“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe,” said Abe Lincoln. It’s astonishing how much practical wisdom is packaged into that simple declaration.
Time spent in sharpening the tool is time well-spent; so is time spent in thinking through a problem and thoroughly understanding the problem before rushing off to solve it.
In most cases, since there is almost nothing new under the sun, there are already known solutions to many problems. So the most efficient method to solve a problem is to find out if someone else has already figured out the answer.
The problem of economic development is multifaceted and complex, taken as a whole. But the problem can be effectively partitioned into simpler, more tractable subproblems. Then search for the solutions to those subproblems. You might find already existing solutions, and if not, you solve it for the first time. Continue reading “From the Archive: Lee Kuan Yew on India – Part 4”
