We often fall for the same fallacy — we see the world from a specific, existing perspective; a shortcut which nature designed to allow us to make split-second decisions, preserving our life in a world ruled by sable tooth tigers.
Changing our perspective can be hard, uncomfortable and, maybe most commonly, inconvenient — it requires awareness, concerted effort and will.
But it is so worth it…
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is fond of quoting: “Perspective is worth 80 I.Q. points.”
Most breakthroughs in science and business came from someone shifting their perspective. Where others saw the same problems, the same opportunities and the same solutions — change makers who shifted their perspective discovered new solutions, unearthed new opportunities and often identified new (lucrative) problem spaces.
It is a very worthwhile exercise to look at your current business from time to time and force yourself to shift your perspective, to look at it from a true beginners mindset, to apply first principle thinking to the problem space…
I am going through this exercise at the moment with the work we are doing here at Singularity University — and it starts to create a much differentiated insight of what and how we ought to be doing what we are doing here.