Don's Inventor Blog
June 25th, 2008
Are You Thinking Like a Tapper or a Listener?
(Is the Message of Your Invention Really Getting Across to Others?)
Charles “Tremendous” Jones once said that you will basically be the same person 5 years from now that you are today except for the books you read and the people you meet. So in an effort to try and broaden my own horizon, given a lot of extended time traveling lately, I try to listen to a lot of audio books. Many have been pretty good reads lately, but one in particular may very well become my pick for “best book I’ve read all year”. This book is called “Made to Stick”, written by two brothers, Chip and Dan Heath. The book’s introduction starts out with a common urban legend that has been circulating around the internet for years, one that you’d most likely recognize from your own spam inbox. After relaying the story, the authors ask you to contrast the story with a passage drawn from a paper distributed by a non-profit organization. It starts out: “Comprehensive community building naturally lends itself to a return-on-investment rationale that can be modeled, drawing on existing practice..". They then ask you to imagine that you closed the book right then and took and hourlong break, followed by calling a friend and trying to retell that passage without rereading it. Good luck. The point they were trying to make here is that some messages are naturally “sticky”, while others are not. So how do you design your idea so it sticks? While I can’t go into all the details of the book, in short the book lays out six principles to make an idea sticky:
1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories
While I do recommend reading the whole book, one particular passage definitely bears illumination and I think helps to give perspective on why we as inventors many times have a very difficult time getting the true idea of our invention across to others.
Tappers and Listeners:
In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game where she assigned people to one of two roles: “tappers” or “listeners”. Tappers received a list of 25 well-known songs such as “Happy Birthday” and “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener by knocking or tapping on the table. The listener’s job was to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped. Over the course of the experiment , listeners only guessed 2.5% of the songs, or 3 out of 120. But here’s the most interesting point to the experiment. Before the listeners guessed the name of the song, the tappers were asked to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly. They predicted the odds at 50%.
I think this is noteworthy. You see, when the tapper taps, he or she is hearing the song in their head. Go ahead and try it for yourself. It’s impossible to avoid hearing it in your head. Meanwhile, the listeners can’t hear that tune in your head, only a bizarre kind of Morse Code. In the experiment, tappers were flabbergasted at how hard it was for the listeners to try and pick up the tune. The tapper’s expressions were priceless: “Isn’t the song obvious? How could you be so stupid?”
It’s hard to be a tapper. The problem with tappers is that they have been given knowledge (the song title) that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it’s like to not posses that knowledge. The brothers Heath call this “the curse of knowledge”, and I think it is core to the problem many inventors have when trying to get the idea of their message across to others. Once we know something, we find it extremely hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily think like the listeners. When an inventor shares their idea with others, telling all the technical features in what seems to us as wonderfully explicit detail, there is a tune playing in our head that the product developer, marketer or potential buyer or licensee can’t hear. And trying to reverse the process is like trying to un-ring a bell. Once you know something, you can’t un-know it. This leaves you with 2 options:
Don’t learn anything. (The unfortunate choice of many, but that’s another story)
Transform the telling of your idea to make it an idea that sticks.
This is not a super-easy task, as I am finding out as I try to apply the principles laid out in Made to Stick to my own ideas and projects. But I’m finding out it is not super-hard, either. You don’t have to be a rocket-scientist (although no doubt in this business of inventing some really are), but you do have to apply yourself. Someone once said that gravity can be a curse or a blessing, depending if you can make it work for you or not. I say take the “curse” of knowledge one step further, learn the principles of making your message sticky so that both the listeners and the tappers can hear that song in your head. Your song. The song of your invention!
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April 28th, 2008
Football, Orange Groves and the Business of Inventing
My Dad used to tell me this story of when he played football at a high school in a small eastern Kentucky town in the 1950’s. But first some background:
My Dad had become something of a football legend in his hometown. Once returning for a reunion decades later, one elderly gentleman told him that the most exciting football he had ever watched, professional, college and otherwise, was when he watched my Dad on the field in high school. My Dad had made Kentucky All-Star, and had earned nicknames such as “greased lightning”. But such was not always so.
When he first made the team, he spent most of his first season on the bench. The coach, as well as many other observers, thought he was just didn’t have the natural build and bulk to be competitive on the field. “Those other boys will break your legs”, was the kind of jaunts he would hear. However, during the summer months, he would implement a plan that would change things dramatically. You see my Grandfather owned orange groves down in Florida, and would take the family down there each summer, tending to the groves. During those summers in a 1950’s Florida, you would have found my Dad in those orange groves, and it would have been a peculiar sight. What he would do is run directly at an orange tree, then just before making contact he would cut and change direction, moving to the left or the right of the tree. He practiced this over and over and over again, until he was able to develop the skill of actually accelerating on the cut. In telling me this story, he said that he got to the point where he could feel the edges of the leaves on the trees brushing the sides of his arms on the cut. The next fall arrived, and with it the start of football season. The day finally arrived that my Dad was put onto the field and subsequently intercepted a pass, taking the ball and heading toward the goal posts. What happened next became football history for that high school. He would run directly at the opposing team players, boys of mammoth stature and frame compared to my Dad, all meaning to mow him down in short order. To their utter shock and surprise he would come right at them, then would cut away, accelerating on the cut. Just as in the orange groves, he could feel the edges of their fingers brushing his arms as they reached out for him. He did this again and again, rushing his way to the goal and making a winning touchdown.
He did not possess the size and strength of those he was going toe-to-toe with. So what was it gave him the ability to win over those literally crushing odds? First, he was creative. Spending those summers in Florida, he could have just worried about the next season, or become despondent and just quit. He could have tried to play by the same “rules” as everyone else, done all the same things as his opponents (and teammates), tried to compete as is and would have most likely failed. Instead he got to thinking about what he had or could do that they did not. What he came up with was something no one else was doing, something that he could do, and something that would even the playing field. The other thing he did was practice. He was not born with this talent. If he had only thought about doing it, he would have failed. If he had only practiced when he felt like it, or not had practiced enough, he would have also failed. But he did practice, again and again and then again. He practiced until he could feel the edges of the leaves just barely brushing the edges of his upper arms knowing, and correctly so, that the same would be true with the enormous linebackers coming at him out on the field.
As inventors, I think we can learn a lesson from this story of a young high school football player all those years ago. As independent inventors, we sometimes face crushing odds in the marketplace. Competitors, like those mammoth linebackers, are coming at us, and they are a lot bigger than we are. We don’t have their resources. We don’t have a lot of things that they have. But we can get creative. We can think as creatively (and many times even more so) than those big guys. And once we figure out how to even that playing field and give ourselves that needed edge over the competition, we need to practice. Even if we are to farm this work out to another, we need to be so intimately familiar with it that we can communicate, implement and work with others in a way that fosters a successful venture, not to “manage by abdication”, which generally leads to certain failure. If there is a skill we’re lacking in any of the steps necessary to become a successful inventor, we need to find out what that is, how to do it and then practice it over and over and over and over again. And then we need to practice some more. This practice can be empowering. Once you become savvy or skilled at a new core competency, you own it. You also no longer fear it. Uncertainty, fear and confusion are rendered null and void. Those big boys coming at you can’t break your legs if they reach out and can only brush your upper arms with the edges of their fingers. And you can’t fear them if you know that.
So get creative and practice! And practice until you can feel the edges of those leaves brushing the sides of your arms.
My Dad once told me that he could take all that he gained by playing football, add a dollar and it would buy him a cup of coffee. I beg to differ.
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March 31st, 2008
What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?
A Cautionary Tale for Inventors and Entrepreneurs Alike
According to the University of California at Berkeley Museum of Paleontology's webpage of dinosaur extinction theories, views on what actually killed the dinosaurs are varied. Some say it was global climatic change, others say it was things like terrestrial disturbance, volcanoes, plate tectonics, and of course the all-time popular one: an asteroid. Still others even go as far as saying it was a virus. Whatever the specific catalyst, there is a common thread that screams out to us from the depths of time, yet one that so many times goes unheeded. One thing that I think you can say with a great deal of certainty about the dinosaurs is that they were unable to adapt to change.
Change is part of progression, it is what is necessary in many instances to move forward. But change can and usually does catch us at unawares, and can cause us a great deal of anxiety and fear. Change can be painful, confusing, and even costly. But change nevertheless is inevitable.
We see changes all around us, changes in the economy, the market, in consumer wants and needs, in the world. And if we let ourselves, we can be overtaken with the worst kind of bird flu of all, the Chicken Little Virus.
Last month we heard from patent attorney Jim Francis who talked to us about the coming patent reform act and what it could mean to the independent inventor. While this legislation was at last check still being considered by the Senate, has not yet been passed and may be amended to a certain degree, one thing is certain: change is coming. And whether that change comes as a conversion from "first-to-invent" to "first-to-file", limiting damages for infringement claims, or perhaps even something as yet unforeseen, the message is blazing across the sky to the inventors and innovators of the 21st century: change is coming. News about these changes, which many of you may have heard for the first time last month, can initially make us feel sucker-punched, like the rug of what we normally rely on has been pulled out from under us. This is a natural reaction. What we do after the initial shock wears off, however, is what separates us from the dinosaurs.
If you are feeling the symptoms of the Chicken Little Virus, remember the advice of Douglas Adams, "Don't Panic!". The good news in all
this is that we are the innovators, and whether we realize it or not,
have a knack for using change as an opportunity rather than a stumbling
block.
The dinosaurs never saw it coming. The difference for us is that we are part of a network that is getting informed in advance.
Now what we do with this information will mean the difference between flourishing and extinction.
Quotes on the subject:
"Failure to change is failure to survive." - Norman Augustine, CEO, Martin-Marietta
"The question is not whether we are able to change but whether we are
changing fast enough." - Angela
Merkel
"If you don't change, reality in the end forces that change upon you." - Stuart
Wilde
A good book to read on the subject: Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson
