Act1 - Temple Grandin, Hero

Temple Grandin is an amazing woman. She is Autistic. She holds a PhD. She thinks in pictures. Growing up she had extreme Autistic tendencies and had a hard time communicating and learning in traditional learning environments. She has learned and grown into an amazing woman, creating a place for herself in fields dominated by men. She uses what are, to her,intuitive thought processes, but to others are methods absolutely unheard of. One of the things she has done is to design ethical, humane and calming cattle shoots for everything from holding a cow in need of an injection to slaughtering them without making them fearful. She did this by being the first one to think from the cow's point of view, down at their level. She understood the shape and placement of the cows' eyes and what things might spook them. I realize cow slaughter is a sticky topic, but in our modern society it is the way most of us get our meat. Until we all raise our own cattle and learn to kill them ourselves, I am glad that Temple has been able to improve the last moments of those cows.

I realize that this is not exactly social innovation, though it does allow a larger society to treat these animals with more dignity. It is, however, very innovative, and the lesson of viewing your problem from your subject or a completely new point of view is very apt.

Additionally, Temple has some interesting thoughts on the way people think and the kinds of people our society needs. If you are interested you can watch her talk on this subject in her TED talk on Feb 10, 2010: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_al... She has also written the very interesting book, Thinking in Pictures, about her life.

Temple has a website with more info here: http://www.grandin.com/