Who are you, and who do you need

I’m more of a thinky/creative type.  I like to think about how awesome things are gonna be when they unfold. I get really excited about a big new shiny object, and I can’t wait to see how fantastic it’s going to make things.

There’s a problem with this.  Sometimes I end up with these: http://budurl.com/gmja

There’s a great example of a company, Optical Distortion Inc (ODI) who came up with a cheap process that would no longer require chickens to be de-beaked, a horrifying and painful process used by chicken farmers.

These guys realized that if they could distort the vision of the chickens, they wouldn’t see each other, so they wouldn’t fight each other.  A creative and simple strategy to solve a problem.

What ODI lacked was the details guy or gal.  The person who steps up and says, “hey, y’all are crazy! You expect contact lenses to stay in chicken eyes?!”

Yep. They tried to sell chicken contact lenses to farmers.  Epic fail.

I have found that success in the real world is the result of mixing people that chase a shiny ball around the room with people who like to calculate the coefficient of friction that is causing the ball to slow down.

The world needs (and has) both types of people. We all just need to take a step back, think about which one of those people we are, and be the best we can be at which ever side we land on.  And if you’re smart (and lucky) you’ll pair up with the other side.