jerrymichalski

How Do We Shift Our Thinking?

sociate@gmail.com (Jerry Michalski) — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 06:12:44 GMT

We really believe what we believe

Once you've had an insight about constraints, the path to taking advantage of your insight can be quite bumpy.

For one thing, your glimpse of a possible future isn't an immersive, virtual reality simulation; it's a glimpse. More importantly, the significant things that change from before to after often run counter to our instincts. An important constraint that you want to shift will feel unnatural until you've internalized the shift.

The work it takes to shift properly is part of your defense against your competitors emulating the shift quickly.

Which Constraints Matter Most?

sociate@gmail.com (Jerry Michalski) — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 04:27:20 GMT

The obvious constraints aren't often the useful ones

Constraints come in many flavors. I generally categorize them into physical, legal, cultural or mental:

Physical: Limitations like safe room occupancy, or the speed an aircraft needs to reach to take off.
Legal: Corporate copyrights last 95 years after the author's death.
Cultural: We frown on brazen lying and insulting.
Mental: There's no way someone would let a stranger drive them around town!

As you can see, some of these constraints have already given way.

You might also have noticed that many constraints that seem to belong in other categories are actually Mental. Back around 1900, most folks were certain that flying in aircraft was a pipe dream. We thought there were physical limitations, but smart people like the Wright Brothers experimented their way to flight. Our Physical constraints were provably wrong. But until the proof showed up, most of us were hard to convince.

That's part of the fun of messing with constraints: The doubters and skeptics often create market dynamics you can benefit from.

What Am I Not Seeing?

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 18:43:33 GMT

Hidden value is often right in front of you

Who knew there was value in your seldom-used guest room? Or in the empty seats in your daily commute?

Someone did, because we now don't think twice about booking a room (or house, or treehouse, or yurt, or igloo) to stay in when we travel, or of soliciting a driver to take us somewhere by tapping an app. Ubiquitous Internet access was a prerequisite; smartphones really helped.

But the big breakthrough was an insight, someone's shift in assumptions that everyone else accepted as givens. In these examples, it was: people will always want to stay in hotels, or be driven by cabbies. The inverse assumption is that people aren't trustworthy hosts or chauffeurs (and, of course, that guests might be miscreants, too).

The quest for hidden value is very fun, often profitable, and sometimes quite difficult.

The difficulties arise because sometimes unlocking the hidden value requires goring your sacred cows, letting go of beliefs that aren't true.