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Ask HN: How to train your brain to recognize opportunities for innovation?

8 points by BadassFractal ↗ HN
As a technical guy, I'm scared of the idea of being dependent on an idea-guy to come up with real-world problems to solve. I strongly believe that not only should I be able to solve problems through technology (or even simpler means, if you're into the whole lean current), but that I must be able to identify the problems themselves on my own.

The issue is that I have a very consumer-like mind and I feel I'm constantly missing out on opportunities to identify areas of improvement or disruption. As a silly example, I would have never thought of allowing individuals to be able to use credit cards for simple personal transactions (I'm referring to Square), and yet it's such a simple and powerful idea.

How do I train myself to look at the world from the point of view of an innovator? How do I spot opportunities? Any interesting books / internet reads on the subject?

I'm rather good at making things that others tell me to make, but I feel there's nothing as enthralling on working on a problem you yourself "discovered" and believe is really important to solve.

13 comments

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paulgb
I find the more I study economics, the more I see examples of problems that could be solved, by technology or otherwise.

Information asymmetry is a big one. FareCaster is a good example of a company that succeeded by reducing information asymmetry.

Arbitrage opportunities are good to look out for too. Same for building markets where no efficient market existed before (eg. AirBnB, Etsy).

8jef
I'm an idea-guy who's training himself to code because I find hard to trust clueless technical-guys as co-founders. Everytime I'm trying to talk to a tech-guy about ideas and sales and marketing, all I'm getting is that Bambi look, you know, just before it get hit by the car.

Try get some life experience. Problems are only one question away.

BadassFractal
You raise a couple of very good points that I myself have struggled with.

First of all, as someone who's been coding non-stop since the beginning of college and later on for years for a large corp, I have little to no experience with the "outside world". I have lived in the academia/enterprise-industry programmer bubble my entire life. I can think of ways I would improve bug tracking, programming, source control and other tools that we use day in and day out, but I don't have a clue about how I could help a small business increase their revenues. As you said, total lack of real-world experience.

Second, I often hear the complaint about techies having no clue about marketing and sales. Do you have any suggestions for how we could address that, and perhaps find a common language with the "business guys"?

8jef
Look, we are at both ends of the spectrum, trying to reach for the <div align="center"> (tentative coder humour). I could suggest that we exchange emails, doing something like "corresponding". I'm ready to share my load of experience in exchange for and outside viewpoint. jef at 5m dot ca
8jef
I'd suggest this: the common language has to be English (and/or French in my case). Nothing is easy, but don't think you got burned the death only because one biz guy took advantage of you and treated you like a code-monkey (taken from you, here, yesterday). There's a lot of decent people out there which are not crooks. One thing you have for you is the commodity to supply code, something tangible (if I may say), where salespeople only throw blah blah in. Protect your belongings. You should make sure the code you write is somehow protected, remotely hosted or something. Why would a non-tech guy get to see your code anyway. Then you have the balance of power. That is if you are forming a partnership. Just my 2 cents.
8jef
By the way, I see at least 5 different incredible business opportunities rising from this thread alone. The only thing that makes me worried in hiring a good coder to help me starting these is: lack of trust and lack of funds. That could be solved if: I'm coding myself, at least enough to only sub-contract insignificant bits, OR if I'm "engaged" (that's the word) in a trustworthy relationship with a technical co-founder.
tick113
You are definitely looking at the wrong developers. Long ago I figured out that being able to code well was just a portion of being a great developer. Learning how to deliver business value through coding is huge, and it's not been easy (at least for me).
alexlumley
I wish there was a way to work with other people to think and talk through big ideas. Talking with other people seems to be the best way to actually find big problems to solve as you never know where your conversations might take you.
noahc
Talk to women and small businesses. Ask them what they feel like they pay way to much for, what their biggest problem this week is. These two markets are so underserved it is ridiculous.
jsmartonly
Learn -- Learn to know how existing things work.

Think -- Think independently. Think as outsider.

Apply -- Apply what you created by independent thinking to what you learn about existing things in the real world.

Repeat -- Repeat the above the above 3 steps.

TheMegalomaniac
This is tactical advice that works for me <br> 1. When you get annoyed - stop and ask yourself why you are annoyed and how you can fix it. This could be tying laces that get untied every five minutes, etc. 2. When you say or think to yourself - I wish I could ... that's an opportunity. I wish I could pay this other guy with my credit card right now so I can track my spending = Square 3. Repeat 1 and 2 for other people 4. Watch people - sometimes its easier to find problems when you are watching and other people are doing things differently than you are. 5. When you see something - a potato peeler, A real estate sign. Guess how much it costs to make, where it came from, what it's purpose is and how well it achieves that purpose. What could make it better? What else could it be used for?
hassaanlatif
I think intuition is something that cannot be taught, & I'm not being facetious. Even Jobs, one of the most intuitive thinkers of his time, said you can only connect dots in your life looking backwards not forward. I am a very intuitive person & I think one has to be very in tune with the world around them in order to connect the dots looking forward. My recommendation to you is that since you're very much in tune with programming and not so much with the outside world, try to find something in your world that you can improve upon. I know nothing about programming so, even though there is a lot of power in naïveté, I don't have enough information about technology to connect dots.
coryl
Having someone to bounce ideas off of and just brainstorm with is pretty useful. I like to be like Einstein and have little thought experiments going on in my head about every product or idea I come across.