Counterintuitive Thinking

Counterintuitive actions prove we can trust real knowledge and do the opposite of what we feel makes sense. ~ Penn Jillette

Counterintuitive action makes a fellow feel smart. ~ Penn Jillette

As counterintuitive as it seems, generosity begins wherever you are. It is important to make generosity a priority. ~ Andy Stanley

Real life does not come naturally. It is counterintuitive. It is a skill we have to learn. That's because the way to real life is not something we get, but something we give. ~ J.P. Moreland

You have learned to be compliant. You've been taught success comes from doing as you are told, staying in between the lines of common sense. What if the recipe for real innovation, the sort that disrupts industries and makes competitors scramble to play catchup, is more like the inverse of what sounds sensible? That's the activity of counterintuitive thinking: the ability to push against the assumption, defy the obvious, and discover the hidden realities which other people recognize but fail to see.

Most people cling to best practices with the hope that what has succeeded up to now will continue succeeding in the future. But human nature is tricky. Safety tends to be a trap. Companies have been founded on old designs, operating on the premise that their approach is the best. You must recognize that the biggest leaps are created by individuals bold enough to test these valued presumptions.

Think about, for example, the "less is more" principle. The average mind assumes that there is more quality in a product with more features. More buttons, more options, more sophistication, of course this has to mean more value. Sadly, the opposite generally holds true. Taking things out of a product to its most basic level needs honesty and makes it easier to use. Reflect on the transition from physical keyboards to touch screens. The idea was ridiculed at first, how can anyone desire a phone with no real buttons? And yet it was this opposite innovation that brought smartphones to the forefront, rendering the BlackBerry smartphones obsolete.

Contradictions lead to innovation. When a community embraces contradictory ideas, they expose their blind spots. To dismiss an idea too quickly is an indication of mental rigidity, inability to see beyond short-term reason. The most powerful innovators are the ones who understand that even "bad" ideas have value. Take Post-it Notes: a failure product, an adhesive that was too weak to do its intended task. It was a useless device, until someone flipped the thinking around. What if a weak adhesive would be a strength rather than a defect? The result: a multi-billion-dollar product.

There is a pattern to this kind of thinking. When everybody is moving in one direction, take the other direction. When sense tells you to do something, do the opposite. When apprehension tells you not to take a risk, know that inaction usually is the biggest risk. Consider Netflix, which was a plain DVD rental company. The sensible thing was to improve their renting process, to establish more physical presence. But instead, they did the counterintuitive thing and killed their own model, going to streaming when everyone believed that technology was premature. They dominate an industry they reinvented today.

The same theory can be applied to Jysk, who defied the traditional retail strategy of delivering furniture fully assembled. They instead placed the burden on the consumer to assemble the product themselves. On paper, this would have been a disaster, who in their right mind would assemble their own furniture? But this turning it on its head cut costs.

Even in software, counterintuitive thinking reigns supreme. Microsoft's closed-source monopoly was uncontested. How would open-source, free software ever have a chance? And yet, Linux thrived due to its stability, built-In security against viruses, and other intrusions. By removing the profit limitation, it became the staple of universities, governments, and technology giants such as Google and Apple products. What seemed to be an irrational business decision turned out to be a revolutionary phenomenon.

You must embrace uncertainty. Fear of failure is an enormous power, but individuals who let fear of failure control them are trapped in mediocrity. History's greatest creative thinkers have a state of mind that does not define failure as defeat but as something from which to create success. A bad concept one day might be a billion-dollar discovery the next, if you have patience to refine it.

To think counterintuitively is to overcome the constraints of conventional thinking. It is to master human nature rather than allowing oneself to be mastered by it. Those individuals who have the courage to challenge assumptions, those who voluntarily risk the unknown, become the makers of the future. The question is: Are you brave enough to think otherwise?