Obviously Wrong, Might Be Right.

Photo by Oliver Schwendener on Unsplash

Inspired by Paul Graham

Innovation will always be fought. It a cliche, but it’s also true; if you don’t have haters you’re likely not doing much interesting.

“If you discover something new, there’s a significant chance you’ll be accused of some form of heresy.” — Paul Graham

Different scares us, especially when we are deeply entrenched in the old world. An obvious example was with the iPhone. It was originally dismissed due to its departures from the norm; high price and a lack of a physical keyboard. The dominant business (mobile) phone at the time was a Blackberry, and its killer app — email, relied heavily on typing.

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item.” — Steve Ballmer on the iPhone in 2007 [1]

You might be old enough to remember the introduction of snowboarding in the 1970s and 80’s. It was not embraced. Don’t believe me, check out this video from 1985. To save some time, here’s an excerpt of a skier talking about the novel snowboarders:

“They swear at you, they tell you to get lost, mind your own business. It’s quite a problem for us really. I think the major problem with the snowboards is that they run into people”

When we see ideas we don’t like or understand, it’s human nature to dismiss them — the mind protects itself from the other. Our innate desire for safety steers us to justify our own views, but the smarter approach is to do nothing — to pause. Create some space; to consider our knee-jerk reaction to the new — to look objectively at the idea. Pause — you just might be standing on the wrong side of history and missing out on the joys of snowboarding.

Sometimes, ideas that we ‘know’ are obviously wrong, just might just be right.

—

Footnotes:

[1]. As of May 2020, the US market share for the iPhone is 52%, while Blackberry is 0.1%.