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00:00:00 RP
Hello. I'm RP. I'm a sustainability professional involved in impact investing in social enterprises.
00:00:07 Sam
And I'm Sam, an advocate on the role of technology in the pursuit of social innovation, nation building and sustainable development.
00:00:15 RP
We’re both from the IGP's MSc Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship program.
00:00:22 RP and Sam
And welcome to ‘To prosperity and beyond.’
[BREAK]
00:00:32 RP
And just like that, we're down to our last episode in our miniseries. Time does really fly by! How are you feeling, Sam?
00:00:40 Sam
Already kind of nostalgic to be honest, RP, we've learned a lot in this journey through the conversations we've had between the two of us and of course, with our amazing guests.
00:00:51 RP
I couldn't agree more, but before we get too emotional and start getting the tissues, perhaps we should introduce our guests to our finale.
00:01:00 Sam
Yeah! Sounds great RP! So for this episode we have not just one but two individuals who have outstanding careers related to the pursuit of prosperity, and from a personal point of view, they are surely very close to our hearts.
00:01:16 RP
That's right, Sam, for our first guest, she studies entrepreneurial and organisational creativity and innovation with a focus on innovating in extreme contexts. Her research is a multi-sided study of entrepreneurial resilience in China, UK and the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia. Outside of the academies she is an explorer, she enjoys hiking, travelling and art.
00:01:42 Sam
Meanwhile, our second guest was a former strategist at advertising agencies in Poland, Germany and Iceland, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Global Urban Research Unit in Newcastle University. His research interests include transdisciplinary, urban studies, public transportation, future studies, and urban innovation through art and technology.
00:02:05 RP
Last but not the least, outside these amazing profiles, they are the programme leads of the MSc PIE programme at the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, so without further ado, we have our warmest welcome to Dr Onya Idoko and Dr Konrad Miciuekiewicz.
00:02:28 Dr Onya Idoko
Thank you for having us.
00:02:30 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
Thanks for having us both.
00:02:32 RP
Yes, Sam and I started this journey of starting our podcast and then when Onya reached out that we should embed it within the Life of PIE podcast, we were very excited and it seemed like a good opportunity to have our plan of having more discussions around prosperity work out.
00:02:52 Sam
Yeah, it is really such an honour to be embedded within the UCL ecosystem and just to start off the interview, we have a little bit of an icebreaker. So now that the dissertation season is over and we've seen the last of London summer for this year. And just like a back-to-school essay, we'd like to ask what did you do over the break and how did you make time to enjoy the season?
00:03:16 Dr Onya Idoko
So for me, I attended a couple of conferences because they happened around this period and after that I was able to travel a little bit. One trip in particular, I was in Washington, DC and I went to NPR. I was able to attend a tiny desk concert. So you have, like, you know, a musician. They come on to perform. So it was really exciting. And then I went to the White House. I managed to pose in front of the White House!
00:03:52 Sam
Did you mean Joe Biden?
00:03:54 Dr Onya Idoko
Of course not the security was intense!
00:04:00 RP
No. Like she went to a more legitimate space for podcasts. And we're recording a podcast in UCL East.
00:04:03 Sam
Yeah. NPR
.
00:04:08 Sam
UCL’s newest campus! you know?
00:04:09 RP
Of course, Konrad?
00:04:12 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
I also got a chance to travel a little, so I went to Poland to spend some time with my family and then I went to the South of France to spend some time with the extended family.
00:04:24 RP
Wow. Just like South of France. It's like the cup of summer. That's very ideal. So we move on to other questions about your work and your research.
So this question is for Onya. You have a bachelor's degree in physics and a Masters and PhD in management. Although the connection might, not be as direct, what was the “creative jolt” that brought you to this career path, and how did this journey influence you in teaching about strategizing for prosperity?
00:05:00 Dr Onya Idoko
So there wasn't a creative jolt. So If you read the paper and you look at what a creative jolt is, I did not have a creative jolt, but I'll go with it like more broadly in terms of creative jolt, if I use the term creative jolt.
While I was doing my masters, I knew, or before my masters, I knew I didn't want to work as a physicist. I just knew already. And so I decided I would switch to management, which is why I did the Masters and first phase. Then during my strategy module I really enjoyed that module and I spoke to the module leader. I said, “I wanted to do a PhD and I wanted to focus, I wanted to do something in strategy.” So they gave me some advice. I spoke to a couple of faculty members and they asked me to stay there. But then I thought, no, I want to go to another university. So I applied somewhere else to do the PhD management. That sort of led me down that path and typically when you do a PhD, what comes next is you're going to be an academic.
I originally did not want to be an academic, I wanted to go into management consulting. I wanted to be at McKinsey. It's the same dream as anyone doing an MBA or in a Business School. But somehow I ended up in my first academic job which was at the IGP as a post doc, which was really amazing. It exposed me to Konrad and all the work that the IGP does. I was working for Dr Tuukka Toivonen and he was the principal investigator on the project that I was working on. And that, of course, then led me, because my PhD is more in strategic management, but the post doc with Tuukka was on entrepreneurship. They bleed, you know, there's a lot of overlap between strategy and strategic management and entrepreneurship, there's even the journal for that area.
So it was really that post doc that then shifted my research and focus towards studying entrepreneurs and then also focusing on organisational creativity and innovation. So that's what led me in that direction.
And that has influenced what I teach. So not just working on that project with Tuukka. Being with the IGP has influenced my teaching and even my thinking significantly because then I was exposed to a lot of content that I hadn't been exposed to in terms of prosperity, the lens of prosperity.
So I have some amazing conversations with Nikolay. We'd be standing outside Warren Street station talking for 30 minutes about, you know, prosperity and research. So the IGP has influenced me significantly and it has shaped, you know, my career and my teaching as well.
00:08:07 RP
Honestly, same like a lot of us, a lot of IGP people find themselves talking on streets of London just about prosperity and people looking at us like, “what would they be talking about? So invested in it.”
00:08:19 Sam
Yeah. “Who are these oddballs?” basically. Just a quick follow-up question. I was interested to know, like how your scientific background influences your way of thinking when it comes to navigating the world of prosperity like it's, you know, physics is so intimidating for a lot of people. So how do you carry that forward now that you're teaching at the IGP?
00:08:40 Dr Onya Idoko
So the thing about physics is my thinking is quite, different from someone who's from a social science background, and I noticed that when I joined the Business School. I noticed that, “So I'm thinking like in a mathematical way.” And I realised that only when I joined the Business School and I had to sort of learn how to think differently and more in a qualitative way to be honest, cause that was not what I was accustomed to.
But what is really interesting is you can think about you can use some theories in physics as a metaphor because you can use metaphor to think about things or to think about phenomenon. For example, you can think of an organisation, not even you can, it has been done. Some people have looked at an organisation like a machine and therefore the way that you engage with it, some people have thought about it like a body.
So there's the CEO… you can see how that metaphor will shape the way that you analyse the organisation or even run the organisation. So sometimes I think about Theories in physics. I think about the way some of the things were discovered were discovered, and I can see some parallels with that and then I use that. This is me personally, I use that to help me think about this thing in prosperity that I'm now thinking about. So I use it mainly in a metaphorical way that's sort of how I use it to be honest.
00:10:19 RP
OK, well I think we can move on to our next question.
00:10:23 Sam
Yeah. Now that we I guess have a little bit of background of where Onya is coming from. It's time to move forward with Konrad starting with, you know, our engagement with Peter Ptashko and he mentioned that “the core of social innovation is about humanity coming together and making decisions.”
So while this sounds good, it is very idealistic, especially given societies varying levels of social cohesion. Having said that, how do you think people working towards prosperity should confront this issue?
00:10:58 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
I think that people can come together in lots of different ways. And the humanity can come together at lots of different scales as well. You could think about some issues that require social innovation and like say, at the global scale.
OK, so for example if we want to tackle climate change, we have to do it somehow globally, because if we do it only in one place, it won't work everywhere. Right? So there are global issues or for example, if we want to have a world of peace, it's also a global venture to achieve that.
But equally there's lots of problems, lots of issues to be addressed that are very local. This humanity can come together in the multitude of places at the same time, sometimes doing the same things in the same moment in time. Sometimes doing the same things in a in a different way sometimes, and sometimes doing completely different things in different places in in time and making the world better for us to live in.
This is where you also come back to these theories of prosperity right there. That people are different in different parts of the world, and then they have different needs. But they also have different ways of pursuing, pursuing their goals and for meeting their needs.
And then to make things even more complicated, I would say that social cohesion itself, it's a contested concept, because in in some ways, it assumes some kind of managed way of organising difference to getting all different diversities in a way that it's functional and that helps an organisation or helps a society to have some, you know cohesion.
And in this very notion of social cohesion, there is a potential problem of what to do with, for example with radical difference. And this can be something like for example new minority, say, sexual minorities in some places were radically different, not up to very long time ago. And then the same sexual minorities are still radically different in many places in the world and in the world now.
By the same token, that you could have people with some wacky ideas, right? Some Einsteins of tomorrow, who do not fit into the ways how organisations conduct their business, or who do not fit in with how states organise the division of labour between departments and so on, but potentially will do so in the future. So then this very lack of cohesion does not always have to be bad, right?
On the other hand, I would say that we are characterised by lower levels of social cohesion in multiple ways. So this could be culturally, this could be economically so there's less equality in the world overall, apart from some places like China, that even the income for a moment in time and this can cause issues.
So when you look at these like global challenges like that of prosperity, the lack of cohesion and the lack of shared values, or the lack of shared positions in the system makes achieving these goals difficult, right?
So when you think, for example, coming back to this climate change, right? Almost everybody agrees, especially younger generations, that we should do something to protect the earth. But then there's less of an agreement of who is to be blamed or what is to be blamed. And there is even less agreement on how to achieve that. And then when you think about how, people converge and diverge, it goes into strange cycles. It's not a process whereby we are closer to that goal of protecting the earth and moving towards that protection. We are moving up and down depending on a complex set of political and economic events.
Take, for example the most kind of burning issue of UK politics of today, the ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone). So quite ironically, for example, the, the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was a big proponent of environmental sustainability and he was a big proponent of green policies in the UK, the fact that he resigned and the fact how by election and his seat went, changed the course of the Conservative Party towards watering down environmental goals over the next 10 or 15 years.
Right. So while there is an agreement to protect the earth, there is also an agreement in the UK to achieve net zero by 2040, right? But then there is less agreement how to get there and there is less agreement on how on what, and who has to do, and when?
00:17:18 RP
With that one, that I'd like to ask, that kind of knowledge or information something that people who work towards prosperity have to constantly always remind themselves: That there is a difficulty being faced coming from very different cultural backgrounds and we may not be able to agree always on how we're going to solve an issue.
00:17:45 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
So there is a diversity of cultural backgrounds, right? That's one. There is a diversity of economic backgrounds. That's two.
And coming back to this issue of this ULEZ, so these ultra low emissions zones, people living in central London or in inner London like me, are less affected by the new regulations than people who live farther away, right. And those people who are more affected are more dependent on cars and quite often would have less resources to adapt right? So while there might be a shared goal, the economic positions and also like geographical limitations are different for different people.
And then I think that the role for researchers, but also the role of policymakers, is to help, not only to help agree on specific values, but it's also to help us mitigate the problems that we might be having in achieving specific goals that are different for different people.
00:19:06 RP
It's a very generous first half. This podcast I think there is much to talk about later for discussion. Would you agree, Sam?
00:19:17 Sam
Yeah, definitely. And with that, maybe we can go on a quick break so that our guests can also maybe think about more on how we're going to move forward with the rest of this episode.
[BREAK]
00:19:36 RP
And we're back. So I think for the first question of the discussion between all four of us. As programme leads of PIE, can you share with us the vision for creating the masters around prosperity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and how it has changed over the years? Like when you were crafting it, and then how things have changed upon implementation.
00:20:04 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
I think that this programme started from our interest in entrepreneurship as a way of achieving prosperity. So it started from entrepreneurship and Fast forward 2030 doing their things for social good, but doing their things for the environment as well.
And it also was rooted in our interest in social innovative practises. This could be social movements, this could be the these could be NGOs or self-organised groups doing something for their communities or doing something for larger communities or society.
So this is how it started from a research interest, and from our kind of curiosity about what the connection was between prosperity, on the one hand, and entrepreneurship and social innovation on the other. So this is how it started.
How it evolved, I think there was – there was a long process of designing a programme and there were different colleagues coming in and out and coming with their ideas. But also there was a process whereby we learned from the students. So there were new cohorts who were for example like certain things, and like some certain things a little bit less. And then we changed the course of the programme a little bit.
Yet another impactful factor for us was that from one programme which was global prosperity. We moved to two programmes, the MSc, Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and then we moved to three programmes with Prosperity, People and Planet. We started having conversations about what is the identity of these programmes, how do they differ? What brings them together, how to teach students in order to offer them the most comprehensive yet different and well suited for different needs [type of] programme. So that was [it] in short.
00:22:26 RP
Yeah, I think it's not a surprise to everyone, but then a lot of the faculty from IGP come from like a sociology, anthropology, social science background. And I think, Onya, you're one of the few that came from like a managerial background. How was it in terms of integrating an understanding of entrepreneurship to a faculty more rich on the social end of the PIE programme.
00:22:57 Dr Onya Idoko
So it wasn't difficult because I've got the entrepreneurship background already. What was fascinating is to look or think about entrepreneurship in a new way, which is what a lot of the social science lenses do and which is actually one of the calls in a recent paper on entrepreneurialism, inequality in society. So people are now interested in the impact of entrepreneurship and how it has become an ideology of its own.
So it wasn't very difficult to bring the social science as a lens to look at entrepreneurship and look at it critically to consider what's happening in the world. A really good example is the IMF or the World Bank, and we talked about this in class.
So when they go to lend money they have conditions that they put on top of whatever provision they're giving. So this is the IMF now, on top of whatever conditions. One of those could be something like you know, do something around entrepreneurship, I'm not saying this is it. I'm just giving you an example.
So it's now a question of, well, if you're asking these nations and these countries to implement these practices, maybe have a Silicon Valley in your own country or something like that.
The question then is, “Is that suited for that?” Remember what prosperity is context based? “Is that suited for that nation? Is that the right approach to development?” So it wasn't hard bringing them together because now you're able to look entrepreneurship more critically and then you can think of a better way of moving forward, of using entrepreneurship as a tool or a mindset or a mechanism for dealing with challenges.
00:25:05 Sam
Yeah, very interesting points of view and I guess our next question is about our experience in PIE. So we notice that most individuals taking courses in IGP were actually from places outside of the UK. So most were from different countries all over the world. So we're just asking like, why do you think this is the case? And what are the challenges and strengths of dealing with the global cohort?
00:25:35 Dr Onya Idoko
I can speak a little bit about it and Konrad can add to it. I think that something that I noticed when I came back to the IGP is post or during COVID around COVID period, a lot of people everywhere around the world had time to reflect.
It's almost like. You have this existential moment, and then people start to ask themselves, “what am I really doing?” You know, “is this impactful?” And then they want to change. So for example, we have, we've had students from investment banking from different backgrounds and they don't really see the impact of what it is that they're doing and when I say impact, I mean, you know, socially environmentally, et cetera, they don't really see it in their everyday. Yeah. And now they're looking for something more.
So it's not that I don't want to be an investment banker or I don't want to be a policymaker or whatever else, or an entrepreneur because we have a couple of entrepreneurs. It's not that.
It's that, “how can I do something more meaningful,” you know? And so they go online and I'm speaking from some of the comments I've had from students before joining the IGP. And they go online and they're looking for a programme that is a combination of these things. So that thread, that prosperity element, they want to understand it and they want to understand.
So I have a previous student who works at Uber. I think she works in the Sustainability department. And they want to understand, “how can we begin to act or organise or do business in a way that is regenerative as opposed to extractive as opposed to destructive.”
So we have students coming from all over the world when they go online, they find this programme. I'll just say Konrad, chip in, you know, share his point and then we move on to the second point.
00:27:47 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
Yeah. So it's just a second on this, the university system in the UK as a whole, is not a local education system, it's a global universal education system. It's simply the numbers. The population of China and India both are 20 times bigger than the population of the UK, right? And then the population of the Philippines is bigger than the population of the UK, right? And then the population of the US is bigger than the population of the UK.
If you look at the programme as a global programme within the university system, which is a global system, then you will have students coming from all over the world wanting to study to study global prosperity and entrepreneurship, but also wanting to study management or wanting to study architecture and wanting to study so whatever there is biology and so on.
00:28:49 Dr Onya Idoko
And I think I'll just add to that. The other thing that is obvious is the reputation. So UCL is top ten global and just sort of building on what Konrad said, it’s top 10. So it attracts the best students from across the world anyway, as you were saying, it's a global university, so it does attract students from different parts of the world.
00:29:11 RP
With having that, how does that introduce challenges in, or strengths in the cohort like you clearly have a very global mix when it comes to a cohort like, are there specific strengths or challenges in like teaching one?
00:29:30 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
I think that the strengths are mainly in being constantly exposed to people who are really diverse and it's from diversity where the best ideas emerge right? In terms of challenges is how this diversity is being managed at different scales to peacefully explore this idea.
00:29:52 Sam
Right. Yeah. So for our listeners, Konrad is smiling very widely right now.
00:29:58 RP
No, I think the art of this, you said something about social cohesion a while ago. That it's difficult to put in the hands of humanity to come together I think.
00:30:07 Sam
We also mentioned like radical differences.
00:30:09 RP
And the radical differences, I think IGP presents itself as a venue to sort of prototype these discussions having a global cohort. Wouldn’t you agree?
00:30:20 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
It's like a lab of experimentation with diversity. And diversity is not always easy. If we are different, it means that we do not see people in the same way. We do not feel things in the same way and we do not act on them in the same way or at the same pace and the process of finding out that the other ones do things differently is a process whereby sometimes we clash. But quite often like the most interesting things and the most innovative things arise from these clashes.
But the fact that, you know like diverse IGP cohort, in a similar way to a diverse corporate cohorts is innovative and does not exclude the fact that sometimes there would be challenges in working through these diverse contexts.
I think we have to accept these challenges and do our best to make the most of it. And I think overall we do. I think it was amazing to teach your cohort and it was amazing to teach some other cohorts, global cohorts who came with lots of these different ideas and then worked in lots of these different ways. So I'm very pleased.
00:31:51 Dr Onya Idoko
I think it's a really good opportunity for the students to study within a global or diverse cohort because for some of them this might be the first time they're meeting someone from another country or the first time they've actually even left that country. So then they're exposed to other cultures. They learn new things, they gain new perspectives on life, as Konrad was saying. And that also feeds in in terms of developing the students. So then when you go back to your country, if you end up going back, you'll notice that your perspective has changed.
The way you communicate has changed the way that you think has changed because you've been 3 semesters, well, two semesters is term 3 is there's a dissertation, it's an individual piece of work. In your term one and term 2 you've been working with these people from different countries. You've fought with them, you've laughed with them. You've come up with great ideas together. You've built rich relationships that sometimes last beyond the IGP itself. So it's a really big advantage, that diversity.
00:33:12 RP
I think with how nice we've painted the programme and but it can be daunting to apply for an interdisciplinary masters, especially one that tackles prosperity, innovation and entrepreneurship as individuals who witness both ends of professional and academic sides of prosperity. What do you think it takes to succeed in the course? More importantly, how can one apply the lessons of PIE to be successful in their chosen career?
00:33:41 Dr Onya Idoko
Well, my response to what it takes to succeed on the programme, well there's several things. One is to engage and I'll try to explain what I mean by that the truth is, the more you engage in most class discussions, the better it is for you. Because then you get better understanding. You're learning not just from the module leader or the module tutor. You're learning from your peers, right? So students that engage, I noticed that they do well. They actually perform really well from a pedagogical point of view, and pedagogy is like theory of learning of education, teaching and learning theory.
There is something called zonal peer. I forgot in the last term, but it's a concept in pedagogy and it talks about learning from, there's something about proximity and learning from those that are close to you, which is your peers. So that engagement is key.
The second thing is, don't just engage within the classroom, engage with the rest of the IGP. So, for example, the director seminars, the soundbites go to those events. Someone like a student actually made a comment and said my advice to the next cohort is engage in everything. You know? The seminars, engage with the ProCols. When they have something going on, go to the Fast forward 2030 events.
Because you're not just at the IGP to gain academic knowledge by, you know, during your dissertation. But you also want to build up your network. You also want to connect to other people. For example, the Fast forward 2030 is the network of impact entrepreneurs that was started by Arthur Kay, who I believe you've had on the show and Henrietta, our director, Professor Henrietta Moore, so participating is basically saying participate and engage fully with the course, that's one tip that I would provide.
00:35:57 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
I would add another E after engage. I would say Enjoy. So do not chase your grades all the time. Enjoy the course, enjoy the content and find some things which are most interesting for you. You do not have to do best in every single subject. Your employers would not necessarily look for straight A's. They would look for somebody who has a passion for something and who does something really well, so that's the secondly.
00:36:31 Sam
What's the 3rd E?
00:36:34 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
And the third E is to experiment. Do different things with different people and find how you can build knowledge together and how you can apply this knowledge and practical context together. So and then yeah, do not be afraid to fall and pivot and restart again.
00:36:56 Dr Onya Idoko
But that really is at the core of entrepreneurship as well, right? Because they experiment a lot, they innovate a lot and they pivot when they need to, right? So it's not just about playing safe. You have to take risks, which is inherent in entrepreneurship, right?
00:37:13 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
This is also like one of these things. How we can learn from entrepreneurship. Lessons of life, that it's actually OK to fail at some point. So if you compare for example, how entrepreneurs present themselves and how policymakers will present themselves and be presented, there is such a difference spin on this.
If you have a policymaker who designed the policy that failed and they had to regroup, they would say like, “oh, this is a failed policy and then they had to, they had to change everything and now they lost so much time.” Then and this and that and then you would have an entrepreneur coming over and presenting his failure as his own achievement.
Actually this is a way of dealing with stress and dealing with failure that comes to all of us in a more effective way in a more psychologically safe, positively, effectively supporting well-being way I would say.
00:38:28 Sam
Yeah. So for our listeners, you already know the hack to achieve and buy the three E's, you know, engage and enjoy and experiment. And perhaps we can wrap up our discussion with this final question being that you already pointed out earlier that learning is a two way process and as lecturers at the IGP, what are the key takeaways that you've gained over the years of interacting with students, and how did that affect your perspective on developing a pathway towards achieving your version of prosperity?
00:39:02 Dr Onya Idoko
So all of the key takeaways for me interacting with the students is, to be honest, they inspire me. They inspire me to want to do better. And I'm asking myself, “How can I help them? How can I do better for them?” Because now they've come here. We’ve just had an induction.
Many of them have left jobs, many of them have families. There's so many things going on in their lives. So for me I learned one thing, one sort of influence has been the inspiration to want to do better that's one.
In terms of learning, I've learned from the different students based on their backgrounds. So I've had a student who is a banker. For example, I see how he thinks when he makes comments. I see, you know, sort of where he's coming from. I have another student who's a designer, so more creative, more fluid in thinking.
So I have these different students that are thinking in new ways. And one of the things that I like to do is to study how people think, “How do they solve problems? How have they approached this problem?” And I see that when I put the students in groups. I see how they function and how they work. So for me, I've picked up on some of their key ways of doing, and it's also the inspiration that they bring because many of them are committed and passionate about the programme, because they self-select into the programme in the first place and that passion is contagious. So yeah, that's mine.
00:40:55 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
I would say on top of all what Onya just mentioned, I also learned that people tend to engage, and students, and other people as well tend to engage with reality in very different ways and tend to and not only build different solutions, but also have different ways of achieving these solutions.
Also that sometimes students who would for example, be very quiet and not necessarily visible not making themselves centre stage at all times, would be fascinating, thoughtful and so joyous to engage with. And mainly this is a psychological issue, but it's also like a cultural issue that sometimes we have.
So I come from a certain cultural background, or Onya comes from a certain cultural background. But then students would come from different backgrounds and they approach problems and approach the learning process in in a different way and sometimes in such surprising ways how they come up.
You would throw something in a blog post, and it would come back to you after a month or two in a with a fascinating response. So I would have learned that as well.
00:42:22 Dr Onya Idoko
I think if I can add one more thing, this you know working as programme leader, it has really taught me a lot about empathy. So I have to, as we talked about the diverse cohort I have to understand the students I have to learn about their culture. I have to understand where they're coming from so that I can work better with.
Whereas before I probably had no clue about their cultural background, but now I try to expose myself because I know; OK, I'm going to get students from this country and this country, and I want to know more.” I want to call them by their traditional name not by some other name you know?
And because I learned from a teaching and learning conference, actually, that students, some students attended the conference and gave us feedback. I learned that those things such as pronouncing their name correctly matter.
So one of the feedbacks that I got from that teaching and learning conference that speed with me after all these years is.
The student said, “when I saw journal paper or a textbook from someone from my country. It really made me feel like I wanted to study. I wanted to do well. Because then I recognised that someone like me is involved in this field.”
So not just focusing on Western case studies or Western authors. But we try to bring others from other geographical locations so that we're all, you know, working together. So yeah, that's I think the last bit for me.
00:44:00 RP
Again, thank you so much for the time. If you pardon this just one closing question, how do you see cohorts grow after their experience with the institute at the IGP.
00:44:16 Dr Onya Idoko
So I'm like a big dreamer. I'm like blue sky, crazy thinking. So for me, I want to see these students go out and actually infect other people like teach them about prosperity. Expose them to what prosperity is about. Talk to them about some of the papers that you've read, you know? That were really interesting for you!
For example, there's some really interesting papers on social innovations and how remember, we did the Tom's case where Tom's took shoes to a country and basically destroyed the shoe market in that country because they have donated shoes. Even though there was such good intention. The question is you need to think critically about the possible unintended consequences. So for me, I'm hoping that students that pass through PIE, you're not just going to start another business like the next person around the corner?
No. You've left here now. Now you're applying systems thinking to your business model, and now you're applying the lens of prosperity to your business model. You're not just creating another business so that you can maximise profit just for yourself. No, you're going to be more conscientious in whatever it is that. You do and wherever you go and you're going to be transformative. Believe it!
00:45:56 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
I would say that in short, I would want you and other cohorts to go out in the world and change it. And then as Nelson Mandela once said, “It takes a generation to change the world.” Maybe this is your generation.
00:46:16 Sam
That that's very little pressure for our generation just to change the world. No big deal.
00:46:23 RP
Well, with that, this has been the Life of PIE podcast, and then our insert which is To prosperity and beyond.
00:46:34 Sam
Yeah. What a finale. And we couldn't have ended it better with the programme leaders by itself.
So thank you again, Onya and Konrad for indulging with us with this very enlightening conversation.
00:46:46 RP
We hope you enjoyed your time and hope our listeners enjoy their time listening to this podcast. Tune In for more from the Life of PIE podcasts as hosted by Onya herself, Onya will be on the host seat moving forward. And we'll see. We'll hope to see you in the next one.
00:47:07 Dr Konrad Miciukiewicz
Thanks for having us!
00:47:08 Dr Onya Idoko
Thank you for having us!