At a Small Scale, Nonlinearity Is Your Ally
At a Small Scale, Nonlinearity Is Your Ally
Innovating is a highly nonlinear process. You can turn that nonlinearity to your advantage and explore a space of opportunity systematically, rather than constraining yourself to a pre-specified future, by combining a few parts, substituting those parts, talking with some people, looking for patterns in the combination of parts and insights from others, and then outline a few distinct opportunities for impact. You don’t need any intuition; just ask what is possible after the parts are combined, and learn what happens then. Are there new problems those parts might solve together? Is there something to learn from how people are “misinterpreting” your idea? As your idea grows, you’ll have parts, people, comments, and near misses to fuel your exploration; as you demonstrate each opportunity with a different set of parts, you are creating a space of opportunity. Time is your ally.
Keywords: Exploration, Leveraging nonlinearity, Time, Uncertainty, Resources, Near miss
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