WEBVTT - Luis Perez-Breva Explains How to Be ‘Productively Wrong’ 0:00:02.240 --> 0:00:06.800 This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:09.960 --> 0:00:12.440 This week on the podcast, I have a special guest. 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:16.000 His name is Luis Perez Brava. He is a professor 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:19.960 at m I T where he directs the Innovation Team's program. 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:24.560 He is also UH the author of Innovating a Doer's Manifesto. 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:29.360 And this is really a fascinating conversation for those of 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:34.960 you who are interested in the direction that technology is 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:43.479 taking us and how startup Silicon Valley technology UH problem solving, 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:49.640 big data, artificial intelligence, et cetera is progressing. I think 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:55.120 you will find this to be a surprising and fascinating conversation. UH. 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:59.960 Luise approaches the idea of UM problem solving an innovation 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:05.080 in a different UH concept and a different order and 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:09.319 in a different construct than I think most people think 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:14.680 of in terms of technology and UM innovation. He really 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:20.080 looks at this as a problem solving an iterative process 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:25.640 as opposed to something driven purely by technology or purely 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:30.600 by capital UH. He in fact, he specifically thinks most 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:35.000 people are doing this wrong because they're focusing on the 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:40.440 concept of big ideas as opposed to thinking about hunches 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:46.880 and small incremental changes that solve problems as opposed to 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:51.040 what we discussed, the grand pivot that seems to be 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:54.440 so popular these days in Silicon Valley. So if you're 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:59.120 at all interested in venture capital or technology or the 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:02.280 future direct action of tech, I think you'll find this 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:07.080 conversation quite fascinating. With no further ado, my conversation with 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:15.079 Luis Perez Breva. I'm Barry Riholts. You're listening to Masters 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:18.480 in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My guest today is Luis 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:21.880 Perez Breva. He is an expert in the process of 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:28.280 technology innovation. He holds multiple degrees from multiple countries, including Physics, 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:33.280 Business artificial Intelligence from Spain, France, and the US. He 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:35.800 is a professor at m I T and he is 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:40.320 the author of Innovating a Doer's Manifesto for starting from 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:45.360 a hunch, prototyping problems, scaling up, and learning to be 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:49.919 productively wrong. He currently directs the m I T Innovation 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:56.480 Team's program and advises organizations on artificial intelligence and innovation. 0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:00.240 Luis Perez Breva, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you, thank you 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:02.880 for having me. So you've said a number of things 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:07.840 that I find fascinating. Let's jump right into the comment 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:12.200 you made about impossible projects. You said, I'm drawn to 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:17.560 projects that look impossible. What are impossible projects? And if 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:21.400 they're impossible, what can you do with them? Well, they're 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:24.760 they're really not impossible. They just looked like that, And 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:26.840 it's mostly because of the way we think, we think 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:29.799 in our silos and our disciplines, and so a bunch 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:31.560 of stuff then all of a sudden, so it looks 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:33.880 like no one knows how to do it. But everything 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.480 you love about the innovation started out looking impossible. So 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.040 give us an example of something that looked impossible but 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:42.800 turns out not to be My favorite one because it's 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:46.400 been a long time and it's still mesmerizing is Henry Ford. 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:48.080 But I'll bring it to the present for you. So, 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:50.160 if Henry Ford was life today, what he would have 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:52.920 said is that he wanted to make jet planes private 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:55.920 jet planes affordable that because that's what a car was 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.200 back then. So this seemed like a completely impossible thing 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.040 to do. Actually, no one believed him. Everyone thought he 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:04.800 was wrong, and yet he somehow they didn't change the 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:07.840 America forever. So that kind of problems, whether they be 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:11.320 that big or smaller, but that people cannot seem to 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:13.720 be able to bring together what draws my attention every 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.880 single time. And I noticed you said affordable. It's not 0:04:16.960 --> 0:04:20.080 just that he wants to manufacture cars. He wants to 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.839 manufacture cars. It's such a scale that they were affordable 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:26.560 to anyone working in his factories that that seems to 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:29.960 be an interesting That's the key when you actually look 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:32.600 at the history of him before, as historians tell it, 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:34.920 just different from how you may read it in a book. 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:37.599 In a business book, you hear that all he wanted 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.800 was make cars affordable because his experience living and growing 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:44.240 up in a farm made him realize how hard it 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:46.120 was to make supply runs to the city. So that 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:51.680 was the objective. Everything else, the scale, manufacturing, finance, increasing wages, 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:55.000 was a means to an end, which is make cars affordable. 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:58.719 It's like problem solving all along. So let's let's address 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:01.279 problem solving a little bit. The title of the book 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:07.279 you reference being productively wrong? How is a person productively wrong? 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:09.960 You know the way. I've actually even come to realize 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:12.720 that even more ever since I had kids. When you're 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:15.680 a kid, When we were children, you spend all your 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:20.000 day being fundamentally wrong, trying things out and mostly not 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:23.520 getting everything right, and just you don't really care, just experiments, 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:25.800 just experimenting, No one seems to care, and so on. 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:29.600 Then eventually we learned just enough to believe that everything 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:33.000 applies by formula, and then we destroy the magic. Effectively, 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:35.360 we destroyed the spirit of angry. But the way we 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:38.560 seem to learn as humans, and this we know from 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:42.040 neuroscience from how hard it is to do ourtificial intelligence 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:45.400 and so on, is by fundamentally being wrong, so officially 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:47.800 many times, until we figure out what was wrong about it. 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:50.479 So we don't learn by being right or by formula. 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.120 We learned by fundamentally being wrong. I'll give you one 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:55.520 quick example which I learned from my daughter. When she 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:59.120 was starting to play violin. She played out of tune 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:02.120 pretty much time until one day she didn't, and then 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:04.440 she figured out when violent itself was out of tune. 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:07.800 And this happened gradually to a point that she never 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:10.679 actually realized that she was playing out of tune until 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:12.880 that one day in which all of a sudden she did. 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:15.880 So she actually learned to play in tune mostly by 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:19.080 being wrung every single time. And I bring this up 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.960 because playing an instrument is such an intuitive thing depending 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:26.240 on how you learn it, that it brings this about 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:28.760 how we learn even when you're an adult. So I 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:31.320 started to learn violin with my daughter. Really, and you know, 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:35.560 the violin is unique, or or at least different from 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:40.040 a piano or something where each note is defined. It's fretless, 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:42.719 and so you could be off by a quarter of 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:47.240 a tone. It's a very different experience. But that leads 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:50.520 the question. We think of child's play as things kids 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:54.680 do for fun, but you're really implying that child's play 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:58.080 is a form of experimentation and learning. Yeah, or you 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:00.760 can look at it the other way around. We adults 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:03.440 should play much the same way, because that's how we 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:06.320 acquired a bunch of things we use every day. Language, 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:10.200 your surroundings, your sense of taste. Everything was acquired that 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:14.280 precise way through experimentation. Is experiment wrong play, but it 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:16.800 was play. Now we grow up and we kind of 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:18.720 are afraid of being wrong. We need to be right, 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:21.760 and so before you know it, you're just not using 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.280 your brain for what it was, for what it evolved 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.120 to do best, which is learning through this kind of play. 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:31.840 Let's talk about innovation a little bit. What is innovation 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:35.440 and how does it work? Funny that's innovation has been 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:38.520 said to me so many things. It's an overused word. 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:40.800 So I'll tell you what I think innovation is. Innovation 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:44.440 is the end result, meaning you go about trying to 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:48.440 solve some obstacle, solve a problem, and uh, most people 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:50.880 will think you're wrong, and one day they stop thinking 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:53.240 you're wrong and they'll call it an innovation. So innovation 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:56.200 is how people certify what you did. But at first 0:07:56.600 --> 0:08:00.360 it looked preposterous, it was fundamentally wrong, and did it 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:02.960 because you felt there was something to it that other 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:05.640 people couldn't see. Give us an example of something that 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:09.880 was preposterous and then adapted by everybody I love. I'm 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:11.840 just going to use big examples. So let's see how 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:16.240 prepostors they wear. And hope logical isn't today. So Bill 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:21.840 Gates talks about a computer in every desk and at 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:24.240 the end at they were every home. Right. So I'll 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:27.800 go back to right where there are maybe a few 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:31.160 main frames here and there no internet, no no internet. 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:33.520 No one knows what to do with it. There isn't 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:36.280 even spreadsheet yet that would come a bit later you 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:39.120 can read the entire history I mean at the time 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:41.440 and and somehow today because you have a computer in 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:43.439 your pocket, and probably another in your desk, and another 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:45.839 at home, and maybe five iPads, and who knows what, 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:48.520 maybe your phone is a computer as well. Now it 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:52.199 seems perfectly natural. So that is what makes it look 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:56.160 like an innovation. It's even better because by the time 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:59.560 it's gone through its cycle, it actually looks old. The 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:01.880 idea of a computer and every desk and every home 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:04.240 seems old all of a sudden, And yet it was 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:08.520 a brutal innovation that has created so much economic progress 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:10.320 in all sorts of fields. Like we're sitting in a 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:14.080 room where there's a cusident of computers. The idea itself 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.600 was prepators in nineteen every actually so prepastors. It didn't matter. 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:23.239 That's fascinating. Let's talk a little bit about technology and innovation. 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:27.080 But I want to start with the idea of ideas. 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:31.960 Where do innovative ideas come from? It's that's a trick question. 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:35.440 It's a true question because over the last two years 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.360 we've placed such an importance on the word idea that 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:40.840 in my book, I decided to give up on it. 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:43.840 And I actually talk about hunches because now ideas have 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:47.200 become so important that it's actually burdening most of us. 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:49.280 We think we need to come up with this innovative 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:51.920 idea before we even do anything. So what's the difference 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:56.640 between an idea and a hunch other than people don't 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:00.360 judge hunches as harshly as they might judge idea. So 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:03.880 the basic difference is an admission practical sense. Nothing ideas 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:06.480 come from pretty much anywhere. And as I've told you, 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.280 the best ideas start out being just preposterous combined two 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:12.400 things that that are not meant to go together. But 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:15.440 from a perception standpoint, from how you go and see 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:18.800 people pitching ideas and investing in ideas, people should not 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:21.280 be investing in ideas. People should be investing in project 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.719 in organizations, in in dreams if you want, if you 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:26.760 want to take it to the extreme. But ideas just 0:10:27.360 --> 0:10:30.320 they are born bad. All ideas are effectively born bad. 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:35.160 Ideas are born bad. Yes, go into more details about 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:40.080 what why do you believe all ideas are born bad? Well, 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:42.920 you know if you truly have one of those ideas 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:45.360 that in the futures, when someone will say they were 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:49.080 innovative right, What you realize is that there is a 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:52.760 lot to learn ahead of you, and it's just impossible 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:54.600 for you to have figured it out all in your head. 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:56.280 So the first thing that needs to happen to that 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:59.680 idea is change, because it's in your head and it 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.160 doesn't exist anywhere, and for it to exist, you need 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:04.680 to scale something up to the world. And it would 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:07.880 be amazing if you had figured everything out perfectly in 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.240 your head. So you need to almost assume that your 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:13.640 idea interesting, enticing as it seems to you, it's just 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:16.440 fundamentally wrong in more ways than it is actually right, 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:17.920 and that's how you figure out how to get it 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:20.800 the scale. So, in other words, an idea is almost 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:24.040 a conclusion, and you need all the intervening steps to 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:26.480 get there. And by the time you're done your idea 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:28.840 we only look like the initial idea to you, but 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:34.120 to no one else. So how does one develop innovations hunches? 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:38.280 I don't I won't say ideas. How does one develop 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:44.439 the skills to produce better hunches and lead yourself towards 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:48.640 greater innovation. It's actually much simpler than people think, once 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:50.880 you remove the obsession to come up with the earth 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:53.800 chattering or disruptive idea. Then you realize that all you 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.080 need to start is something that doesn't seem to be right, 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:58.400 So you might as well start by putting trying to 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:02.240 put together two things that actually don't simp to fit together. 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:04.640 And then that causes you to ask the question, Okay, 0:12:04.679 --> 0:12:07.400 this doesn't work why, And as you start from there, 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:09.760 you realize that all you need to do is continue 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:12.720 to put these pieces, these parts together, to prove to 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:15.840 yourself that this will actually not work. Slowly, you increasingly 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:18.880 either build up scale just give up on it, mostly 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:20.960 because you lose interest. And that's fine. That's how we 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:23.640 humans operate. It's actually very simple way to do it, 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:26.920 and you can practice it. So as you practice, you 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:30.120 start to see opportunities that are essentially emerging things that 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:33.480 you and perhaps only you see that are meant to 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.160 go together. But then what else does just yet? That's 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:40.920 quite interesting. What do you think the differences between ideas 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:45.960 and execution, because they really are two completely different skill sets. 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:49.800 There are two completely different skill sets. But you know, 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:52.440 my experience when when I've taught over years, is that 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.520 paying too much attention to those two words actually gets 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:58.080 you into linear thinking, because then it because as you 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:00.760 to ask the question when once should I stop ideating 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:04.280 and then start executing, meaning to linear, not to line, 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.360 flexible or exactly. And what we know from innovations, and 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.200 every single treatise and innovation tells you this is that 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:13.280 innovation is fundamentally nonlinear. If you endeavor set you up 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:15.040 to try to predict the future so that you know 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:17.640 when to start executing, you are starting the wrong way. 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.080 So what I tell my students and what we the 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:21.840 way we teach it and the way I explained in 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:25.240 the book is your challenge is to scale up something 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:27.800 that's the only thing that matters. And you cannot scale 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.600 up by mostly dissociating an execution from idea. Execution will 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.000 change your idea, and your idea will change what you 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:38.240 execute on continuously at different scales. So is that from 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:41.720 whence comes the infamous pivot or you get all these 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:45.760 startup companies and Silicon Valley and they look like they're 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:49.320 going to be one thing, and then halfway through suddenly 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:53.360 the point in a different direction from a fundamentally similar 0:13:54.480 --> 0:13:57.520 technology or idea. But but the problem they're trying to 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.040 solve seems to be something completely different, any original idea. 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:03.920 I love that you called it infamous pivot. It wasn't me, 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.400 you did it. Yes, well, haven't we heard that phrase 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.240 a million times in the past. You know a lot 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:12.800 about the innovation we're just chatting about. It depends on 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:15.880 from where you're looking at it. So if you are 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:17.800 at the receiving end of it, and you're just looking 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.080 at what a company does without all the knowledge of 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:22.560 what they're doing every day, it looks at as though 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:25.760 they change direction all the time. Now that's just a 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.720 perception from the outside, which means it's not what you 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:31.400 should do. It's what people think you're doing. But what 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:35.800 you are doing is effectively continuously changed incrementally how you're 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:39.120 thinking about it, reformulating it continuously, and as you start 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:41.920 to get traction in different directions, it seems as though 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:44.280 you're doing different things. But every time you look at 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:47.240 any of those stories, the way they really happened, not 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:49.880 the way they are told. There was no pivot. Nobody 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:52.200 started pivoting and changing in their mind every ten seconds, 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:55.600 And the advice to pivot constantly makes no particular sense 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:59.560 to me. So they're they're working on something. It's evolving, 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:03.280 it's rating over time, and suddenly, I think you use 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:06.720 the phrase traction, something starts to gain traction and scale. 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.160 So what we're hearing after the fact as a pivot 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:15.520 is really a normal evolution towards something that's that's working. Yes, 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:18.560 except that some companies have taken as a mantra to 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:20.600 take pivoting as a as a thing they do. And 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:22.800 so every now and then they say they try to 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:26.360 cause them themselves to think, how should I change direction today? 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:29.840 And that's a really hard question. Actually, the field of entrepreneurship, 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.880 which is different from innovation, is full of really strange questions. 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:36.800 Give us another example we've just discussed, when should I 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.960 stop be the aating versus executing? I don't know how 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:43.160 to even pose that question meaningfully. Should I pivot today? 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:45.840 Maybe maybe not? I just I have no data, no 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:50.080 evidence to kind of grasp some other advice. You hear 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:52.120 a lot of this focus on the user, but really, 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:55.080 if what you're doing is that new, is there already 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:57.880 a user for it? If not, you're just making it up. 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:00.120 By the way, I'm all for making stuff up, I'm 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.280 not for ignoring the fact that you just made it up, right, 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:05.840 So it's concealing the assumption you make is actually the 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:08.840 big mistake you would do. So there's an apocryphal story 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:14.240 about Steve Jobs and the iPhone, and people at Apple 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:17.680 kind of challenged what he wanted to do, saying the 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:22.800 user doesn't have any idea what what a glass phone 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:26.400 is going to be like, and Jobs famously said, I'll 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:28.880 tell the user what they want. Is that what we're 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:33.160 talking about in terms of not focusing too much on 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:36.400 the user experience and instead, if you really want to innovate, 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:38.520 you have to forget about the user for a while. 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:43.120 So I think that we went back ten years ago, right, 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:46.560 maybe fifteen, and anybody came to us and said you 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:49.440 need to be listening to more podcasts, the answer would be, 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:54.160 what is this person talking about? Right? So I don't 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:58.280 think you can expect anybody, neither the innovator, nor the entrepreneur, 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:01.680 or the investor or anybody to predict the future, right. 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:04.240 And so at some point, if you truly are looking 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:07.080 for or five years ahead, and you're going to users 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:09.399 and hoping they have an answer of what the future 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:13.760 beholds five years had, I think you're delivering yourself like nobody, 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:16.399 nobody has that answer. Someone has to make up that future. 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:19.960 That's the way I hear what Steve Jobs might have said. Right, 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.920 I wasn't in the room. So let's talk a little 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:28.000 bit about what's going on in the world of innovation today. 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:32.119 How can we tell if a good idea or a 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:37.200 hunch is going to succeed? That's a question I get 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:40.920 every semester, and the answer, I'm afraid is you can't. 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:43.399 You just got to try it out. Just try it 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:47.560 out and see what happens. Now, the good news is 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:49.560 that you also get to define what success is. So 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.240 there's no way you can fail unless you make it 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:57.320 a purpose like many people do, meaning meaning that, well, 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:01.120 how do people define success if they have an idea? Well, 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:03.320 what I propose people do, and what I talk about 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:04.920 in my book is, you know you have a hunch. 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:07.680 How about we try to figure out what problem is 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:10.359 it that you three you really think you're solving. There's 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:14.159 a way to think about problems that's pretty straightforward. And 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:16.480 what I tell my my my students and they look 0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:20.440 at me funny, is that, uh, if an alien species 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:22.600 where to come down to Earth and show you the solution, 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:24.639 would you even know that that's actually a solution to 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:27.600 your problem, because if not, then you will never find 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:30.000 it on your own, and that's how you fail. So 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:33.120 you start working backwards, what do you think solves the problem, 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:35.480 and then before you know you realize you actually get 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:39.000 to define everything. So you continue to do that, and 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:41.119 before you know it, you succeed. Maybe it's a different 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:44.600 way you thought you would, but that's how you succeed. 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:48.159 You try and you go through scale. You're the director 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:52.400 of the m I T Innovation Team's program. Yes, what 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:55.960 does that program do? What are its goals? And what 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:59.720 has come out of that program? So it's a very 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:07.200 usual entity in academia. A few years ago we thought about, well, 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:09.880 you know, we want to etiquate people to actually meaningful 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:12.840 to innovate as a career choice. How do we do that? 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.600 So most people think that you you want technologies from 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:19.320 academia to live and have an impact in the world, 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:22.240 and of course we want that. But what I really 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:24.879 want is for every single student at m I T 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:28.199 and wherever I've taught this now worldwide, to learn how 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:30.240 to do this as a career choice, and then they 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:32.080 can choose to do it or not. That's their choice. 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:35.560 So I thought, how do we do that? And it 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.440 occurred to us that you could actually get a Mighty Technologies, 0:19:38.480 --> 0:19:41.800 which is a real tangible thing, and then ask students 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:45.040 from all domains. So I may get an engineering technology 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:47.959 and the students are from science, business and architecture, and 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:51.040 then try to teach them what it actually means to 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:53.960 innovate with that tangible starting point. And the process is 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:56.760 very simple. So someone in a lab at M I. T. 0:19:56.880 --> 0:19:59.720 Has discovered that a new thing is actually possible. So 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:03.280 I of my students, Okay, somewhere they're hidden is a superpower. 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:07.080 We just don't know what the superpower is. And obviously 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:09.200 that superpower is going to solve a problem somewhere. We 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:12.080 just don't know where nor what the problem is. So 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:14.600 we need to solve for those two things. So people 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:19.480 are really approaching the concept of ideas and innovation backwards. 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:22.919 They're starting with the idea as opposed to what problems 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:25.720 to solve exactly. And that alone takes me about a 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:30.240 month for STEMS to appreciate that we're actually turning things 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:35.760 on its head because it's actually simpler problem and solve 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:38.520 it exactly. And of course there's no change we're going 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:40.679 to find the perfect problem at the start. But as 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:42.359 long as you understand how to do it, you can 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.000 do it increasingly more quickly. And that's what led me 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:47.280 to believe that you could actually practice this even when 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:48.919 you don't have a technology at the input, which is 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.840 what the book covers. Um. But beauty is that the 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:55.360 result is actually very clear path to action to take 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:58.440 this technology, change it and address a problem that even 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:01.840 the researchers hadn't hadn't about. And so a bunch of 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:03.760 startups have actually come out of this, even though it's 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:06.640 not my objective, right, My objective is to educate students, 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:10.159 so they do this continuously. Right, So you write in 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:15.119 the book that people and again to reference Silicon Valley, 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:18.320 they do it backwards. They as soon as they have 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:22.719 an idea, they try and um get funding, They try 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:25.919 and go out and raise capital. You suggest not to 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:30.280 do that until way later explain the thinking. So there's 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:34.560 the ways to think about about that. Um, I think 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:37.120 that I while you have is an idea, which as 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:39.960 you know, I think they tend to be born not 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:44.480 so great, not to say bad ah, and you obsess 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:47.679 about pitching it and selling it. You're putting yourself in 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:51.680 the worst negotiation position you can possibly ever be, which 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:54.119 is someone else is going to decide what your company 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:56.040 is going to look like. They may give you money, 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:58.160 You may look like great because you've got the money, 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:00.760 but then you may soon realize your idea. UH needed 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:03.520 a whole different process. So I asked in the book, 0:22:03.560 --> 0:22:05.800 I asked everybody who has an idea to think of 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:09.080 themselves as investors zero because the first time he's going 0:22:09.119 --> 0:22:12.720 to be spent by them. And instead of spending six 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:16.280 months touring vcs or asking for money, what can you 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:20.200