Create! Build Something That Hasn’t Been Built Before!
Aug 03, 2020 by Roger Scherping
I recently listened to the Westwood One Podcast “Exploitation Economy” on the Prof G Show with Scott Galloway. Galloway interviewed Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square and author of “The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time.” McKelvey offered some great insights into entrepreneurship.
He said that when faced with a problem, copying is often the answer. If you’re faced with a problem, the first thing you should do is look around and see if anyone else has already solved that problem. Take, for example, the chair. The chair is a solved problem. Its purpose and basic design are well understood, so all you need to do is adapt it to create a new chair.
But what if we’ve never solved the problem before? Now you’re inventing or creating something new. You don’t get to copy, and all of the tools you’ve learned, especially what you learned in school, tend to not work that well. You don’t have a checklist of steps to follow to get to the solution. Instead, you’re forced to do something that is hugely awkward. You have to create something; you have to invent.
Describing his experience at Square, McKelvey said invention is a messy, creative process where you do one thing and it doesn’t work, so you try something else. That works, but it causes two other problems, so now you have to solve those two problems. And the second problem is illegal, so you need to get a law changed, and a third problem causes your customers to revolve, so you’ve got to keep dealing with this messy creative process. He said that in founding Square they did 14 things that had never been done before.
Invention is antithetical to most of what we’ve been taught to do, which is to copy because copying almost always works. You can consult an expert or go to a seminar or trade show where they’ll teach you how to do it. Or you can earn a credential that allows you to officially do this thing. That’s great, but copying shouldn’t be the limit of human progress. Otherwise everyone is only doing stuff that’s already been done, and we don’t get anything new.
McKelvey feels that too many people disqualify themselves when they feel that burning ignorance in the face of solving a previously unsolved problem. They think, I’m not an expert, so I shouldn’t be doing this thing. If you’re talking about flying an airplane, no, don’t do it unless you’ve been trained. But for the Wright brothers, one of them had to get in and fly that plane for the first time. He was by definition unqualified.
So McKelvey wants a bunch of people to get off the sidelines and get in there and build stuff that hasn’t been built before. He cautions that it’s going to feel really awkward, but it’s how we make progress. Don’t worry about feeling unqualified. Just get in there and figure it out. Create something new and great. Move the world forward.
Something to think about. Email me if you have any comments.
Roger
Listen to the podcast here http://www.westwoodonepodcasts.com/pods/the-prof-g-show-with-scott-galloway/