The Pain Papers

7/17/2001

The Pain Papers
Newsletter #2 - July 17, 2001
Copyright (c) 2001 Christopher K. O'Leary
All Rights Reserved

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CONTENTS
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- The Problem with Positive Thinking
- No Pain, No Ideas
- Idealab! and Walker Digital

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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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THE PROBLEM WITH POSITIVE THINKING
As part of the research for my book "The Paradox of Pain", I was talking the other day to Eric von Hippel, author of "The Sources of Innovation". In the course of our dialog, he made the following comment...

"It seems to me that pain is only one of many possible incentives to innovate. After all, you might also innovate motivated by the possible achievement of a pleasurable of otherwise profitable outcome as well..."

I have had other people say this kind of thing to me - comments along the line of "Can't you be more positive and talk more about pleasure and less about pain" - and it has made me realize that I probably need to better explain what I mean when I talk about pain.
     Basically, I view pain as both a source of MOTIVATION and a TACTIC.
     Pain is a source of motivation (or goal, incentive, etc.) because it tells us how to make the world a better place by improving people's experiences with products and services. More importantly, pain is a tactic because we can (and should) look to pain to point out opportunities for new product and services. The great thing about Pain is its applicability as a tactic. It answers the "how" question of innovation - "How should I innovate? You should look for pain." as well as helping us to generate ideas that will lead to more pleasurable and more profitable products.
     The thing that I love about pain is this dual nature - as both a source of motivation and a tactic.
     The same thing isn't true about pleasure or profit. While pleasure and profit are both good motivations, they do not make good tactics. Past experience has shown that it isn't that helpful to use a pleasurable or profitable product as a source of ideas. About the most you will get (or the most that I get, anyway) is a feeling of admiration and a sense of "I should do something like this." However, it is hard to turn "I should do something like this" into action because the unanswered response is "With what kind of product or service?" Pleasure and profit do not as reliably give you ideas or directions for new products to build and new services to start.
     How many people want to create the next "killer app" because of the promise of pleasure and profits but fail to do so? Desire isn't enough. Desire isn't a tactic.
     The result of focusing on pleasure and profits is that you often end up doing something derivative and not fundamentally better. That is why the world is so full of knock-offs and me-too products. Most knock-off and me-too products are the result of copying the success of others - and are rarely as successful. Maybe, you can generate some valuable principles by looking at pleasurable and profitable products, but I don't see anything really new or different in that approach.

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NO PAIN, NO IDEAS
I am actively working on two projects. The first project is my book The Paradox of Pain and this newsletter, The Pain Papers, which I hope to use to develop and spread my ideas. My second project is an effort to change the way people build software systems and applications.
     I am trying to effect a paradigm shift in application creation.
     My application creation project, while personally valuable and rewarding, has also been extremely frustrating and fairly unsuccessful to date. While I know that a tremendous opportunity exists - just look at the time, expense, and pain required to build even a fairly straightforward application - I continue to have a hard time finding allies. While I am sure that some of this is due to my inability to adequately communicate my vision, the bigger issue is finding a more technical person who shares my dissatisfaction with the current state of the art.
     The problem is that most technical people do not see a problem with the current state of the art.
     If you think about it, this is very natural, given the way the industry works. Basically, the technology industry (and the educational system that feeds it) is set up to identify and select people who are the most comfortable with the current state of the art. Those who are not comfortable with the current state of the art are filtered out.
     The result is that the people who are driving the industry are those who are the most comfortable with it.
     While some of the status quo perpetuation that I am seeing is due to people not wanting to lose their status, I think the bigger problem has to do with pain. The people who are driving the industry do not feel much (if any) pain from the current state of the art and thus are not getting many ideas about how to improve things.
     They have learned to use vi. They have gotten used to having to take hours (or days) to find bugs that are due to a mistyped or invisible character. They have learned to live with application creation tools that are little more than text editors. They no longer laugh when you tell them to type...

find * -name "*.properties" -exec grep -i -l "adrq" {} \; 

This same phenomenon can be observed in other industries and with other tools. People learn to do things that at first make no sense. They complain and make stupid mistakes. They curse at the designers of the tools.
     However, over time they learn these tools and procedures and eventually grow comfortable with them (and sometimes even fond of them).
     The existence of this phenomenon in multiple industries points out what I think is a general principle of innovation.
     No pain, no ideas.
     I believe that the pace of innovation is generally slow not because people do not want things to get better. I believe that the pace of innovation is slow because, as people become more and more expert in a subject matter and thus more able to improve that subject matter, their growing expertise gradually blinds them to opportunities to improve things. I call this phenomenon paradigm blindness.

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HALL OF SHAME
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IDEALAB! AND WALKER DIGITAL
I hate to pick on people when they are down, but I have to take a moment to take a shot at two of the companies that I think epitomize what was wrong with The New Economy. The two companies that I have in mind are Idealab! and Walker Digital. For those of you who are not familiar with them, Idealab is Bill Gross's incubator and Walker Digital is the R&D arm of priceline.com founder Jay Walker.
     So what is my problem with these two?
     Well, aside from their organizational and other issues, in my mind both companies point out what happens when you try to innovate in the absence of pain. While both generated ideas for companies that were momentarily hot, neither has exhibited a talent for sustained success.
     I think this results from their innovation model, which is largely based on the (remarkably common) idea of having a smart guy sit in a room and think up ideas for cool companies.
      Nowhere in the descriptions of these two companies and their ideas and processes do I hear a serious discussion of addressing pain and solving problems. Instead, the main topic seems to be having fun and making money. As a result, each organization tends to develop ideas that may be clever and unique, but that have a very difficult time succeeding when the going gets tough.
     As an aside, one of my ultimate goals is to create a pain-based incubator and see what can be done with an innovation model that is based around pain.

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COMPANIES TO START AND PRODUCTS TO BUILD
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Tonight I am going to take the kids to McDonalds (for the 257th time). My wife is nauseous and I am giving her a break. While I know that the kids will have a good time playing for an hour or so on the slides and in the ballpit, I am not looking forward to having to endure another greasy hamburger or sit at another dirty table.
     Of course, this gives me an idea. Why not create a restaurant that combines the fun of a McDonalds Playplace with decent food? Why not make it a good experience for both my kids and myself?
     I know that I am not alone in feeling this pain. My wife and many of her friends have had the same thought when they think about going to McDonalds yet again.
     What I have in mind is a restaurant that would cater to playgroups and moms in the mornings and afternoons (especially in the Summer and Winter) and would then cater to families in the evenings. The food mix might be Einstein's Bagels crossed with California Pizza Kitchen crossed with Fuddrucker's.
     The market seems open to me. You have McDonalds with fun and crappy food, you have decent restaurants with good food but no fun, and you have "family restaurants" that have crappy food and a tick over no fun. It would seem possible (and profitable) to create a restaurant that combined good food and fun.
     Just in case you ask, let me say that I don't want to start this company because I have been in the restaurant business and know it's not for me. However, both my wife and I would be frequent patrons of such a restaurant.
     Think about it.

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PLUGS
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I have found that one of the best ways to generate ideas is to expose myself to a wide range of interesting and thought-provoking ideas. One of the sites that I have found that helps with this process is https://www.tdcrc.com - The Titanic Deck Chair Rearrangement Corporation. If you are looking for a site (and newsletter) that will challenge you, then I strongly suggest that you take a look.