Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create A Category Of One by Category Pirates & Nicolas Cole & Christopher Lochhead & Eddie Yoon

Author:Category Pirates & Nicolas Cole & Christopher Lochhead & Eddie Yoon
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Category Pirates
Published: 2022-07-26T23:00:00+00:00

The challenge here is that when you are trying to come up with Non-Obvious insights, what you are really doing is solving an equation with no known/understood variables. This is the higher math of thinking and language. Furthermore, Non-Obvious insights tend to happen at the intersection of two or more conflicting data points or perspectives. That’s what makes them Non-Obvious. Which means you need to train your mind to hold opposing, seemingly unrelated ideas long enough for your mental model (as we talked about at the beginning) to consider, “What must be true?”

Ah, but we sort of just gave you a Non-Obvious solution to a Non-Obvious problem, now didn’t we!

Let us give you a more Obvious (and actionable) solution to the Non-Obvious problem called, “How do I generate Non-Obvious ideas?”

Today’s solutions are tomorrow’s problems.

Pirate Christopher remembers in the late 1970s and early 1980s when laser printers were invented.

It was a tremendous invention (created by Gary Starkweather), and unlocked all sorts of benefits for users—producing high-quality text and graphics, in color, using a laser. It was arguably the most innovative product to come out of Xerox, and created a massive category known as Digital Printing.

But laser printers had a downside: cartridges were expensive. So this innovative solution (the laser printer) created a new problem called: laser printer cartridge replacement. Which meant, all of a sudden, small businesses and 3rd party sellers started popping up everywhere—offering to refill cartridges for a fraction of the cost to replace them (an Obvious solution).

Which then created a new problem: people would pay for their cartridges to get refilled, and then not know how to replace them inside their laser printers. Which led to the creation of a new solution: laser cartridge replacement services. And so on and so on: a solution creating a problem, creating a new solution, creating a new problem.

This is the evolution of society in a nutshell.

(One day, might we have so many robots dealing with so many new and different problems in our house that we’ll need a mega-super-duperding-dong robot to manage all the minion robots?)

In order to spot, create, or unlock Non-Obvious problems, solutions, or outcomes, here’s the easiest place to start:

Audit today’s newest, hottest, most popular solutions.

Solutions create problems, and problems create categories.

By auditing the solutions society values most heavily today, what you’re going to find are emerging categories with strong tailwinds behind them. This means today’s solutions are going to create tomorrow’s problems, and solving tomorrow’s problems before anyone else is just another way of saying “solving Non-Obvious problems.”

These problems are Non-Obvious because the world hasn’t realized which way the wind is blowing yet!

For example, cryptocurrencies are today’s hot solution to an age-old problem called “banks and other 3rd parties get in the way of my money.” But today’s solutions create tomorrow’s problems, and as soon as you buy your first Bitcoin, all of a sudden you are confronted by a slew of new and different problems: how do you safely store the seed phrase to your crypto

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