Reinventing the Toilet & Rethinking Risk

This video below, which is about reinventing the toilet to prevent disease in developing countries, caught our eye and inspired us in a couple of different ways. First of all, we’re fans of anyone who is willing to take on the world’s biggest problems and apply unconventional thinking and highly creative approaches to solving them.

To say these folks are thinking outside the box (or should we say outside the bowl?) is a major understatement. For instance, most Americans would see no need to reinvent the toilet; plumbing here works just fine. But in the developing world, lack of water and funds to invest in sewage systems mean you’ve got to solve a basic sanitation problem through different means – hence, a reinvented toilet.

Similarly, risk management professionals, who have to stare down impossible-seeming challenges all the time, can benefit from a major rethinking of their organizations’ risk profiles, as well as their risk management approaches. Unfortunately, corporate culture is frequently cited by risk managers as an impediment to positive and sustained change, especially when it comes to creative problem-solving. That’s a plumbing challenge risk managers have to be clever and creative to solve.

We strongly believe that passionate and creative risk managers can change organizations as well be innovative in addressing the many “cr*ppy” problems (this is an article on toilets) they have to face these days – everything from cybercrime and hackers to malicious insiders and costly compliance processes. New and fresh thinking is required because the nature of the threats change all the time.

The point is, innovative thinking and effective risk management “plumbing” help sanitize organizations from a wide range of threats and keep information flowing through the organization hygienically and efficiently.