Week 4 Reading Reflection

Overall, I thought that this week’s chapter was very interesting. One topic that really stood out to me was about Africa, and how its economy is slowly growing. The company that was written about has invested in certain countries in Africa and received returns over three times its initial investments. Emerging Capital Partners, ECP, has been investing in Africa since 1999 and has seen returns on a mobile company, a banking group, and a rubber exporter. All of these businesses have been thriving in Africa and putting out large returns. One area that confused me slightly was the explanation of the creative process. In my mind, I don’t think things like creativity and innovation should be processes that are able to be explained and broken down into steps. The book lays the creative process out into four common steps or phases, and I think that creativity is too subjective of a process to be explained in that way. Personally, creativity is different and unique to each and every individual. If I could ask the author two questions, I would ask him if he was dominated by his left or right hemisphere, and whether he is an adaptor or an innovator. I think that asking him these questions would help explain why the text book is written the way that it is. Finally, I don’t necessarily disagree with anything that the author puts forth in this chapter. I think that the points made in this chapter are fairly objective. This chapter was very interesting because it thoroughly explained how different people can think and come up with new ideas.