Today it has become fashionable to write articles, comments and tweets about how young companies make mistakes. People like to write and read that someone's company is idiotic, someone's ideas are stupid, skeptically pursing their lips and laughing at failures. And it kills brilliant ideas and worthwhile projects, and, above all, works against the cynics themselves.
Reasonable people adapt to the world, unreasonable people try to adjust the world to themselves. Therefore, progress depends on unreasonable people. Bernard shaw
Why does it matter? Why should you think about the fact that the attitude to new ideas is leaning in the wrong direction? Why is it more important to find what is right, interesting, necessary in some company than what is wrong and funny in it?
The very concept of "technology" can be perceived as the best way to do something. The best way to store information, the best currency, the best way to make friends — to find something from this means to improve the millennial experience of mankind, and it's not so easy.
At some level, it seems that it is simply impossible to do something better. There are such thoughts: has no one thought about it since ancient times and up to 2014? Am I the only one so smart?
From a psychological point of view, this is very important, and in order to create something, a person must exclude such thoughts indefinitely.
The launch of new technologies is the moment when talented people can imagine the impossible.
People often wonder why big companies have problems with innovation, while small companies easily carry out various innovations. The fact is that big companies have more ideas, but they can't put them into practice because too many people have to approve the idea before it can be implemented.
If some smart guy finds negative qualities in an idea, and this is often done just to show his power, it will simply kill her and put an end to the project. And this fosters a "Culture of Not Being Allowed".
The big problem with innovation is that great ideas often look like bad ones. All because they are so new that it is difficult to imagine how they will work.
Big creative-oriented companies like Amazon or Google take care of their innovators. Larry Page will definitely finance a good idea that looks like a bad one and remove the reason why it cannot be implemented.
This attitude can be called "Culture is Possible".
Some people would like to turn the world of technology development into one big company with a degenerate "No Culture", and there is nothing new in neglecting brilliant ideas and technologies.
New ideas may not be entirely successful, but this does not mean that nothing can be learned from them. However, for this you will have to change your attitude to innovation and lose a fair share of skepticism. Here are some examples from history that clearly show this.
In 1837, Charles Babbage wanted to build something he called an "Analytical Engine" — the world's first general-purpose computer. If Babbage's machine was given enough resources, it would be able to calculate everything that a modern computer can.
Calculations would be slower, and such a computer would be simply huge (very slow and really gigantic), but it would still perform all the calculations that are available to modern computers.
Babbage never managed to bring his project to life, because in 1837 it was too ambitious an idea to build a car out of wood and run it on steam.
In the end, mathematician and astronomer George Bidel Airy told the British Ministry of Finance that the analytical engine was "useless" and the Babbage project should be stopped. Shortly after, the government froze the project. The world forgot about this idea until 1941, it was killed by skepticism and completely forgotten.
After 177 years, it's easy to see that his vision was correct, and computers are not useless at all. As for Babbage, the most important thing in his life is not that he proposed the idea 100 years earlier than the world was ready to accept it, but that he had a wonderful idea and determination to promote it.
The example of this scientist still inspires many inventors, whereas George Airy will be remembered as a short-sighted type who does not see beyond his nose.
Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, offered to sell his invention and its patents to Western Union, a leading manufacturer of the telegraph, for $100,000. Western Union refused because of the report of its internal committee. Here are some excerpts from this report:
The purpose of the phone is to transmit voice over telegraph wires. We found that the voice sounds rather weak and vague, and becomes weaker with increasing length of wires between the transmitter and receiver. Technically, we do not assume that this device will ever be able to send recognizable and clear speech over a distance of several miles.
Sir Hubbard and Bell want to install one of their "telephone devices" in each city. The idea is idiotic. Why would anyone suddenly want to use impractical devices instead of sending a clear message by telegraph and getting legible and clear words in any city in the USA?
The electricians of our company have developed significant improvements in telegraph technology, and we see no reason why a group of renegades with their extravagant and impractical ideas should have fun at our expense, while they have no idea about the real problems of our field.
Mr. Hubbard's bizarre predictions sound appealing, but they are based on pure imagination and a complete lack of understanding of technical and economic factors. He simply ignores the obvious limitations of his device, which is not much different from a toy.
For this reason, we consider Hubbard's offer to sell the device for $100,000 unreasonable, since the phone is absolutely useless to us. We do not recommend buying it.
Today, almost everyone recognizes that the Internet is important, but such beliefs have emerged relatively recently. Back in 1995, astronomer Clifford Stoll wrote an article for Newsweek titled "Why there will be No Nirvana on the Internet."
This article provided the following analysis:
This is cyberbusiness. We are promised online store catalogs - select and click to get the best deals. We will order tickets online, book tables in a restaurant, even conclude purchase and sale agreements. Stores will become obsolete.
So why does my small shopping center generate more revenue in the afternoon than the entire turnover of online commerce for a month? Even if there were reliable ways to send money over the Internet (which does not exist), there is not one very important component of capitalism on the web — sellers.
Now it sounds ridiculous, but at that time it was quite serious and caused trust.
So what kind of mistake did all these undoubtedly smart people make? They focused on what the new technology can't do, instead of what it can do and what it will do in the future.
Who is the first to be hit by "Culture is Not Allowed"? Just for haters and skeptics. People who focus on the negative side of an idea will never decide to change themselves, because they are too afraid to seem stupid.
They will be too envious to learn from the great innovators. They will be too stubborn to notice a brilliant young engineer who can change the world. They will be too cynical to inspire someone to create something great. And they will be the ones who are ridiculed by history.
Don't hate, create
