Seeding Innovation

5The Liability of Ignorance

“If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.”

—Sir Ken Robinson

IN MY FINANCIAL career, I learned how discriminatory our financial system is. It was not something I learned in school. We didn't cover it in college, and we didn't cover it in business school. It's why I include the topic in the course on innovation that I teach at Rice University. Ignorance is a liability. I also never learned a single Native American word in school; although I was given the option to study French, Spanish, Japanese, German, and so many other languages, a Native American language was never offered. I never learned how to say hello or thank you. Where had education failed me on this? Where had I failed myself? And just as I asked you to do at the end of the prior chapter, to explore your sources of information in order to learn what is not familiar to you, I got to work doing the same, in an effort to expand my knowledge and understanding, to address not only my own blindspots, but also the shame I felt over my ignorance. I am and always will be working on this.

Why do I bring this up? Because if we're going to talk about things like fundraising from friends and family, then we have to talk about who has the ability to do this and why and who has generational wealth and who has access to lending. I began learning the depths of the racial discrimination in the financial system, when I first learned that 70% of farmers are white ...