1 00:00:01,331 --> 00:00:11,417 The IKEA effect is not just limited to physical things and kids. 2 00:00:11,418 --> 00:00:18,045 It also, works for ideas. So imagine what happens when you have your 3 00:00:18,045 --> 00:00:21,120 own idea versus other people have their own idea. 4 00:00:21,120 --> 00:00:23,859 Are you more committed to your idea just because. 5 00:00:23,860 --> 00:00:27,120 It's your own. You've all probably been in committee 6 00:00:27,120 --> 00:00:31,064 meetings or group meetings when somebody comes up with some, what seems to be like 7 00:00:31,064 --> 00:00:34,718 a random, stupid idea but the moment they've said it, all of a sudden they're 8 00:00:34,718 --> 00:00:38,430 committed to it and they insist that everybody would spend time and energy on 9 00:00:38,430 --> 00:00:41,299 that idea. Nobody is able nobody else is able to see 10 00:00:41,299 --> 00:00:45,193 the value but because they've created that idea they came up with all of a sudden 11 00:00:45,193 --> 00:00:49,775 they think it's fantastic. Turns out it's not just those people, it's 12 00:00:49,775 --> 00:00:54,586 all of us. So imagine what would happen if you had 13 00:00:54,586 --> 00:00:59,453 write your own ideas versus look at my ideas. 14 00:00:59,453 --> 00:01:04,899 So together with some colleagues, we did this experiment. 15 00:01:04,899 --> 00:01:09,973 We gave people that read the New York Times a few big world problems, how to 16 00:01:09,973 --> 00:01:14,077 deal with global warming and water and pollution and so on. 17 00:01:14,078 --> 00:01:18,355 And we asked them to do one of two things. We asked them to write solutions for those 18 00:01:18,355 --> 00:01:23,648 ideas, how would you solve those problems in different ways, and then tell us how 19 00:01:23,648 --> 00:01:28,517 much they like their solutions and also how much they like our solutions. 20 00:01:28,518 --> 00:01:31,160 And what happened? People loved their solution much, much 21 00:01:31,160 --> 00:01:35,086 better than they loved our solution. But there could be all kinds of reasons 22 00:01:35,086 --> 00:01:37,256 for that. First of all, they might have been able to 23 00:01:37,256 --> 00:01:41,266 come up with better solution than ours. Maybe they're smarter than us the second 24 00:01:41,266 --> 00:01:45,960 thing could be idiosyncratic fit. There could be some people that, for 25 00:01:45,960 --> 00:01:50,705 example, think that the right solution to deal with world hunger is for everybody to 26 00:01:50,705 --> 00:01:54,164 be vegetarian. And some people think that the world, the 27 00:01:54,164 --> 00:01:59,631 way to deal with world hunger is to change the economic incentives in Africa. 28 00:01:59,631 --> 00:02:04,778 Some people might think that the way to increase happiness is to everybody become 29 00:02:04,778 --> 00:02:09,884 religious and some people might think that the way to get more happiness is for us to 30 00:02:09,884 --> 00:02:13,680 eliminate all religions. So, it could be that it's not that their 31 00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:18,234 ideas are better but each person has their own version of the idea that they believe 32 00:02:18,234 --> 00:02:22,524 to higher degree or it could be the third thing which is the IKEA effect which is 33 00:02:22,524 --> 00:02:26,874 the pride of creation, so to look at this more carefully, we change the set-up. 34 00:02:26,874 --> 00:02:31,930 Instead of just giving them problem and allowing them to write whatever they 35 00:02:31,930 --> 00:02:36,842 wanted, we give them a list of 50 words. And we said here is the problem, but now 36 00:02:36,842 --> 00:02:41,504 you have this list of 50 words and you have to use those 50 words to come up with 37 00:02:41,504 --> 00:02:45,216 a solution. Use any words you want, but your solution 38 00:02:45,216 --> 00:02:49,563 can be one sentence and only come with those 50 words, and we see that those 50 39 00:02:49,563 --> 00:02:52,420 words were the words we thought are the solution. 40 00:02:52,420 --> 00:02:57,378 In fact our idea was just jumbled up in a different order in the first line of those 41 00:02:57,378 --> 00:03:02,188 50 words, and because of that most people came up with our idea, they basically 42 00:03:02,188 --> 00:03:05,874 looked at all the words, and basic, oh, one more thing. 43 00:03:05,875 --> 00:03:10,020 And the rest of the words were just, eh, a synonym of those words. 44 00:03:10,020 --> 00:03:13,860 So in fact, the 50 words were basically all going, people were going to come up 45 00:03:13,860 --> 00:03:17,700 with our ideas sometimes with a word change here and there, but basically all 46 00:03:17,700 --> 00:03:20,647 of them came with our ideas. What happened? 47 00:03:20,648 --> 00:03:23,250 Now there was our idea that we asked them to evaluate. 48 00:03:23,250 --> 00:03:27,870 And there was our idea that we asked them to evaluate but they came up with it from 49 00:03:27,870 --> 00:03:30,120 a list of 50 words. What happened? 50 00:03:30,120 --> 00:03:33,620 They still thought that their idea was much, much better. 51 00:03:33,620 --> 00:03:38,022 Suggesting that it's not that their ideas, that in the original experiment that it's 52 00:03:38,022 --> 00:03:40,727 not just that their ideas were objectively better. 53 00:03:40,728 --> 00:03:44,820 It's not just they were idiosyncratically fit better than they thought that they 54 00:03:44,820 --> 00:03:47,741 were better. There is something about the pride of 55 00:03:47,741 --> 00:03:51,270 creation. We pushed that idea even further. 56 00:03:51,270 --> 00:03:58,570 We compared our idea, and then for other people we gave them this idea, 7 words 57 00:03:58,570 --> 00:04:01,480 idea. We gave it to them, but in a different 58 00:04:01,480 --> 00:04:03,861 order. And we asked them to reorder the words to 59 00:04:03,861 --> 00:04:07,566 make a sentence, and there was only 1 sentence they could make from it which was 60 00:04:07,566 --> 00:04:10,130 our idea and once they had these 7 ideas prearranged. 61 00:04:10,130 --> 00:04:12,319 And how much did they like their solution now? 62 00:04:12,320 --> 00:04:16,875 Even now they liked it more. Which means that the moment you get people 63 00:04:16,875 --> 00:04:22,519 to invest even a little bit of energy all of a sudden they think that, that solution 64 00:04:22,519 --> 00:04:26,916 is much, much better. In the history of ideas there's lots of 65 00:04:26,916 --> 00:04:31,388 very, very notable people. One of them of course is Edison. 66 00:04:31,389 --> 00:04:36,040 The amazing inventor who came up with lots of things, and we owe him much of our 67 00:04:36,040 --> 00:04:39,423 progress. But there's an interesting story about 68 00:04:39,423 --> 00:04:43,420 Edison and Tesla. And as you remember Edison basically 69 00:04:43,420 --> 00:04:47,180 invented the direct current, what we have in batteries. 70 00:04:47,180 --> 00:04:53,597 And he basically was trying to get direct current to be the thing that would fuel 71 00:04:53,597 --> 00:04:58,618 the world or electrify the world. And one of the people who worked for 72 00:04:58,618 --> 00:05:02,324 Edison was Tesla. Tesla was a young engineer, and he argued 73 00:05:02,324 --> 00:05:07,010 that direct current is going to have strong limitations, and instead wanted to 74 00:05:07,010 --> 00:05:10,802 use alternating current. And he actually invented alternating 75 00:05:10,802 --> 00:05:14,656 current in Edison's lab. Now, Edison, officially it could have the 76 00:05:14,656 --> 00:05:18,660 rights for alternating current because it was developed in his lab. 77 00:05:18,660 --> 00:05:23,880 It was part of his team of inventors but he hated alternating current. 78 00:05:23,880 --> 00:05:28,983 In fact, he hated it so much that he basically got a fight with Tesla and Tesla 79 00:05:28,983 --> 00:05:32,030 left and took alternating current with him. 80 00:05:32,030 --> 00:05:37,406 And not only that, Edison then went to great lengths to try and defame and bash 81 00:05:37,406 --> 00:05:41,380 alternating current. And this was actually funded. 82 00:05:41,380 --> 00:05:46,684 The development of the first electrical chair using alternating current to show 83 00:05:46,684 --> 00:05:51,091 how dangerous it is. Every time somebody got electrified by 84 00:05:51,091 --> 00:05:57,188 alternating current, Edison paid a PR company to go and make a big story out of 85 00:05:57,188 --> 00:06:00,433 that. Eh, they would electrify animals, cats and 86 00:06:00,433 --> 00:06:05,048 dogs to show how dangerous it is and by the way in some sense he was right because 87 00:06:05,048 --> 00:06:08,667 in the early days, alternating current was very dangerous. 88 00:06:08,668 --> 00:06:14,476 But the reality is that direct current is incredibly limited and if we every wanted 89 00:06:14,476 --> 00:06:20,356 to electrify the world current to go far distances and so on alternating current 90 00:06:20,356 --> 00:06:23,744 is, is the answer. But the interesting thing is, here is 91 00:06:23,744 --> 00:06:27,712 Edison, one of the most brilliant people to have ever lived, one of the most 92 00:06:27,712 --> 00:06:31,206 important inventors. Nevertheless, I think that his love for 93 00:06:31,206 --> 00:06:35,430 direct current was so strong that he couldn't see the benefit of alternating 94 00:06:35,430 --> 00:06:38,279 current, and not only couldn't see the benefit. 95 00:06:38,280 --> 00:06:43,850 He was fighting them in order to defame them and try to win in this current war. 96 00:06:43,850 --> 00:06:50,545 In academic life, by the way, we have something similar we call the toothbrush 97 00:06:50,545 --> 00:06:53,836 theory. The toothbrush theory is the idea that we 98 00:06:53,836 --> 00:06:58,448 all need a toothbrush. We all want the toothbrush, but nobody 99 00:06:58,448 --> 00:07:03,460 wanted to use anybody else's toothbrush. And the same thing goes for academic 100 00:07:03,460 --> 00:07:05,623 theory. We all want theories, we all like 101 00:07:05,623 --> 00:07:09,517 theories, we all think it's important, but nobody wants to use somebody else's 102 00:07:09,517 --> 00:07:12,104 theory. We all just want our own. 103 00:07:12,104 --> 00:07:16,014 And I think it's kind of a fair and important aspect to think about how much 104 00:07:16,014 --> 00:07:19,982 do we really fall in love In what we're doing and how much time we're willing 105 00:07:19,982 --> 00:07:24,189 spend and effort and so on. Now in the academic setting I think it's 106 00:07:24,189 --> 00:07:29,927 really easy to see while falling in love with our own ideas has pluses and minuses. 107 00:07:29,928 --> 00:07:33,966 After all if you don't fall in love with your idea, why would you ever work hard on 108 00:07:33,966 --> 00:07:36,240 it whether you're a startup or an academic. 109 00:07:36,240 --> 00:07:39,696 And if you fall in love with your idea you would work hours and days in trying to 110 00:07:39,696 --> 00:07:43,054 promote it and spend more time on it and think about it and figure it out. 111 00:07:43,055 --> 00:07:47,277 And really, really, really work very, very hard to figure it out. 112 00:07:47,278 --> 00:07:49,330 If you don't like it so much, you wouldn't do it. 113 00:07:49,330 --> 00:07:52,400 That's the plus side. The plus side is we tend to fall in love 114 00:07:52,400 --> 00:07:56,732 and therefore we're willing to spend more time, energy, effort and so on. 115 00:07:56,732 --> 00:08:00,728 The down side is that sometimes, we don't recognize when things are failing. 116 00:08:00,728 --> 00:08:05,424 Sometimes, we're so much in love with our ideas, like with Thomas Edison or you can 117 00:08:05,424 --> 00:08:08,446 think about other theories and economics and so on. 118 00:08:08,446 --> 00:08:12,826 That people fall in love with their theories that they're not willing to 119 00:08:12,826 --> 00:08:17,692 accept other things that might be better. This, of course, happens in business all 120 00:08:17,692 --> 00:08:20,735 the time. This idea of "not invented here" that we 121 00:08:20,735 --> 00:08:25,760 over-value what we are created and not value what other people are creating, are 122 00:08:25,760 --> 00:08:30,860 causing many companies to just look inside for ideas and spend way too much time on 123 00:08:30,860 --> 00:08:34,227 ideas they created And not look externally for that. 124 00:08:34,228 --> 00:08:38,350 One of the most sad and interesting and famous cases of this, of course, is Sony. 125 00:08:38,350 --> 00:08:43,810 Sony was an incredibly innovative company but at some point they started sitting on 126 00:08:43,810 --> 00:08:46,130 their laurels. They thought that they were innovating. 127 00:08:46,130 --> 00:08:49,859 They thought that everything they do is fantastic and what other people are not. 128 00:08:49,860 --> 00:08:53,700 And because of that, they missed quite a few revolutions in technology. 129 00:08:53,700 --> 00:08:57,787 They missed a revolution in digital cameras for a whole; they missed a 130 00:08:57,787 --> 00:09:02,343 revolution in memory technology; they missed a revolution in TV technology, all 131 00:09:02,343 --> 00:09:06,832 kinds of things, because they just looked inside, and anything that did not come 132 00:09:06,832 --> 00:09:09,798 from Sony was not value for them to the nth degree. 133 00:09:09,798 --> 00:09:13,926 So It's a mix. We should love what we do but not too 134 00:09:13,926 --> 00:09:16,256 much. Somebody told me that the secret to a 135 00:09:16,256 --> 00:09:18,874 happy marriage is to have life insurance but not too much of it. 136 00:09:18,874 --> 00:09:26,609 Maybe the same lesson is here as well: We want to love what we're doing but maybe 137 00:09:26,609 --> 00:09:28,443 just not too much.