It's Magic

Since magic has been a hobby of mine for years, friends email me videos of some great magic acts. This week, someone sent a video of a wonderful magician named Criss Angel. In this video, Criss appeared to pass his entire body through a solid pane of glass in a picture window. The question, of course, is how’d he do that? I watched the man walk through that glass four or five times before I remembered that a famous magician of another century had done a stage version of that trick. I read an explanation of that trick back in the 1960s. He was doing it on stage, Criss did it with a storefront window on a city street, but the technique was the same. Isn’t that the way it goes in business? When two people see the same new tool for business one person cannot see how it will help his/her business, another person grasps it immediately. Chances are the person who grasps it has experience the first person doesn’t have. This has been particularly evident as computers have been introduced to business in the last few decades. Many of us learned the basics, but never imagined the many other business advantages attainable with computers. Quite often, the difference was in past experience. Those who had experience in direct marketing for example, were probably the first to see how the computer could improve that industry. Certainly the people who grasped what the computer could do for aviation navigation were those who were already working with navigation systems. Another example of this is the spreading use of composite materials in aviation. A few decades ago, many people could explain why composites wouldn’t work in aviation. Today many—from Boeing to homebuilders—are proving them wrong. When a new idea is introduced, try to look at it within your own area of experience, and try to get others to help you look at it from their area of experience. And try to imagine how it could solve old problems and open new opportunities. We’d love to post your comments. Please click the comment tab at the top.