by Joseph Pangilinan, De La Salle University

The “Dollar Bill” William Henry Gates III, reputedly the world’s richest man, shocked the world when he announced that he would formally retire as Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, sometime in July 2008.

Gates said  he wanted to fight “more important wars,” particularly crucial problems involving world health and education in the Third World.

Some fresh goals:

(1) Find and deploy  the cure for AIDS, cancer,  malaria, et. al. and

(2) Bridge gaps in educating the world’s poor.

Awesome Goals. Why do I believe them more than I do the Millenium Development Goals?

The solutions mogul wants to solve the right problems for a change! He believes these new “pursuits” are more significant than protecting his $60 Billion “baby” Microsoft.  Mind-blowing!

In fact, Gates is currently persuading the best of the best scientists, engineers, doctors, experts in various disciplines, to come together for this new cause.  Warren Buffet, and some others among the world’s richest, most powerful, mostly retired leaders, have bought into the Gates challenge. W.Buffet has allegedly donated billions of dollars to Gates’ Foundation work. Gates himself has earmarked over US$10 Billion thus far, to this quest.

Make no mistake about it. These powerful yet unlikely leaders, a kind of “third force,” are converging to find real answers to the world’s real problems.

Hallelujah!

Yet, while tremendous resources may be needed in this new mission, Gates wants warm bodies to contribute – to the thought processes, research, development and strategic analysis required to solve problems, project execution, and so forth.

Challenges in “democratizing” health and education solutions in Third World countries, for example, are daunting in both depth and breadth. Research and technology, corruption in government and business sectors, poor infrastructure, dysfunctional policies and support systems, supply chain constraints, politics, and so forth.  Even “helping” is easier said than done.

Why the paradigm shift? Gates realized that despite all he knew, and despite having the largest research knowledge database worldwide, he was at his peak, virtually clueless about hunger and AIDS in Africa, or babies killed in China, or poverty in India.  He felt it was time that ‘the best and the brightest’ address Second and Third world problems, rather than just First world problems.

What a breakthrough!

The world’s most powerful solutions involve “integration” of the best and the brightest from various disciplines, interdependent knowledge, skills, and leaders from multi-sectoral institutions of the world.

I am no Gates fan, to be quite honest. I have always despised the idea of paying more for MS Windows, or MS Office upgrades, just so that I can read my friends’ latest doc and ppt files. That’s hardly any value added. But  for now, I cannot think of anyone else in the world who would be better qualified to integrate various disciplines’ technologies, resources, and build the most powerful solutions to complex problems, if not the Master-Jedi, Solutions-Integrator himself, William W. Gates III.

Making sense of the latest in information, telecommunication, and other technologies to build user-friendly “solutions,” over transnational distribution networks and supply chains: in fact constitutes Bill Gates’ most distinctive competitive competence!   Microsoft does project management and solutions integration on a global-scale, better than anyone else in the world!

Indeed collective knowledge is power, especially if applied to the right questions of the human race. In college physics, recall Poiseuilles Law, named after this French physician, who studied the flow of blood through capillaries. This law gave rise to new approaches to the treatment of high blood pressure, other such illnesses, and has saved millions of lives.

Bear with me on this one. Poiseuilles Law states that:

  • the flow rate, Q, or the volume of a liquid flowing through a capillary, per unit time (cm3/sec) is directly proportional to the difference in pressure of the liquid between its ends, and the fourth power of the radius of the capillary (or pipes, in the case of plumbing or other fluid dynamic systems);
  • and is inversely proportional to the viscosity of the liquid (represented by the greek letter ? “eta”), and the length of the capillary, or the pipe, through which the liquid travels.

So what now?

The formula for Fluid velocity or Flow rate is

Q = Volume per Unit time = [(p2-p1 ) x ( p  ) x ( r4 )] /  8 x [? x  L]

?  = “eta”, or the coefficient of viscosity

p  = “pi”, or the engineering constant 3.1416, or the circumference of a circle when the diameter is one (1).

So, how –pray tell –is this “knowledge” of any USE to the human race?

Take the medical problem of high blood pressure, a simple fluid flow problem, where we might want to reduce the velocity of blood flowing through human, veins, or arteries (cylindrical capillaries, all).  Say the blood flows too quickly. Am no doctor, but from Pouiselle’s Law, I thought up a few options to reduce blood flow rate, Q (barring any complications that may arise, of course):

1) reduce the radius  of the pipe (i.e. notice how radius is raised to the 4th power!), because the greater the radius, the greater the flow.

2) increase viscosity of the fluid, to reduce fluid velocity

3) increase the length of the capillary or pipe, which would reduce the rate of fluid flow.

4) reduce the pressure difference between entry and exit points of the capillary.  I suppose this is when the doctor advises the patient to “check his lifestyle’ or say, to avoid stressful situations, or even highly strenuous exercise.

Poiseuilles and related discoveries have saved millions of lives, and continues to solve countless day-to-day problems for people all over the world.

Dr. Poiseuille might have thought he was only researching treatments for high blood pressure, but his“law” is applicable to all homogenous fluid moving along circular tubes or pipes, just as it does to veins and arteries, spinning off into countless applications in fluid dynamics, not only in medicine, but in business, industrial and organizational theory, fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, supply chain management, and so forth.

Applied Science rocks!! Such are the kinds of solutions we need for the world’s most challenging problems, and not just popular “monster” applications as gaming, gambling, texting, or other forms of social-networking.

Combining knowledge, power, wealth, even fame, may be helpful, even necessary, to bless the world with the solutions it so badly needs, but as Bill Gates himself has seemed to realize, these are not sufficient.

The right problems will neither surface nor resolve themselves, if leaders will only pursue selfish, vested or parochial interests.

Complex problems will remain unresolved, precisely because they are complex, involving thorny “conflicts”, disparate systems and policies, many wasteful, dysfunctional, and frustrating steps, say in business, industry, or government.

Not enough leaders have the guts, the gall, and the gumption to address such complexity head on, for the greater good.

Thus, what Gates and Buffet are doing, is a breath of fresh  wind and spirit at such times as these. Even the world’s most difficult problems and conflicts can be solved, if more of such leaders work together, and channel their collective passions, resources. and skills, towards crucial issues of the human race.

We do not need more knowledge, power, or wealth, but more action.

We do not need a change of heads or hands, but a change of hearts.

What the world needs now, are more men and women with the unconditional love and courage to DO what is right, despite fear or resistance.

The world needs more men and women, with hearts turned to flesh, from stone.

JN Pangilinan

Note: Poiseuilles Law, The American Heritage® Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.