The Expert Problem

The Expert Problem

The X PRIZE[1] foundation held a contest for a more efficient way of cleaning up oil spills. The winning Illinois team had a tattoo artist, a dentist and a mechanic working on the problem. Their method was 89.5% efficient and did the job for way less than what BP was spending to clean up their oil spills. So how did chemical engineers at BP manage to be less efficient than three guys who didn’t go to school for this stuff? Psychologists refer to this as the curse of knowledge. That is, a university professor may struggle to explain elementary concepts to a class of grade-8 students. Biologists have an explanation for this as well. Biologists say that when you’ve seen a problem that you’ve seen before, the lowest point of your neocortex is activated to come up with the solution. Your brain says “okay, I’ve seen this one before. This is how I solve it.” Yet when you haven’t seen the problem before, a higher level of activity in your neocortex takes place and it results with a more creative, outside the box solution[2].

Now this doesn’t mean that you should pick a business you’re not passionate in pursuing. On the contrary, if you’re only tackling problems in your domain, you may end up chasing self-serving ideas and fall in love with them. This is what we hope to avoid.

The one place where you won’t find answers is in your office[3]. The eureka-moments take place over a coffee, shower, or lunch[4] (pretty much when you’re not focused the problem).

If you’ve liked this post, you may enjoy reading my new book Ice Cream Startups.

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[1] The X PRIZE gained popularity with Sir Richard Branson’s vision and involvement with the Ansari X PRIZE for personal spaceflight.

[2] Source: Naveen Jain, co-chair of the education and global development initiative of the X Prize Foundation, as quoted on Fast Co-Exist by Ariel Schwartz

[3] Source: Passion and Purpose interview with Joe Kennedy: CEO & President of Pandora

[4] Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., WALL-E brainstormed over one lunch, (just before backing out from an acquisition by Microsoft), and grossed $2.2 billion at the box office.