Pascal Latouche - Open Innovation

Mr. José Jacques Gustave (G2J) is the first entrepreneur I had the pleasure of interviewing. I say pleasure, it was more than that. We come from the same corner of the globe: the Caribbean. Needless to say, listening to him reminded me of my past, I sometimes had the scent in my nostrils and the taste in my mouth.

In fact, when it comes to travel, with G2J, I will take you to different destinations: the Caribbean, mainland France, the USA, Africa, Asia. In my opinion, G2J is more likely to be seen as a global entrepreneur, because his favorite terrain is the world, wherever he feels there is something to be done.

Like any story, it needs a beginning, and it starts in 1965, somewhere on an island in the Caribbean.

G2J comes from a modest family from Martinique. Martinique for those who do not know is one of the many French islands of the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea. He is the fourth child of a sibling group consisting of one brother and two sisters.

With a driving license obtained during his time in the army (military service), his father started earning his money as his brother-in-law’s “apprentice”, a small plantation owner who had demonstrated Caribbean customary solidarity by hiring him. He was indeed a handyman. At that time in the West Indies, there was nothing extraordinary about hiring the youngest of the family. In short, it was an approach that we would readily describe today as a form of economic “mentoring” aimed at giving people “smaller” than ourselves the chance to earn a few pennies in exchange for a variety of services. With money in his pocket and access to credit in the West Indies, his father was able to buy his own truck. For G2J’s father, this was the beginning of an “entrepreneurial” adventure: he then became what we could call today a craftsman – a transporter. To get around these islands, you should know – and this is still true today – that there were only roads. G2J’s father answered – is there a need? I guess so. Goods, such as bananas, needed people to get them from one point to another. Note that his father was an innovator, because he was the first to have the idea of transporting racing skiffs from one side of the island to the other via his truck, as it is recounted in Mr. Castandet’s book on the history of skiffs in Martinique. G2J lost his father at the age of 9. May he rest in peace, and if it is true that there is something beyond, then no doubt he will meet mine.

As for G2J’s mother, orphaned at 14, she trained to become a teacher. She passed on the knowledge she had acquired to the children. From G2J, I got a lot less detail about his mother’s life. I think I noticed this phrase more than once: “ My mother was a fighter! ”. I deliberately didn’t dig any further. The place of women in some cultures is important. It is not only her vocation to give birth to children and to be the “wife”. It is above all she who takes on a statutory role in the home, who educates, disciplines or not, keeps accounts. In short, whether you are a husband or a child, it is in your best interest to make an ally out of her, otherwise you will no longer have the affection you have longed for.

As I was listening to G2J, I realized that a singularity was emerging. The parental couple as such. Imagine that you want to build a house, it collapses a few days before it is finished. G2J told me that rather than attacking the craftsmen, her parents simply decided to rebuild it without asking more questions than that. This seemed very strange to me, because we could have imagined this couple in a process that would have consisted at least in implementing actions against the craftsman, while rebuilding. In retrospect, is it any wonder? For months, you watched your house rise up out of the ground. A certain sympathy has inevitably developed with your craftsman. I imagine that the failure of the project (the collapse of the house) becomes a collective failure because you took part in this construction. You assume the result. It is only long after I understood this philosophy that characterizes G2J: never get lost in useless fights and take the events upon yourself as soon as you have taken part in them.

You’re not born with a philosophy of life. It’s being constructed. I wanted to know how G2J was constructed and of course, if it passes through the family home, it also passes through social relationships. For a child, school is a melting pot of social relationships. From that point of view, it seems today that G2J has not had any luck…. But it has nothing to do with luck.

G2J’s school years were not easy. It seems today that he was a very industrious child. “ School was a pain for me !”. It took him six years to complete his studies from 9th grade (aged 14) to 11th grade (aged 16), taking each class twice. This gives you an idea of G2J’s ordeal as a child. As a child, you must want to be and be recognized. Your grades, teacher ratings are just a few of the many ways you can be proud of yourself. But for G2J, the journeys marked out were just an antithesis of his deepest sense of self.

School predestines us, based on grades, to allow ourselves to do things or not to do things, or at least to believe that we can or cannot do them. Imagine that from the 6th grade (aged 11), a whole educational system is there to tell you in substance that you won’t make it to the 9th grade (aged 14) and that if by chance you make it, receiving the BAC diploma, you shouldn’t dream. An ordeal that is likely to break a young spirit and ruin his life. G2J was telling me that someone he knew talked about school as “ learned helplessness ”. How to give a child the intimate conviction of being useful or useless, or even to comfort or panic him about his own future, and this on a completely simplistic basis: his grades.

This was G2J’s fate: “ I had my bag on my back without knowing where to find it ”. This picture is very beautiful. He had in a well-defined object (his backpack) the knowledge (his books). This knowledge he carried on his back as a burden that he could not access, because it was not in front of him. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there. He wanted it, and the young G2J was going to develop on his own in his corner the means to grasp this knowledge.

He already went beyond that, with his hands, he dismantled and reassembled electronic tools. At the time, many radios could already be picked up in the islands. Listening to one of them meant that G2J could listen to all of them. So he tinkered and found a way to get radios from all over the world. While he didn’t like to read, the radios were there. He “ate” all kinds of information to the point where he didn’t sleep much. Thus, G2J became aware not only that he could create his own modus operandi to move forward in life but also that because his modus operandi was convincing, he too could have a certain self-esteem … despite the opinions of educators.

Maybe he didn’t understand what the teachers were saying. But he was able to invent his own method of learning and adapting to his environment. Discreetly, if he had good ideas, he would not talk about them because he thought they would not be taken seriously. How could having such poor grades add value to classroom exchanges? What’s the point of trying to answer questions from teachers for whom everything is conditioned in advance and who put you in a box…. G2J wasn’t trying to shine, but was looking within himself for the resources to act in this strange world far too marked out for his inventive and visionary spirit. Was G2J already a child entrepreneur? I can’t say. One thing is certain: he already possessed all the attributes, a bit like a spark that only asks to meet a situation that would ignite the flame.