Challenging Assumptions

I recently watched some brilliant videos about innovation but there were some really interesting ones about questioning assumptions.  They are part of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. 

In one,  Tina Seelig, the speaker, talks about giving some students an exercise in entrepreneurism.  She gave each group $5, and told them to see how much money they could make in two hours and to give a three minute presentation on the results.

The students came up with variety of innovative schemes that met the challenge.  Most of the groups quite reasonably considered what they could do with $5 in two hours.  However, a couple of the groups did rather better.  They chose to ignore the assumptions of the initial problem – the $5.  One group booked tables at a very popular restaurant and when the usual queue formed outside, they sold their reservations to the queue.  Another group found a company that wanted to sell services to students, so the students sold their three minute slot to the company and did their presentation about the company’s services.

The link below is to a different five minute talk she gave about “Challenging Assumptions”.  In it she gets her audience to solve a simple problem.  The real lesson of the talk comes at the end.  A brilliant observation about solving problems, which I won’t give away. 

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2779