In the last year, a few of what have developed into my most devoted friends, are from Asian countries. When I have a dilemma in my life, I float it around to friends, and increasingly I see how people from other cultures have fresh answers.

Great competition, cliche picture

All this has made a point very clear: other cultures have solutions for your own world if you ask. So, I totally got it when I found through someone I was following on twitter about a design competition for emerging market citizens to solve first-world problems.  The tag line is funny and poignant:  The rest saving the West.

It’s embarrassing that such a competition seems novel. But it is, and it’s totally wonderful. As an American, I can’t enter. I don’t like that but I  say enthusiastically, “Yes, help us. Everyone help everyone.”

But don’t help us with obvious things like the stupid obesity picture put on the competition’s website – that’s getting cliche! – but help us on more subtle day-to-day issues that we in the West assume have been solved.

As a side note: I realized, happily, that the definition of design thinking as floated by Tim Brown seems to be culturally independent.

On a related note. The April 15th edition of The Economist has a special report on innovation in emerging market.