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Strategies & Market Trends : Africa and its Issues- Why Have We Ignored Africa? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (686)	12/27/2006 11:15:32 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1267

Big ideas don't just matter in academia, they have real world effects. To a large extent the big ideas provide the purpose and direction for all the practical hard work that has to be done. Dilettantes may be able to deal with a big idea, without being able to deal with the practical details and the realities of having your boots on the ground, but that fact doesn't decrease the importance of the overall ideas. Of course big ideas can be wrong (witness "socialism is the answer to Africa's problems), and people who spend all their time dealing with big ideas, may have a poor grasp of realities on the ground (not just compared to people doing the work, but even compared to what they reasonably should be able to have from publicly available sources of information). Also its very possible to sabotage the big idea by getting the details wrong, or by not working hard on them. But none of that makes talk about the big ideas pointless or trivial. (At least not in a universal way, particular big ideas might be trivial, or worse yet harmful.)