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What An African Woman Thinks

• May 11, 2009
• From Idea to Implementation: Let There Be A Do-Pipe

  Posted: May 11th, 2009, 7:24am EDT

  Last week, while watching the Citizen TV Louis Otieno-moderated debate between government officials and a panel drawn from Strathmore University about the state of the nation, I tweeted that it was clear that there was no shortage of thinkers or of good ideas for that matter, in this country.
  
  I was struck by the exchange between Kwame Owino, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, one of the Strathmore University affiliated panellists and Cecily Mbarire, MP and Assistant Minister for Health, for prime example. In the course of making a particular contribution to the debate, Owino mentioned that he sits on a non-governmental think tank whose responsibility it is to think through the issues that ail Kenya and how best to solve them. Mbarire remarked that he had some excellent ideas but he needed to talk to her and other members of parliament who could push these ideas and influence their implementation. Or something like it.
  
  The whole debate in general revealed high calibre thinking on the part of the panellists on both sides. By the end of it, however, I was furrowing my brow, wondering why none of this thinking had been converted into measurable progress on a broad, scalable basis and why as a nation, we were not feeling the positive effects of these sometimes excellent, and always at least good, ideas.
  
  This is why I come to propose a solution to Caesar:
  
  We need to construct an effective Do-Pipe (©Rombo 2009) that connects the best ideas and solutions with the problems and issues they address as a matter of urgency. The Do-Pipe should serve as the essential infrastructure that connects resources with markets, potential buyers with sellers. As it stands at present, we have a glut of ideas on the one hand, and a dearth of action on the other, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
  
  This is simply unacceptable.
  
  Let there be a Do-Pipe.
  
  The Do-Pipe should be a brutally pragmatic, highly efficient channel that:
  
  

  1. Skims the best of the best ideas from the expansive think tank industry, packages them appropriately and palatably, refines them if necessary, and feeds them directly to those who would benefit most from them;
     
  2. Identifies and/or creates what incentives (or even penalties for non-action) are necessary to compel those who would benefit from these best of the best ideas to at least attempt to implement them in a reasonable way within a reasonable time frame as well as to incentives for those who create the ideas to come up with ideas that work;
     
  3. Measures the efficacy of these ideas as they are implemented to see which ones fall apart and which ones hold together at the execution, developing an understanding of why this is so and feeding this information back to the think tanks to complete the solutions circle and in so doing, developing solid best –practices and best-thinking expertise as well as ensuring reasonable turnaround speeds;
     
  4. Becomes the ultimate measure of the value of any think tank initiative for any would-be funders. Those think tanks whose ideas are not flowing down these Do-Pipes to the Implementation Centres would need to justify their continued existence with the caveat that not all ideas generated by a specific think tank must work for it to be feasible but some at least must be able to rise to the top as cream.
     

  So there.
  
  Let there be a Do-Pipe.
  
  Goodness me: I want to run the Do-Pipe.It's my window, but I don't own the view.