Zero to One: How to build the future
PayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel is the author of the international bestseller “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.”
The book is founded on the premise that the best business insights come from answering a contrarian question:
“What important truths do very few people agree with you on?”
Such questions reveal unique insights about how people will behave. For example, they lead to eBay, Uber, AirBnB and other businesses that are based on the premise that most people are honest!
The next Elon Musk will not build an autonomous vehicle.
The next Mark Zuckerberg will not build a social media platform.
The next Steve Jobs will not build a smart phone.
The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system.
If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them.
“Competition is for losers!” says Thiel.
He challenges why we are attracted to the idea of competing against similar players rather than pursuing singularity and uniqueness. “It’s wrong to narrow your focus to beating the businesses around you. You lose sight of something more valuable.”
“What great business is nobody building?”
When you find a unique insight – a secret – and build on that, you avoid competition altogether.
Most people can only tweak an existing idea. They can’t start with a blank sheet of paper and solve from first principles.
Most people can only move the needle from 1 to N. But how do you get from 0 to 1?
The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
Thiel believes that unless companies invest in the difficult tasks of creating new things, they will fail in the future, no matter how big their profits are today.
What happens when a business runs out of ideas?
This is when many businesses turn to traditional consultants who are trained to research industry trends and competitive forces, speak to customers, analyse business models and balance sheets.
Consultants deliver reports that summarise all this data into 2 x 2 matrices, charts and graphs.
Brand and product consultants talk to customers and conduct market research and focus groups.
(BTW, is the customer always right? You know what Henry Ford would say! What the customer tells you they want is often totally at odds with what is actually best for your business. We’ll blog about this hoary chestnut another time!)
Consultants are a great resource when you have a simple or even a complex problem to solve.
Simple problems are easy to solve; they are predictable.
Complex problems are trickier; they require a bit of time and work to solve.
Many of today’s problems are described as “impossible” or “wicked.” Wicked problems are non-linear with multiple interdependencies, hidden root causes and many unknowns.
Wicked problems resist even being defined … let alone solved! Yet these are exactly the kinds of problems we find in business and society today.
Can a traditional consultant come up with your company’s next big idea? Or solve a truly wicked problem?
Einstein said that if he had 60 minutes to solve a problem, he would spend 55 minutes focusing on the problem and only 5 minutes thinking about the solution.
Ideation is an entrepreneurial skill. It starts with defining a problem, then solving deeply for that problem in a way that captures value and also surprises and delights the customer.
Ideation is human-centred; it’s not data-driven.
The world today is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (“VUCA”) just like a war zone. In fact the VUCA acronym was coined by the US Army War College to teach the strategic leadership skills required to lead on the battlefield.
Ideation at speed and at scale – harnessing real breadth and depth of thinking - is impossible without a technologically enabled platform like Mindhive.
Mindhive delivers Collaboration-as-a-Service. Our tech platform supports collaboration between hundreds of people at speed and at scale to explore problems and generate actionable ideas.
In recent months, the hive has tackled challenges including:
Where in the world should we build the next Silicon Valley?
How can Australia recover from the bushfires?
How can we curb domestic violence?
How can the education system better prepare kids to handle real-world issues?
How can we find the funding to clean up abandoned fuel storage sites?
How can VR bring us together for social interactions in a time of social distancing?
At Mindhive, we believe in the power of the crowd and the power of technology.
Mindhive gets you from Zero to One.
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