Issue link: http://psai.uberflip.com/i/813414
W EEKLY EDITION APRIL 19, 2017 Growth and Expansion: …continued Are You Blinded by Risk? The reasons for not adopting the new innovation happened to be "red" cards. The value of the idea was on the green card. The outcomes were on the yellow cards, a description of the idea itself was on the blue card, and so on. This small puzzle made it ea sy to see the point, but it also showed us something else. Sometimes we asked people to complete the series and try to match the product with its story elements. We noticed that when people started their series with the red card, it took them much longer to complete the sets. A little later, while giving a talk at a major university's MBA program, we broke the audience into two teams. So they wouldn't know they were working with the same cards, we asked one group to arrange all the red cards vertically an d add the matching cards from left to right in order to complete the 10 stories. We asked the other team to do the same beginning with the green cards. The "green team" finished in about 7 or 8 minutes. The "red" team never finished. As the time this was v ery embarrassing for the participants and a little disconcerting to us, but it also intrigued me. Starting your thinking with the reasons not to do something clearly had an impact, even when you don't know what the idea is yet (this was on the blue cards) and it's not even your industry. In groups, this effect turned out to be much worse. We started doing this two - team exercise with groups before a presentation or a speech in order to illustrate how the starting point of a discussion can influence the whol e outcome. We had to stop because after numerous tried we realized that no group who began with red cards ever finished their sets and this was very upsetting for them. What does this mean? The original idea was to demonstrate the phenomenon philosophers refer to as "shared meaning ," which is specific to our species. In other words, we participate with other people in common activities and as a result, eventually share their world view. This happens on a very large scale – at one time everyone believed the earth was flat – or on a micro - cultural level, such as a group of friends having the same world - view. In the same way, people who work for the same company can come to share a common "truth" about the business they are in and what is possible. But wha t we observed here was much more powerful and potentially much more disturbing. Even when people do not know each other, know anything about the innovation, or even work for the same company, the manner in which they are introduced to a common task can hav e a profound impact . A card with four lines indicating the risks of an idea caused them to be completely blinded. They literally could not find the cards that went logically with these risks but rather believed them as self - evident t ruths that cannot be ch allenged. PAGE 4 CONTINUED ON PAGE 5