Page 45 - The Business Idea Factory: A World-Class System for Creating Successful Business Ideas

Avoid making decisions based on past experience

While studying at Yale University, Fred Smith wrote a paper in which he described a concept of
Federal Express. His management professor gave him a “C” for the project and said, “The concept is
inter esting and well-fo r med, but in o r der to ear n better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.” Once
Fred founded FedEx, almost every delivery expert in the United States predicted that his company
would fail based on their experience in the industry. They said that no one would pay a premium price
for speed and reliability.

We are used to making decisions based on our past experience because in the majority of situations
it’s reasonable and helps avoid making the same mistake twice. If, however, you take into
consideration only what worked in the past, you may come to the same old ideas. If you want to create
successful business ideas, you need to tell the world what will work in the future, not what worked in
the past.

Several years ago while studying how the brain works, I stumbled upon a very interesting statistic
that said, “When you do kickboxing, your body burns about 10 calories per minute; when you walk,
your body burns about 4 calories per minute; the brain on its own burns only about one tenth of a
calorie per minute. However, when you actively think, the brain burns 1.5 calories per minute.”
Taking into account that the brain makes up only 2 percent of the body weight, that’s a huge amount
of energy!

Your brain always tries to conserve as much energy as possible. Once you begin thinking about any
task, the brain quickly scans memory for past experiences and in a few seconds says: “Here is a
solution.” You say, “Hey, brain, I don’t like this one. Give me another one.” The brain looks into the
past experiences and again in a few seconds says, “Here is a solution.” Unfortunately, these solutions
are often obvious and of little value for making a business successful.

Tell your friends, “Please write down a list of 20 animals.” At the beginning, they will most probably
list such animals as “cat,” “dog,” “bear” or “lion.” These animals are freshest in your friends’
memory, because they often see them on the street, in the zoo, on TV or in advertisements. At the end
of the list there will be more rare animals such as “puma,” “sloth” or “guinea pig.”

Research shows that we recall common objects faster than less typical ones. Research also shows that
when thinking about a problem, the brain tends to give most typical solutions based on past
experience faster than original and creative solutions.

Your brain will avoid thinking really hard until it runs out of quick solutions based on your
experience of what worked in the past. The only way to make the brain think hard and produce world-
class ideas is to make it generate a lot of ideas.

The greatest innovators know this and when they think on a problem they are never satisfied with the
first or second solution that comes to their head. They generate all the ideas they can and then pick the
most promising ones. Einstein was once asked how his thinking was different from the thinking of the
average person. He said, “When searching for a needle in a haystack, other people quit when they find
a needle. I look for what other needles might be in the haystack.”