Tag Archives: ideas

How to fight the confirmation bias

Jorge in Behavior, Innovation, Psychology

“It is difficult to lay aside a confirmed passion.” – Caius Valerius Catullus

Aha! you got an idea and you want to do some research to know if you’re idea has wings. You setup google alerts, hashtags about related topics on twitter, follow people in the know, join related groups on Linkedin, etc. You know the drill!

Soon after you start receiving information, this information looks familiar to you, it makes sense. Other people are talking about the same thing, you engage them and start exchanging ideas which start taking on a life of their own. This confirms your hunch, you get more excited because your idea has wings. Bangarang! you’re sure to be a gazillionaire!

Sound familiar?

This is the confirmation bias.

Whenever we have an idea, instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Once we see a pattern we do not easily let go of it, we keep digging and digging to see that pattern more and more. Sometimes there isn’t even a pattern there but we somehow ‘want’ to believe there is. You know all too well how this plays out in any organization.

Let’s change that. Time to turn off your lizard brain and engage your critical, truth seeking side of your brain.

In order to fight the confirmation bias let’s do the opposite: learn to spend as much time looking for ‘evidence’ that we are wrong as we spend searching for reasons that we are correct.

It’s not fun trying to prove we’re not the hotshots we think we are but the truth shall set you free.

Confirmation Bias ” You Are Not So Smart (youarenotsosmart.com)
The Nature of Consensus (theness.com)
Top Ten Underapreciated Aspects of Human Nature (unreasonablefaith.com)

Innovation posts of the week: Organizational Innovation

Jorge in Must reads of the week

Good Ideas Come From Sharing, Random Collisions And Openness, Not Hoarding And Bursts Of Inspiration (techdirt.com)
“Ideas are Networks” (taylordavidson.com)
David Gurteen: The Liquid Network: Where Good Ideas Come From (elsua.net)
Where Do Good Ideas Come From: A Q&A With Steven Johnson (freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com)

Innovation posts of the week: Homophily the #1 enemy of innovation

Jorge in Must reads of the week

The Rubbery Challenges of Innovation (designmind.frogdesign.com)

Insights first, ideas second

Jorge in Innovation

I just want to add my thoughts to Tim Kastelle’s post earlier today: Ideas are cheap.

They sure are. There are all sorts of fun ways to come up with new ideas and tactics to help you see new ideas. Do a google search for ‘how to get new ideas’ and you get 381 million results, more links than you’ll ever have time to visit in your lifetime with some mostly the same information that is in those two articles I linked to! Ok so what’s a better way to generate ideas?

Insights, they’re the seeds of new groundbreaking ideas.

A more strategic way of generating ideas is to focus on building ideas on top of insights. Don’t get me wrong, thinking stuff up is fun. You let your imagination run wild, think of the impossible and think all kinds of stuff only you can imagine. It’s your own dream world! Mostly all these ideas will be way ahead of their time or not even doable. That’s why we need to combine our imagination with our intellect. Our intellect drives our capability to discover insights and our imagination helps put the pieces together in a new way.

So how do you discover new insights?

Recently I’ve written how insights can pop out of nowhere and how the most simple way of spotting them is by noticing things. To discover new insights we have to become really good at recognizing patterns and then making sense of them in this interconnected world. We must turn mud into gold if you will and this happens by making distinctions out of what we observe.

To get you started, a simple way is to observe the world, industries and people. Notice what’s changing, what’s different and ask yourself what does it mean for the world, industry your customers and you. Think about what needs and behaviors might emerge from these changes and how can you exploit them.

Ideas are cheap but insights are hard to come by.