
To predict the future 1/3 of you need to be crazy - rmason
http://steveblank.com/2015/12/15/blanks-rule-to-predict-the-future-13-of-you-need-to-be-crazy/
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tsunamifury
I think one of the main reasons I've failed to innovate inside a large
company, while succeeding at building new things at startups, is because I
find it so hard to maintain a positive attitude inside a corporate
environment. However, at a startup, when I'm starving, I find optimism in
everything and build nonstop.

So far this is a bit of a horrifying conundrum where I am a technical startup
failure, but in good spirits or a corporate success and in bad mood all the
time.

I've found when I'm at a startup there is enormous willingness to believe that
my crazy ideas might create an opportunity -- likely because C-suite has
nothing to lose and everything to gain. While I'm in a corp environment at the
top of the market, VP's have everything to lose and very little they can
imagine that can get better (other than competitive catchup scenarios).

This leads to a really deadly cycle, where large companies shun real
innovation because of the perceived risk being 100,000,000x higher than at a
startup since one has 0 to lose, and the other has billions.

The net-net result here is that big corps never end up being first movers,
since they need to see opportunity illustrated by a competitor before they
move on it. This sets up the corp team for failure though, as they are
assigned to catch up to a competitor already established and building a
product on a good foundation and likely years ahead in thinking.

~~~
RankingMember
Would you say that, for this reason, large companies should maintain small
insulated "Google X"-style incubation divisions to attempt to get the best of
both worlds (stability of the big company with the risk-taking of the small)?

~~~
tsunamifury
I think creating separate quasi-elite innovation groups ruins the spirit of
innovation for the overall corp culture.

It should be emphasized that everyone has "Google X"-like responsibility, and
managers especially need to be trained to listen, accept, and support
suggested projects by their reports.

~~~
huac
The goal generally is to split the company into "exploitation" and
"exploration" divisions, as in the types of innovations that the divisions
pursue.

So, the traditional group still innovates, but focuses on product or
incremental innovations. The 'innovation group' then is one that has free rein
to pursue 'radical innovations.'

In general - exploitation requires homogeneity and consensus, while
exploration benefits from heterogeneity and episodes of conflict. This still
focuses everyone on innovative effort, but if management can identify how
people fit in / which kinds of innovations they can do best, then this
'ambidexterous' organizational structure can work well.

Additionally, the 'elite' language is pretty bad - you're right, we should
encourage everyone to innovate, and should encourage incremental improvements,
which certainly have great value as well. It's easier to see the value of a
radical innovation, but also the risk as well.

~~~
derefr
I would argue that everyone wants to be in the "innovation group"—it's where
all the challenge is, it's where all the stuff that looks good on their resume
is, and it's just plain inherently more interesting subject matter—and that
those who end up "exploiting" rather than "exploring" feel like they've lost
out because of this. Plus, R&D engineers frequently have less oversight _and_
better pay.

The real problem is that the decision-process for who ends up in R&D—and who
ends up handling dumb production bugs their whole life—looks more like the
military officer/enlisted split than like a single career track. We have
extremely talented, extremely experienced engineers who are 20-year "Non-
Commissioned Officers", still stuck in the bullpen, while some of the newbies
mysteriously end up fluttering away to be Ensigns.

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numlocked
Great post. This reminds me of a New Yorker article, Groupthink, from a couple
of years ago[0]. Essentially, disagreement fosters creativity, not
brainstorming platitudes like 'there are no wrong ideas'.

An excerpt:

    
    
        ...dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages
        us to engage more fully with the work of others and to
        reassess our viewpoints. “There’s this Pollyannaish
        notion that the most important thing to do when working
        together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt
        anyone’s feelings,” she says. “Well, that’s just wrong.
        Maybe debate is going to be less pleasant, but it will
        always be more productive. True creativity requires
        some trade-offs.”
    

The article is terrific and I'm mentally made note of 3 techniques that I've
used over the past few years:

1\. Thinking on your own can lead to more solutions than thinking in a group.

2\. Dissent and constraints stimulate creativity.

3\. Insane, off-the-wall, unproductive ideas can stimulate creativity in
everyone else.

[0]
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/groupthink](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/groupthink)

~~~
ionforce
I dunno, I'm not totally sold... Often times I've worked with people who I
pretty much thought were bad engineers and they were the most boisterous. I'm
not saying being boisterous in itself is bad, but it's like it was there
primary weapon to make EVERYTHING an issue.

Healthy debate is good, but... I dunno. I hate giving bad engineers more ammo
to act crazy.

~~~
arbsn
I believe that the article was talking about disagreement, critique, and
debate. Being "noisy" and "boisterous" sounds like something else entirely.
Productive debate ought to be calm, civil, rational, and without inflated
egos.

~~~
sblank
Good rebels versus Bad Rebels at work here
[http://steveblank.com/2015/08/25/why-corporate-
entrepreneurs...](http://steveblank.com/2015/08/25/why-corporate-
entrepreneurs-are-extraordinary-the-rebel-alliance/)

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Htsthbjig
I remember when I created my first company. Being young I was so idealistic
and did bet everything on it.

My parents believed I was nuts: "With no real world experience you should not
create a company", they said, "first work for someone else, get experience,
and then make a company if you want".

My girlfriend thought I was also nuts, she blackmailed me: My (stupid) idea or
she. I chose my stupid idea. She wanted to get back a week later but it was
too late.

My friends could not understand either why take "pies on the sky" when I had
good options on a "real work".

After creating my company everything took way longer than expected, I started
believing it was not a good idea after all, you only have the energy you have
after it is depleted.

But one day I read a document I wrote when I started my company and was
incredibly shocked that everything I wrote down in the past was becoming real
in the present!!

Things started to roll, I got more confident...in the end it was a huge
success precisely because it was such a crazy idea.

Had I followed my parents' advice, I would never have never done what I did,
"experience in the past" would have blocked the possibilities of the future
and the beginners mind.

~~~
meagain20000
What is the name of the company?

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jdmichal
Reminds me a bit of the 10th man idea from World War Z. Basically, if all 9
members of a council unanimously agreed on something, it was the 10th man's
duty to act as if that thing was a certainty and prepare for it.

This all really plays into argumentative theory [0], which is the basic idea
that human reason developed as an argumentative tool. Its main function isn't
"true" or "logical" ideas, but rather persuasion and defense thereof. One
major conclusion is that reason often works to reinforce existent ideals
against external challenge, regardless of the merit of those ideas.

[0] [http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evos/wp-
content/uploads/2011...](http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evos/wp-
content/uploads/2011/06/Mercier-Sperber-Why-do-humans-reason.pdf)

~~~
duncancarroll
Small correction: It was the 10th man's duty to *disagree with the other 9 and
prepare for that outcome.

~~~
ableal
That makes more sense.

Another SF writer (name escapes me) posited a Ministry of Sabotage, in charge
of making government less omnipotent ...

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ainar-g
Might've been Frank Herbert:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Sabotage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Sabotage)

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amitparikh
This reminds me a lot of a thesis (sort of) from Peter Thiel's "Zero to One".
He calls it The Contrarian Question:

    
    
        What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
    

The question asks us to escape from the mental confines of the past and
present to be able to "predict the future" as it were.

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MDCore
I like this concept, now how does one tell the difference between a tenacious
insider with a crazy idea that just might work, and a tenacious insider with a
horrible idea that they just won't let go of?

~~~
ionforce
Presumably the idea itself has merit?

I don't know, but I agree with you that this is a good question.

~~~
jtolmar
Good crazy ideas revolve around solving one or a handful of extremely hard
engineering tasks, which make everything else easier "assuming the crazy thing
works."

Bad crazy ideas break any part of that description. The single hard thing is
new science/research instead of engineering, or the new hard thing won't make
the rest easier, or the new hard thing is supposed to get rid of all the other
problems.

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andrewsNews
I was hoping that the article would explain the fractions it so arbitrarily
threw out. Did I miss a derivation of the numbers or a reference to supporting
evidence? Does anyone else have any studies/proofs about such team
demographics, etc?

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mistermann
"Luckily Houbolt got to make his case, and when Wernher Von Braun changed his
mind and endorsed this truly insane idea, the rest of NASA followed."

If one can take this literally (and it wouldn't surprise me at all, but who
knows for sure), it shows how even the cream of the crop smart people are
subject to either group-think or fear of rocking the boat they are sitting in
- now imagine if your workplace of relatively average people are subject to or
engage in similar behavior.

The tenacity of the engineer to stand up to that culture is extremely
admirable.

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hamhamed
It goes back to the traditional quote that you if you don't know it's
impossible to create X thing, then it might just be possible to create X thing

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ableal
_" Luckily Houbolt got to make his case, and when Wernher Von Braun changed
his mind and endorsed this truly insane idea, the rest of NASA followed.

We landed on the moon on July 20th 1969."_

'Chapeau' (hats off).

Been paying attention to space and SF for way too many moons, had never read
this story.

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suneilp
"Yet in 1961 LOR was a completely insane idea."

It's not that you have to be crazy, it's that most people around you are
actually the crazy ones who push conformance on you because they can't hack
it.

Innovating is difficult due to many people being so very risk averse. Ideally
you have a balance between caution and boldness, however, people lose the will
to take chances when the "bottom" line is at risk.

Of course, when it comes to what NASA does, the bottom line also involves
human lives. Although, then NASA's existence would have and probably is still
considered crazy by some number of people.

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bchjam
man but staying crazy can really lead to burn out if your voice is never heard

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api
I suspect this is why "collect the best and brightest and lavishly fund them"
star-power startups tend to fizzle. The best and the brightest are that way by
yesterday's metrics.

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Xcelerate
I've always thought an interesting idea for trying to curing cancer would be
to put the world's best physicists, mathematicians, economists, and software
engineers in a room together and see what happens.

(Conversely, it would be interesting to see what ideas the world's best
medical researchers and biologists come up with for particle physics and
software development.)

~~~
crpatino
If you invite the economists, you will end up concluding that, in order to
stop cancer, you'll need to stop the _Demand_ for cancer.

~~~
Mikeb85
> If you invite the economists, you will end up concluding that, in order to
> stop cancer, you'll need to stop the Demand for [whatever it is that] cancer
> [-ous cells like].

I think we're on to something...

