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Critical Thinking is Sexy or Do What Works
The amount of information available for the budding tech entrepreneur is pure awesome. A critic would call it information overload. I disagree. It first can seem overwhelming, but once you find the right people to follow and read the right blogs, you’ll have your finger on the pulse of the tech scene. Sure, there is always more information available. Things are always being missed. But the good information is basically there for the taking.
I’m a strong believer in a liberal arts education. The main components of a liberal arts education are reading and writing. You are always doing both. But one does not succeed unless one reads and writes critically. It is not about taking in information and then regurgitating what you read onto the page. Once you read something, the first step is comprehension, keeping the author’s perspective in mind. With that achieved, you must think critically on the topics raised and formulate an original hypothesis. The final step is translating your thoughts to the page, in clear and concise language. A liberal arts education can easily be combined with a science, technical or business degree. It can be a minor or just a concentration of interesting classes. I went all in. I studied history and English literature, with a sprinkling of political science. History and political science taught me about the world while literature taught me about the human condition.
My father is a physician. He has seen it all in his career. One truism that he passed on to me involved treatment methods for patients. He subscribes to the scientific method. But things are not always crystal clear in medicine. No studies are 100% accurate. But the end goal is always the same; a healthy patient. So when talk shifts to to unproven treatments that were successful, my father listens to the information with open ears. He favors the methods that are scientifically proven, of course. But if someone says I tried all the drugs, and the only thing that saved me was drinking a glass of wheat grass twice a day, then great! The moral? Do what works. Writing everything off as nonsensical because it doesn’t follow a set rule, especially if it achieved the end goal of a healthy patient, is narrow minded. And more importantly it could limit future medical breakthroughs. I’m happy the wheat grass worked and I’m even more happy that you’re better.
No two startups are the same. Paypal’s beginnings were different than Google’s which was different than Apple’s and YouTube’s. What they all have in common is that they each found out what worked best for them. And when that glimmer of success appeared, they all pushed hard on the gas pedal and never looked back. It’s great to look at successful companies as examples of what to do and not do, but that will only get you so far. So you have a new product you want to launch? Should you launch at a conference, soft launch, do a marketing launch, or a closed beta launch with press access? People have done well and bombed in all of the above scenarios. That’s where your critical thinking comes in. You have the information, now how are you going to handle it? Situations dictate more than theory or experience. Sometimes you will need to make a nontraditional move to forward your business. A startup is like curing an ailment; think of all the possibilities, try different approaches, and after all of that, go with what works.