Counterintuitive ideas are in big trouble. In a world of political discord, social-media tribalism and fake news, we yearn for certainty. We want expertise that can be trusted, for the presentation of indisputable facts, that are indeed, facts.  We scrutinise graphs, plotted by scientific experts, eager to see empirical evidence that public health policy interventions are working. The opinion polls tell us that we want transparency and authenticity from politicians whom we can trust. The brand analysts say that we want companies and products provider who mirror our values and actually deliver what they say they will. In a demanding market for certainty, counterintuitive ideas – which defy logic or reason – may look doomed to fail. 

Which is a shame, because counter-intuitive ideas are the holy grail of the smart thinking business. These are the off the wall ideas that ignite innovation, creating break-out products and industries. Counterintuitive ideas break the mould exactly because they are initially perceived to be mistaken, or the errant plans of the foolish, but are in fact (because of their rarity) the marks of true genius.  If you are not convinced, perhaps some real examples of counterintuitive ideas might reassure? Each story, in its own small way, illustrates some aspect of the genius found in pursuing strategies that really don’t make sense. 

Ignore the prevailing common sense

Like many good stories, we begin on the high seas.  When the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain in 1492 to find a western sea route to India and Asia, he defied the common consensus about the huge difficulty involved. Columbus calculated the route heading West to Asia in Italian miles and mistakenly estimated the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan as about 3,000 miles, which, with three ships prepared, he was confident of navigating. The true distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was some four times greater than Columbus’ hypothesis. The common-sense view of most European navigators of the day was that anyone trying a westward voyage from Europe to Asia non-stop would die of thirst, disease or starvation long before reaching their destination. They were, in a way, proved to be right and Columbus dangerously wrong, but in defying the consensus and happening upon the Americas, he literally changed the course of human history.   

Disregard consumer feedback

Famously, when the makers of Red Bull decided to launch their new drink, they undertook significant market and consumer testing. Whatever the market, age group or demographic tested, the feedback came back the same: it tastes terrible! In fact, the agency commissioned to source consumer’s views described the feedback as the single worst reaction they had received to any product ever. But then Red Bull decided to spend less money on expensive market research and started throwing people our of hot-air balloons in low earth orbit, sponsoring death-defying ‘X-rated’ sports and positioning themselves as the default ‘early-hours’ refreshment choice for 20 year old clubbers the world over. They now sell several billion cans a year.

Create new products from inventions that don’t work

The classic innovation approach and the fuel for many start-up ventures is to come up with smart solutions to thorny problems faced by consumers.  The counterintuitive approach would be to invest entrepreneurial energy in coming up with solutions for other problems that don’t exist.  The most famous example is from 3M’s development of the Post-It - borne out of an adhesive that hardly adhered. Some ten years after its glue discovery, 3M launched ‘Post-its’ in the US and a multi-billion-dollar category was born. There are others: The Slinky Toy was developed as a spring to support and stabilise sensitive equipment on ships. When one of the springs accidentally fell off a shelf, it continued moving, and its designer got the idea for a toy. His wife Betty came up with the name and more than 250 million ‘Slinkys’ have been sold worldwide. Play-Doh is a familiar smell from childhood which has kept millions of children entertained. But before it was a brightly-coloured modelling clay, it started life as ingredients for a wallpaper cleaner.

Take away features the customer wants

In 2012 Steve Jobs decided to remove optical disc drives from its hugely popular iMac computers.  Almost all computers used some form of optical drive as a convenient way of playing music, movies and copying data and booting systems.  The tech community thought this would be commercially disastrous for a premium brand manufacturer like Apple. It simply made no sense to do this when all Apple’s cheaper competitors continued to supply drives. But Job’s decision was perhaps inspired by Wayne Gretski’s quote about his success in ice-hockey: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been”.  By anticipating a rapid demise of the market for CD’s, in favour of online music and secure data transfer over networks, the decision to make computers thinner and lighter was less a radical gamble than one of Jobs’ many moments of genius.   

Make things difficult for the customer

In 2006, while still an undergraduate at NYU, Jack Dorsey wanted to connect people with news, views and updates around the wold, so he, counterintuitively, insisted on creating an instant messaging system that was somewhat awkward and inhibiting to use.  From launch, Twitter restricted users (whom often had a lot to say) to a strict regime of 140 typed characters (including spaces) and made the user adopt an unfamiliar keyboard Shift or Option function to address or categorise each message.  Within 6 years more than 100 million users were posting 340 million ‘tweets’ a day. Dorsey is still CEO of a company that now employs over 4,000 people and is valued at over USD24 billion.  

If the shirt doesn’t fit wear it

Doing something that doesn’t make sense can also signal a different level of leadership.  When Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president, he set out to reconcile black and white South Africans after centuries of racial and apartheid division. When South Africa reached the final of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, Mandela walked into the stadium wearing the Springbok jersey, which was hated symbol of white supremacy. On the back of the shirt he had the number 6. Few of us though could ever fathom or anticipate the sheer vision and guts of a political leader who would choose to wear a divisive symbol of the past as a way of signalling his hope for unity. The effect on the Springbok’s dressing room was profound, emotional and galvanising, with the team captained by Francois Pienaar (who wore the number 6 short on the field) winning the game and champions of the world. 

Give airtime to ideas that sound dumb

When we run workshops at LBS on innovation, we ask groups to brainstorm alternative, ‘left-field’ and counterintuitive ideas and we encourage their originators to log these as prominently as the more obvious data-driven customer and product ideas.  When the groups reconvene to consider, rank and select a shortlist of ideas for financial investment, they often hastily reject the odd, the strange and the quirky.  When challenged to consider the merits of a counterintuitive approach, the authors soon weary of the verbal and mental gymnastics involved in defending ideas that make no sense to others. In the debrief, the participants shrug and tell us: “the counterintuitive ideas just ended up sounding dumb”.  Not all new ideas adopted are based wholly on logic or reason, but our intuition, or hard-won reputation for competence, readily urges us to prefer ideas which just seem more viable and credible than the others. Just being aware of this bias adds a frisson to these workshops and a healthy debate about where ideas come from and why so few ideas sound unique enough to thrive.   

A counterintuitive future

Many of us would readily invest in cautious navigators who had double-checked their charts, glue manufacturers who made things stick, entrepreneurs who made unfussy messaging systems and computer makers who gave us more features, not less.  As the world emerges from the shock of a global pandemic and deep economic disruption, many will naturally scramble for sense and certainty.  The economic models and data will be scrutinised much like the epidemiologists’ charts and the old business processes and risk assessments will be dusted down on freshly sanitised desks.  Business leaders in turnaround mode and politicians, with elections to fight, will need to make good rational bets about the future.  The stock pickers and hedgers will have already decided their predicted winners and losers.  

But amidst the predictable approaches, perhaps a brave few will decide to try another way? Despite initially making no sense to anyone, fresh ideas might emerge again that are tangential, bizarre and surprising. Somewhere unexpected, there will be a new idea on a weary Post-It note, stuck there patiently, humbly, ready to be embraced.  Then seized boldly, blinking into the daylight, that idea will slap common-sense in the face and say, “counter that, wise guy.”