da Vinci and the 40 Answers

Give Yourself Great Odds

Fear of failure stops many people in their tracks. I once had an angel investor approach me after a workshop. He said that he and his friends had a $30 million fund. They wanted to start a bunch of companies, and they needed smart people to help. My first reaction was, “I don’t want to take anyone else’s money and fail.” That’s what I kept thinking the whole time he was talking.

Later that night, we went out to dinner to discuss the subject further – and he said something that made me rethink everything.

“Here’s what I think would be absolutely glaring success. We start 10 companies. Eight of them fail, one breaks even, and one makes me some money. If even one of them succeeds, that is unbelievable success.”

Think about that for a moment. When I was told that I was allowed to fail, my perspective changed. I think I’ve got a pretty good chance of being successful, especially if I’m allowed to screw up 85% of the time.

After that conversation, I said, “Wow. OK, let’s talk some more, now I am interested.”

You can give yourself good odds, too, by just being willing to try. Just do something for the sake of your own curiosity and don’t worry about the end result. Failure and success is all perception anyway.

If you ever want to experience that eureka moment, if you ever want to taste great success, you have to be willing to try – and be willing to fail, so get off you keister and do something about it.

Fear of Failure

One of the key things to keep in mind when you are being creative and testing and demonstrating is to leave yourself a lot of room for error. You’re always going to experience failures and make mistakes; that’s just a fact of life.

Despite the necessity of failure to success, many people allow their fear of failure to prevent them from taking action.

Do you remember Ken Jennings? Ken holds the record for the longest winning streak on the show Jeopardy. He won 74 games before he was defeated, and earned an estimated $3,022,700 on the show.

In my opinion, Ken only made two mistakes in his life – well, at least in his life on Jeopardy. One was when he lost on purpose because they paid him to quit (that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it). His other mistake came in the form of a truly awkward answer.

The question was Tool Time for $200.

     Alex: This term for a long-handled gardening tool can also mean an immoral pleasure seeker.

     Ken: What's a hoe?

The next time you make a mistake, put your error in perspective. At least you’re not a clean-cut Mormon with 6 million people watching you say, “What's a hoe?” on national television (the answer was “What is a rake?”). Keep that in perspective.

Just do It!

The next time you have an idea, go ahead and try it. Test your theory or idea.

Creativity is coming up with an idea; innovation is getting off your butt and doing something about it.

Roy Williams has told me many times that anyone can be a best selling author. The recipe is this;

• Pick something you’re really interested in
• Think about it a lot
• Think about it some more
• Develop you own unique theory about what it all means
• Just do it – go out and test your theory
• Write a book about it

Roy has an African friend named Akintunde Omitowoju from Nigeria. After Akintunde heard Harry Nilsson’s song “Coconut,” he asked Roy if lime and coconut were really good together. 

Roy realized that he, in fact, had never heard of anyone who actually tried to put de lime in de coconut, and so he said, “Akentuda, we’re going to do this.”

In the da Vinci course, Roy tells a story about the two of them sitting together in his living room, passing a coconut shell filled with their concoction back and forth.
According to Roy, coconut milk and lime juice actually make a pretty good combination – but he never would have had the opportunity to experience the drink if they hadn’t actually created the concoction and tried it out.

How many people wonder why something is the way it is, but never stop to find out? How many people have a brilliant idea, and get excited about their idea, only to do nothing? Most people never take action to test their theory or try out their plan.

Curiosity is important, but you’ll only see results if you actually take steps to test your hypothesis and answer the questions you’ve raised.

Fight Fire with Fire

Smallpox was an epidemic of epic proportions at the turn of the last millennium. During the 18th century alone, the disease killed an estimated 400,000 people each year, including five reigning European monarchs. Smallpox proved fatal in 20 to 60% of infection cases, with even more tragic results in children. Eighty percent of children infected with the disease died. Researchers believe that smallpox first surfaced in human civilization around 10,000 B.C.

In 1796 a doctor in rural England took note of a peculiar thing.  Dr. Edward Jenner noticed that milk maids who were infected with a skin disease known as cowpox appeared to be immune to smallpox. Cowpox is related to the smallpox virus, but the disease is not really harmful to humans. Cowpox got its name from the manner in which the disease was transmitted; cow maids got the disease from touching the udders of infected cows.

Jenner was curious as to why the cowpox seemed to protect the milk maids from the deadly smallpox infection. He decided to find out why, and embarked on a mission to shed light on the mystery. Jenner’s experiments revealed that smallpox immunity could be produced by injecting a person with material from a cowpox lesion. Sure enough, cowpox inoculations created smallpox immunity.

Jenner called the materials used in the inoculation a vaccine. Vaccine is derived from the root word vacca, which is Latin for cow.

In the 19th century, the cowpox virus used for the vaccine was replaced by the vaccinia virus, an infection in the same family. Almost 200 years after Jenner’s discovery, the World Health Organizations certified the eradication of the disease, in 1979. Today, smallpox remains the only human infectious disease to have been successfully eradicated from nature.

Jenner’s curiosity and subsequent testing saved countless lives, and helped rid the world of a dangerously infectious epidemic.

The Pill did What?

In the 1990s, a group of pharmaceutical chemists at Pfizer’s Sandwich, Kent research facility in England created a compound known as Sidenafil. Sidenafil was designed to treat hypertension (high blood pressure) and angina pectoris (a form of cardiovascular disease). Clinical trials revealed that although the drug did little to treat angina, there was one totally unexpected, yet remarkable side effect. 

Sidenafil induced penile erections.

Known today as Viagra, this little blue pill was approved for use as an erectile dysfunction aid by the FDA in March 1998. Viagra was the first pill on the market to treat E.D., and quickly became a runaway success. Between 1999 and 2001, annual sales of Viagra exceeded $1 billion!

Nobody in the world dreamed about Viagra’s “side effect.”  I wish I had been able to be a part of that research team. On a paper survey of the drug’s effects, how many people do you think were forthcoming about that unexpected result? Once the researchers discovered the drug’s more popular (and marketable) use, they had to actually test and demonstrate the medication.

Radar Range

In 1940, scientists Sir John Randall and Dr. H.A. Boot invented the magnetron, a key component of radar, in a lab at Birmingham University in England. Radar, which stands for Radio Detecting And Ranging, was used to bounce microwaves off enemy war crafts to detect their presence.

In 1946, Dr. Percy Spencer accidentally stumbled upon an entirely new use for the magnetron. The engineer was running tests on a magnetron tube in his Raytheon Company lab when he was hit by a chocolate craving. Spencer reached into his pocket to retrieve the treat and realized that his chocolate bar had melted into a gooey mess.

Spencer knew that the magnetron produced heat, but he had not felt any of the heat waves during the test. He also suspected that the magnetron was responsible for the current state of his chocolate – after all, his body heat had never melted a bar before.

So, Spencer got curious. He decided to explore his accidental discovery further and ask “why?” He placed a bag of popcorn in front of the magnetron tube, and the popcorn popped all over the floor. The next day, he decided to try to cook an egg. Another scientist got a little too close and the egg blew up in his face – but the egg was in fact, cooked.

And so, Raytheon created the first microwave oven, known as the Radar Range.

Eureka!

Most new discoveries don’t result in a “eureka” moment, but rather a puzzled, “what the hell just happened?”

That ever-elusive eureka moment is the result of testing, experimenting, demonstrating, and asking questions. The end result is often unexpected, but once the unforeseen result has reared its head, the accidental inventor’s curiosity will take over and ask, “Why?”

At that point, the inventor has to test and demonstrate to explain their unexpected results.