Myopic Visions
I must confess that this excerpt given to me by a good friend and advisor Mitch Silberman (see below)is from the book titled “Prime Movers” by Edwin Locke and I came across a passage that is fascinating, aligns with what we are doing by pushing the envelope with sustainable lighting and is amusing and telling. Please enjoy…
Myopic Visions
Seeing ahead (and being right) is a rare quality - and not only in business. Most new ideas, especially radical new ideas, are disparaged by experts (the airplane), mocked by the press (the electric light), belittled by consultants (xerography), ignored by the higher-ups in one’s own company (the minivan), and often refused initial funding by most investors (Federal Express). Consider the following examples of myopic visions:
• ”Computers in the future may weigh as little as 1.5 tons.” (Popular Mechanics, 1949)
• ”I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” (IBM, 1943)
• ”I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.” (editor in charge of business books for a major publisher, 1957)
• ”But what…is it good for?” (IBM engineer commenting on the microchip, 1968)
• ”There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” (chairman of a major computer company, 1977)
• ”This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” (Western Union internal memo, 1876. Note: Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone did have many shortcomings, but a man named Thomas Edison found a way to eliminate them.)
• ”The wireless music box (radio) has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” (David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his suggestion for investment in the radio, 1920s)
• The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.” (Yale management professor’s evaluation of Fred Smith’s paper proposing an overnight delivery service)
• ”Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” (Warner Brothers, 1927)
• ”A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.” (expert’s response to Debbie Field’s idea for Mrs. Fields Cookies)
• ”We don’t like their sounds, and guitar music is on the way out.” (Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962)
• ”Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” (Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895)
• ”If I would have thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you couldn’t do this.” (Spencer Silver on the work that led to Post-It notepads)
• ”So we went to Atari [and asked for funding] and they said ‘No’. So we went to [another major electronics company] and they said ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t gotten through college’.” (Steve Jobs on the PC)
• ”Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” (New York Times on Robert Goddard’s pioneering rocket work, 1921)
• ”You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all your muscles? It’s can’t be done.” (response to Arthur Jones, developer of Nautilus weight-training equipment)
• ”Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.” (driller’s response to Edwin Drake, who drilled the first oil well, 1859)
• ”Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” (Yale University professor, 1929)
• ”Airplanes are interesting toys but are of no military value.” (leading French general)
• ”Everything that can be invented has been invented.” (U.S. commissioner of patents, 1899)
• ”Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” (French professor of physiology, 1872)
• ”The abdomen, the chest and the brain will forever be shut from intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.” (surgeon-extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873)
It is easy to be smug about quotes like these from our modern perspective, but we should not be too hard on these poor souls. They did not really know any better. It takes a rare genius to see past the status quo, and geniuses in any society are always in short supply. How many of us, even those of us who are experts, can foresee the developments of the next century?
Final Thought
The reason why experts are so often wrong is that what they are experts at is what is already known, what has been discovered in the past. Although it is critical to learn from the past, it is all too easy to go from “that’s never been done” to “that can’t be done.”
