

Ask HN: How to train your brain to recognize opportunities for innovation? - BadassFractal

As a technical guy, I'm scared of the idea of being dependent on an idea-guy to come up with real-world problems to solve. I strongly believe that not only should I be able to solve problems through technology (or even simpler means, if you're into the whole lean current), but that I must be able to identify the problems themselves on my own.<p>The issue is that I have a very consumer-like mind and I feel I'm constantly missing out on opportunities to identify areas of improvement or disruption. As a silly example, I would have never thought of allowing individuals to be able to use credit cards for simple personal transactions (I'm referring to Square), and yet it's such a simple and powerful idea.<p>How do I train myself to look at the world from the point of view of an innovator? How do I spot opportunities? Any interesting books / internet reads on the subject?<p>I'm rather good at making things that others tell me to make, but I feel there's nothing as enthralling on working on a problem you yourself "discovered" and believe is really important to solve.
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paulgb
I find the more I study economics, the more I see examples of problems that
could be solved, by technology or otherwise.

Information asymmetry is a big one. FareCaster is a good example of a company
that succeeded by reducing information asymmetry.

Arbitrage opportunities are good to look out for too. Same for building
markets where no efficient market existed before (eg. AirBnB, Etsy).

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8jef
I'm an idea-guy who's training himself to code because I find hard to trust
clueless technical-guys as co-founders. Everytime I'm trying to talk to a
tech-guy about ideas and sales and marketing, all I'm getting is that Bambi
look, you know, just before it get hit by the car.

Try get some life experience. Problems are only one question away.

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BadassFractal
You raise a couple of very good points that I myself have struggled with.

First of all, as someone who's been coding non-stop since the beginning of
college and later on for years for a large corp, I have little to no
experience with the "outside world". I have lived in the academia/enterprise-
industry programmer bubble my entire life. I can think of ways I would improve
bug tracking, programming, source control and other tools that we use day in
and day out, but I don't have a clue about how I could help a small business
increase their revenues. As you said, total lack of real-world experience.

Second, I often hear the complaint about techies having no clue about
marketing and sales. Do you have any suggestions for how we could address
that, and perhaps find a common language with the "business guys"?

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8jef
I'd suggest this: the common language has to be English (and/or French in my
case). Nothing is easy, but don't think you got burned the death only because
one biz guy took advantage of you and treated you like a code-monkey (taken
from you, here, yesterday). There's a lot of decent people out there which are
not crooks. One thing you have for you is the commodity to supply code,
something tangible (if I may say), where salespeople only throw blah blah in.
Protect your belongings. You should make sure the code you write is somehow
protected, remotely hosted or something. Why would a non-tech guy get to see
your code anyway. Then you have the balance of power. That is if you are
forming a partnership. Just my 2 cents.

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TheMegalomaniac
This is tactical advice that works for me <br> 1\. When you get annoyed - stop
and ask yourself why you are annoyed and how you can fix it. This could be
tying laces that get untied every five minutes, etc. 2\. When you say or think
to yourself - I wish I could ... that's an opportunity. I wish I could pay
this other guy with my credit card right now so I can track my spending =
Square 3\. Repeat 1 and 2 for other people 4\. Watch people - sometimes its
easier to find problems when you are watching and other people are doing
things differently than you are. 5\. When you see something - a potato peeler,
A real estate sign. Guess how much it costs to make, where it came from, what
it's purpose is and how well it achieves that purpose. What could make it
better? What else could it be used for?

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hassaanlatif
I think intuition is something that cannot be taught, & I'm not being
facetious. Even Jobs, one of the most intuitive thinkers of his time, said you
can only connect dots in your life looking backwards not forward. I am a very
intuitive person & I think one has to be very in tune with the world around
them in order to connect the dots looking forward. My recommendation to you is
that since you're very much in tune with programming and not so much with the
outside world, try to find something in your world that you can improve upon.
I know nothing about programming so, even though there is a lot of power in
naïveté, I don't have enough information about technology to connect dots.

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jsmartonly
Learn -- Learn to know how existing things work.

Think -- Think independently. Think as outsider.

Apply -- Apply what you created by independent thinking to what you learn
about existing things in the real world.

Repeat -- Repeat the above the above 3 steps.

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alexlumley
I wish there was a way to work with other people to think and talk through big
ideas. Talking with other people seems to be the best way to actually find big
problems to solve as you never know where your conversations might take you.

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coryl
Having someone to bounce ideas off of and just brainstorm with is pretty
useful. I like to be like Einstein and have little thought experiments going
on in my head about every product or idea I come across.

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noahc
Talk to women and small businesses. Ask them what they feel like they pay way
to much for, what their biggest problem this week is. These two markets are so
underserved it is ridiculous.

