leader and gesturing a signal of 'down', he responded with a nod of confirmation. Those first few breaths of moist, oxygen rich air elevate your appreciation for the simple act of breathing. The wave of energy that rushes into your body, replenishing its empty reserves, a pink hue of colour returning to our team's lips. Which after initially turning a worrying shade of blue on the first fay, had since maintained a pale whitish pink colour for the past 6 days. The rugged terrain had taken its toll on all of us, but the marvel of the natural beauty around us, had given us all the motivation we needed to keep going.
With humidity comes rain...
Continuing down, the first man-made structure we encountered came into view. It was a towering orange steel frame, reaching 30 m into the air part of the local government's plans to create more accessible means of entering the mountain range. As we continued down, we caught a glimpse of the bottom of the structure and the rough pebble-dashed road that would take us back to the urban world.
Future elevator..?
After days of hiking through the rugged mountainous terrain, we finally caught sight of our chariot: a 9-seater Wuling van, lovingly referred to as a "bread van" in China. Eager to rest our exhausted bodies, we piled into the van and began the 4-hour journey to the nearest town of Lintan, hoping for a comfortable bed and a good night's sleep.
The view from the Mianbaoche van on the drive back to Lintan, Gansu.
The hotel was a modest setup but the rooms were clean, spacious and after 6 days of only baby wipes, the hot shower was one I will not soon forget. It was in this hotel room in Lintan that I encountered a novel solution to a problem I hadn’t expected needed solving. Standing in front of the TV, remote controller in hand, I noticed the reflection of my socks glaring back at me. After 7 nights suffering the effects of high altitude, I hadn't had the best sleep, so I'm not ashamed to admit that there was a brief pause while my brain processed what was going on. Upon closer inspection, I realized that I could also see what looked like a TV box reflecting back at me in the same place as my socks. Opening the TV cupboard I discovered that a TV box had been mounted with its receiver panel facing upwards pointing at a mirror that had been angled at 45゜. This allowed the TV box to fit inside the slim cabinet and use the mirror to reflect the IR signal from the remote controller, down towards the TV box.
The solution is undoubtedly novel and resourceful, addressing a problem that ideally should not have arisen in the first place, but it did and as a result, the team hired to install the furniture faced a significant challenge. A TV cabinet with a TV box that wouldn't fit inside. And yet, someone came up with a solution that solved the problem seamlessly, and did so for all 60 rooms of the hotel... I checked.
While it's true that mistakes, accidents, and unintended consequences often spur innovation, the solution to this particular problem should ideally never have been necessary. It's a creative remedy born out of a situation that shouldn't have occurred in the first place—an innovative response compelled by need. This scenario prompted me to reflect on the ongoing discussions around innovation.
The "collective brain" as mentioned at the start of this article, talks to the contemporary research that emphasizes that the transmission and diffusion of knowledge are vital for the flourishing of innovation. These processes form the bedrock for the sharing and expansion of knowledge, skills, and resources. However, the example I witnessed in that hotel room, in a remote town in China, underscores that isolation and limitations to the access of shared knowledge and processes can, at times, compel the need for creative problem-solving.
This type of creativity, born out of necessity and resourcefulness, is of course not unique to the Tibetan plateau. Many isolated regions of the world, as well as countries undergoing rapid development and change, frequently experience breakdowns in knowledge transmission or can be cut off altogether. However, it is in these moments of isolation that people can be given the chance to rethink how things are done, and attempted to create new solutions to problem. In this case here, in this hotel room, we have a great reminder that while the solution may not have been groundbreaking, it does demonstrate the creativity that can be unlocked when we start from a blank canvas.
It's worth contemplating how, in our intricately connected world, moments of isolation can offer us the opportunity to reassess established norms. When we find ourselves detached from our daily, highly connected, and resource-abundant environments, we are compelled to revisit the fundamentals or the 'first principles' of the challenges we're tackling. This separation allows us to approach problems from fresh perspectives, exploring innovative solutions that may have otherwise remained unimagined.
So while we do now live in this ever rising tide of collective knowledge interactions, a tide that for the most part offers us many of the answers and serendipitous sparks we need, a tide that has accelerated to hit the reset button sometimes and really go back and rethink new solutions to problems. So as we continue to navigate an increasingly interconnected and complex world, it is important to remember the value of sometimes exploring in isolation. To seek inspiration in places where gaps or breakdowns in knowledge transmission exist and just maybe, we'll find ourselves forced to solve for things that should not need solving, but in the process of doing so we discover a completely new approach; one that has us staring at our socks while we turn on the TV.
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