Spencer Greenberg: Effective altruism entrepreneurship I

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Is it possible to innovate on purpose? Arguing against the standard ‘genius’ and ‘luck’ models of innovation, Spencer Greenberg presents four frameworks for deliberately seeking new ideas.

Notes by Nils:

How to innovate on purpose

  • It’s not useful to think it requires being a genius (Einstein)

  • It’s not useful to think it’s about luck (wonderful idea from within the bathtub)

Innovative ideas need to be …

a) … impossible until now

I.e. looking at existing technology and thinking about using it in new ways; e.g. Machine Learning applied to cars → Google self-driving cars

To-do:

  • Learn promising technology very well

  • Ask the question: “What industries has this technology not been applied to yet?”

b) … undiscoverable to others

I.e. find out what multiple topics /​ things you know, and thereby realising your potentially unique overlaps; e.g. programming language design + cloud computing → developing programming language specifically designed for cloud computing

To-do:

  • Pick two unrelated topics you know a lot about

  • Ask the question: “What does combining them make possible?”

c) … stupid sounding

I.e. find the overlap between ideas that seem like a bad and a good idea at the same time, because you know some secret that makes the stupid idea seem like a good one; e.g., “let’s have anonymous random people argue to decide the facts on every topic” and “let’s have everyone trust this information” → Wikipedia

To-do:

  • Ask the question: “What’s an important truth you know that few do?”

  • Ask the question: “What seems dumb unless you know this truth?

d) … tiny at first

I.e. find the overlap between things people care about and weird people like you care about; e.g. “people can’t easily find Bay Area events, I will send an email list to my friends” and “I will let other people post their events too” → Craigslist

To-do:

  • Tackle a problem had by a small group you understand

  • Slowly expand the features for a larger and larger group

Entrepreneurial success depends on:

  • Quality of idea

  • Time commitment

  • Ability to build the product

  • Propensity to learn from feedback

  • Skill at securing funds

  • Relentless pursuit of success

  • Sales and marketing skills

  • Leadership

  • Random chance

In the future, we may post a transcript for this EA Global: San Francisco 2015 talk, but we haven’t created one yet. If you’d like to create a transcript for this talk, contact Aaron Gertler — he can help you get started.