Little bets reminded me that you don’t need to have amazing ideas, you do need to let go and begin. The creative process is a posture, an acceptance that trial and error are your constant companions and that’s ok. Actually, better than ok, they should be welcomed into your DNA alongside the criticism and feedback of the people you hope to serve. 

Go create

At the core of this experimental approach, little bets are concrete actions taken to discover, test, and develop ideas that are achievable and affordable. They begin as creative possibilities that get iterated and redefined over time, and they are particularly valuable when trying to navigate amid uncertainty, create something new or attend to open ended problems  

Fundamental to the little bet approach is that we.

• EXPERIMENT: Learn by doing. Fail quickly and learn fast. Think beta product development to gather insights and identify problems
• PLAY: Ideas need time to develop. Don’t shut down the idea too early
• IMMERSE: Seek inspiration and observe how things work from the ground up. Be curious
• DEFINE: use insights gathered throughout the process to define specific problems and needs before solving them 
• REORIENT: Be flexible in pursuit of larger goals and aspirations, making good use of small wins to make necessary pivots and chart the course to completion
• ITERATE: Repeat, refine and test frequently.  

You are not supposed to win. So win at everything.

Chris Rock builds his routines out of trial and error, using his 40-50 appearances prior to his global tour to refine his work. Think of it like a boxing training camp. You figure out what works and what doesn’t. Open to failure, open to learning. End goal in mind

The complexity of the jokes, the energy and conviction of delivery, is the result of the preparation. The finished product, an hour long show can be 6 – 12 months of labour. 

Genius ideas are not necessary to begin. Google’s humble starting point, a collaboration on the Stanford Digital Library Project trying to prioritise library searches online. Reminds us that it is ok to begin by solving much smaller problems.

It’s impossible to predict the consumer response despite your obvious emotional attachment to an idea. Experimental innovators accept trial and error as part of the process and are willing to repurpose ideas. Testing using small bets is much kinder to your resources and allows you to stay in the game. 

Small bets create a focus on what we can afford to lose. Not what we stand to gain. Affordable loss principle. Think energy recycling. 

The illusion of rationality is behind one of my favourite sayings. Great on paper, shit on grass. No football team is a sure bet to win on game day, despite the teams impressive line up.

Growth vs Fixed Mindset 

Think of growth and fixed mindset as a continuum.

A growth mindset can be developed

1st step. Create an awareness of what a growth mindset is

Then either mimic and spend time with others who display a growth mindset or draw on examples of when you displayed a growth mindset to overcome a problem. 

If you are predominantly of a fixed mindset. When confronted with a daunting task it is likely that you will say. I’m not going to be good at this. Fixed mindsets gravitate to tasks that confirm your ability. Asking the question. Am I going to be good at this?

Growth mindset views activities as an opportunity to expand their ability. With the outlook. I can learn to do this

Be a problem seeker

Agile development is to focus on smallified pieces of work and narrowly defined problems. Accepting that the problems become better known during the process is the basis for problem seeking. 

One of the great benefits of the agile approach is that it is also a good method for failing fast. If you can launch ten features in the same time it takes a competitor to launch one, you’ll have ten times the amount of experience to draw from in figuring out what has failed the test of customer acceptance and what has succeeded.

The practice of smallifying problems that can be tackled within one or two weeks makes problems feel more manageable, encouraging creativity.  

Problem seekers are people who are comfortable reformulating and experimenting with solutions. Welcoming problems as opportunities to innovate.

We are more likely to experience flow when we do work that appeals to our intrinsic interests that are also aligned with our personal strengths.

If you struggle to let go and get it through the door

Identify what is behind your perfectionism. Healthy perfectionism is internally motivated and driven by strong personal values such as quality and excellence. 

Unhealthy perfectionism is externally motivated, approval seeking, typically there is an intense worry about making mistakes and a tendency to ruminate over past performances.  

Invest little emotional capital in the creative process by using prototypes to overcome the angst that comes with the creative process. If (when) it fails the blow is softened. Focus on what you can learn NOT what you have lost.

The barrier of giving and receiving feedback when your idea is a prototype is lower on both sides. 

John Lassater of Pixar. “We don’t actually finish our films, we release them”. 

Plus the effort

Facilitate the build up of ideas by taking the lead from improvisation. Think of it as plussing the efforts of others. 

1. Make your partner look good
2. Accept the offer with Yes, and…..
3. Relax and become playful
4. Active listening. Not deep in thinking about what to say next.  

Avoiding the HiPPO trap. HiPPO, the highest Paid person’s opinion, can dominate how decisions are made in organisations and kill creativity. 

It doesn’t have to feel original

Steve Jobs: “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people … Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective.”

Questions are the new answers

People too often have a tendency to think that certain people, experts or mentors for example, have all the answers when in reality insight is far more dispersed.

Get out into the world to challenge our own assumptions.

The creative process requires definition

Constraints shape and focus problems and provide clear challenges to overcome described by Gehry as guard rails that define the scope of the building project

Constraints are broken down into problems that can be overcome. 

“Let’s look at it for a while,” Gehry says, “and be irritated by it.”

Lucky People

Learn a little from a lot

Lucky people typically pay more attention to what’s going on around them than unlucky people.

Lucky people tend to be open to opportunities (or insights) that come along spontaneously, whereas unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine, fixated on certain specific outcomes.

At social parties, for example, unlucky people tended to talk with the same types of people, people who are like themselves. It’s a common phenomenon. On the other hand, lucky people tended to be curious and open to what can come along from chance interactions.

Lucky people are effective at building secure, and long lasting, attachments with the people they meet. They are easy to know and most people like them. They tend to be trusting and form close relationships with others. As a result, they often keep in touch with a much larger number of friends and colleagues than unlucky people. And time and again, this network of friends helps promote opportunity in their lives. Lucky people increase their odds of chance encounters or experiences by interacting with a large number of people.

The mindset of the creative process is to accept the offer and be willing to listen to another viewpoint. 

Schultz, creator of Starbucks, believed they should just say yes to customer requests. So, for example, Schultz was initially determined to avoid using nonfat milk since he didn’t think it tasted as good as regular milk and because it was at odds with the Italian coffee experience. When customers kept requesting nonfat drinks, Schultz relented. The success of those drinks became an important small win and soon much more. Nonfat milk would grow to account for almost half of Starbucks’s lattes and cappuccinos.

The role of early adopters in product development

Choose a few consumers that you really feel are the early adopters, test it with them, see what they like about it and what they don’t like about it. And, if it appeals to them, use them to optimize the idea further and then the laggards will follow.

Active users are rare, but they sit at the top of pyramids of other people who are working to solve similar problems.

Extreme users, whose unique needs can foreshadow the needs of other people. The reason why designers find extreme users so valuable is because the average person isn’t actively thinking about solving problems like these. Their needs and desires are less pronounced.

Steve Jobs is known to say, “People don’t know what they want if they haven’t seen it.”

Prototype your development

Prototyping can be somewhat counterintuitive, placing the emphasis on doing to be able to think rather than thinking in order to do. 

Write really, really shitty first drafts. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.

Be wrong as fast as we can. We’re gonna screw up, let’s just admit that. Let’s not be afraid of that. But let’s do it as fast as we can so we can get to the answer.

Action produces insights that can be analysed. 

The best way to predict your future is to invent it.