I am fascinated by problems. I like to think of myself as a solution oriented individual. However when problems creep into my life as they always do I know that I am in a great learning experience.
I just finished reading a book this week that belongs to the library of every entrepreneur. It's called "Juice, The Creative Fuel that drives the World-Class Inventors by Evan I. Schwartz." This book allows you to take a peek inside the labs of the brightest minds and better understand how They relentlessly question and discover the infinite ways that we can imagine and create solutions. The book is an impressive display of how world class inventors on the planet search for problems, try to understand and develop solutions that can only come to perceive the problem differently. Every entrepreneur should read this book! And 'chock full of wisdom that can apply to our business life.
Albert Einstein once observed that the most fundamental question we can ever ask ourselves is whether the universe we live in is friendly or hostile. He suggested that the answer to this question will determine your fate. I think many people have decided that the universe is hostile. In this way, their immediate response to a problem only compounds the hostility. However, the great minds always teach us that regardless of the problem is an important lesson to be understood only if we learn to look for it. World history is literally the history of transformative discoveries.
In the book "Juice, the creative fuel that drives the World-Class Inventors by Evan I. Schwartz, the author shows clearly that the only factor that separates world-class aspiring inventors is that it celebrates the feedback they receive from bankruptcy. Recognize that innovative minds in every failure is the real information you need to learn to better understand the problem and overcome the obstacles it presents. I am fascinated by the feedback they receive, and are constantly focused on further testing because the answers will provide. A great lesson for us all! Bankruptcy is within such feedback and feedback is the wisdom of incredible success. Or as Dr. Wayne Dyer, as he said, "When you change your way of seeing things, the things you look at change."
Take for example the story of Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, the two-wheeled vehicle that is revolutionizing the personal electronic transport in our major cities. One day in 1990, Kamen attended a wheelchair man trying to navigate a curb en route to a mall. He followed the man into an ice cream shop and was amazed how the man struggled to reach the counter and grab his ice cream cone. As part of that experience Kamen was both outraged and inspired. The seeds of the Segway are born. Two years later, after numerous disappointments Kamen slipped on a wet bathroom floor and realized that the real problem was facing in its technology has been one of balance. He and his team of engineers smoothed in the enabling technology of electronic gyroscopes can provide "balance automatically." It was only after years and years of failure and to celebrate the feedback received that could focus on the success of the prototype Segway. Today, according to Kamen, the Segway is the answer to the problem of urban transport. 43% of gas in the world, is used by cars and nearly 20% of disposable income individuals' goes to car payments and gasoline. The Segway market for several billion people! A fascinating creation caused by someone who simply disagree with the limitations imposed by the status quo.
What is your biggest problem in life right now?
What is the biggest problem in your company?
The late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale used to say that "when God wants to send a gift wraps it in a bigger problem and is the gift that God sends you the bigger the problem".
If the Segway can grow, witnessing a wheelchair bound man in search of an ice cream cone what are the possibilities that may occur in your life, if we learn to seek the lesson of your problems?
Nathan Myrhrvold, former chief technologist at Microsoft Corporation has predicted "There has never been a better time for big ideas."
Eureka! When bankruptcy is designed to reinvent your success.
Be careful what you agree with!
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