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Tech, Strategy, and other interesting things by Roberto Zoia

ideas

Denying the Obvious

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People don’t deny the obvious because they "have a cogent argument about why it’s wrong." They deny it because they think it will make their life better, even if there is strong evidence that they are wrong. "Simply because denying it puts me into a circle of people where I feel comfortable denying it."

Seth Godin has honed this extraordinary ability of using powerful stories to help you see different points of view of the idea he’s trying to convey. This idea is from his podcast’s episode Gravity, Evolution and Ideas. Worth listening to the whole episode.

La Pirámide Invertida de la Invención

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Todo el mundo tiene ideas. Pocos las ponen en práctica. Kevin Kelly, en su libro What Technology Wants, citando a Jay Walker:

“Puede haber decenas de miles de personas que conciben la posibilidad de la misma invención al mismo tiempo. Pero menos de uno de cada diez se imagina cómo se podría implementar. De estos, solo uno de cada diez llega a pensar los detalles prácticos y soluciones específicas. De este último grupo, solo uno de cada diez logrará un diseño funcional. Y finalmente, solo uno de todos esos milles que tuvieron la idea lograrán que la idea arraige en la cultura. En nuestro laboratorio nos involucramos en todas esas etapas, en las proporciones esperadas.”

En otras palabras, a nivel conceptual la simultaneidad de una idea es generalizada e inevitable; tu brillante idea la tendrán muchos. Pero conforme bajamos, habrá menos personas en cada etapa. Y en el momento en que estés tratando de llevar tu idea al mercado, probablemente seas el único porque estás en la cúspide de la pirámide de personas que tuvieron inicialmente la misma idea.

Cualquier persona razonable que vea esta pirámide entenderá que la probabilidad de que alguien logre la adopción de la lámpara eléctrica es 100%, mientras que la probabilidad de que fuera Edison el que la inventara es uno en 10,000.

The Inverted Pyramid of Invention

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Everybody has ideas, few put them into action.

“There might be tens of thousands of people who conceive the possibility of the same invention at the same time. But less than one in ten of them imagines how it might be done. Of these who see how to do it, only one in ten will actually think through the practical details and specific solutions. Of these only one in ten will actually get the design to work for very long. And finally, usually only one of all those many thousands with the idea will get the invention to stick in the culture. At our lab we engage in all these levels of discovery, in the expected proportions.” In other words, in the conceptual stage, simultaneity is ubiquitous and inevitable; your brilliant ideas will have lots of coparents. But there’s less coparentage at each reducing stage. When you are trying to bring an idea to market, you may be alone, but by then you are a mere pinnacle of a large pyramid of others who all had the same idea.

Any reasonable person would look at that pyramid and say the likelihood of someone getting a lightbulb to stick is 100 percent, although the likelihood of Edison’s being the inventor is, well, one in 10,000.

— Kevin Kelly quoting Jay Walker in What Technology Wants.

Nikola Tesla on going from idea to product

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Lifehacker has an interesting article about Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), the Serbian-American inventor. This description of his visual thinking process caught my attention:

My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance. There is no difference whatever, the results are the same. In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything. When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and the experiment comes out exactly as I planned it. In twenty years there has not been a single exception. Why should it be otherwise? Engineering, electrical and mechanical, is positive in results. There is scarcely a subject that cannot be mathematically treated and the effects calculated or the results determined beforehand from the available theoretical and practical data. The carrying out into practice of a crude idea as is being generally done is, I hold, nothing but a waste of energy, money and time.

You have to read to be able to write

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Matt Gemmell on the classic question How do you get your ideas, or the relation between reading, writing, and the idea-flow:

The corresponding answer is usually something like “they just come to me”, but it’s a half-truth. We all know that, deep down. The reality is more prosaic: your outlook alters, such that everything is an idea. In the same way that a former spy can never fully switch off their vigilance, a writer’s imagination just becomes perpetually active.

Reading is what makes it possible – you have to read in order to be able to write – but you have to write to actually activate this shift in perspective. It happens fast: within days. The problem isn’t ever finding ideas; it’s filtering them.

Reading is important, even if you are not a writer yourself. Finding time for reading long form –books, long articles, etc.– is crucial, even if it seems to be increasingly difficult.