Article by Ali Musleh
In 2006 the New Economic Foundation (NEF) created what they call the Happiness Planet Index (HPI) of more than 100 countries. The goal of the HPI is to measure wellbeing and happiness around the world and the reason for such a study is that almost every country uses GDP to measure its success and social progress but to almost everybody, GDP fails to capture what is really important and focusing merely on it as a measuring tool increases inequality between the rich and poor.
“Gross National Product measures everything, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Robert F. Kennedy
The NEF considered the issues of: life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, health and ecological footprint to make this study to measure human wellbeing and happiness all over the planet.
HPI Colored map
We (Jordan) scored 54.6 on the index in 2009 which puts us at the happiest countries in the world category. The first HPI study published in 2006 showed Jordan to have 42.1 world average which means that our Gross National Happiness has been increasing almost 4% each year from 2006 to 2009.
Why is this interesting? I hate uninformed arguments especially when we are talking about something that deserves a little bit of effort to understand. For example, some people tend to argue that we will not be able to establish Industrial Design in Jordan because our national industry is weak compared to that of industrialized countries meanwhile people who understand design or business – who are rare if I might add – would know that demand comes from society and different kinds of businesses not only manufacturers. Surely if the field of industrial design depended solely on the demand of manufacturing companies it wouldn’t be as powerful as it is now and with such enormous global impact.
This mindset would make people who make such an argument ignore almost all opportunities to develop products that can ultimately generate profit and can be added to our national portfolio.
A few days ago I sat with a group of people and we were debating the impact of creativity on our economy. To provide context the people on the table were engineers, government employees and sadly businesspersons. Their argument was that our people “Jordanians” are generally not happy which decreases their creativity and that minimizes the impact of creativity on our economy. High taxes, crowded streets, low incomes, and late marriages are all issues they included to empower their argument. This makes sense but its not entirely true when we are discussing the determining factor that is resulting in the minimum affect of creativity on our national economy.
Anybody working in design or in any creative field surely understands that if you’re happy your creativity increases because you wouldn’t be distracted and you tend to focus more as now many organizations are associating design with play, so designers would be more productive and explorative while enjoying there time. Many in the industry argue that being focused is the main thing that makes any individual put more creativity in their work.
There is also a very important driver to be creative and innovative and that is “need”. We all know that “Necessity is the mother of all inventions” so it is because of need that we try to be creative and not because of the lack of need.
Design practitioners don’t generate better income than the rest of the people working in other fields. A junior designers income starts at 300-350 JDs a month in a respectable design house or in an advertising agency and its almost the same for any other field here such as engineering, marketing, medicine etc… as they are subject to high taxes, crowded streets and late marriages. So what is different here?
The answer is suitable management methods. Design Houses and Agencies know that without creating the right environment for everybody to function to the best of their abilities they wouldn’t be able to produce creative designs. It is as simple as that. Designers always try to find the best way to function and thats what makes a difference between creative people.
Creating the right conditions for everybody to function to the best of their abilities to reach the overall objectives is the determining factor when it comes to the impact of creativity on our national economy. It is simply good governance and good governance can help organizations capitalize on the creativity of their team members .
At the end of the debate everybody started comparing Jordan to USA and ironically the United States of America is categorized in the Happiness Planet Index to be closer to unhappy rather than happy with a world average of (30.7) but is definitely the richest country in the world with a GDP of 14.2 Trillion USD. The difference here is that people understand good governance is the determining factor and the pursuit of happiness to be their driver instead of waiting for happiness to be creative.
I made this study because I love my country and I hope it was informative and compelling. The thing that made our HPI (54.6) is that our life satisfaction average was low and I’m sure that for a country with an economy built on knowledge, being creative will hopefully contribute to our peoples happiness.
References:
http://www.neweconomics.org
http://www.happyplanetindex.org
http://catalystsdr.com/
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3464.htm
http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/design_is_the_problem_an_interview_with_nathan_shedroff_13049.asp
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