Confirmation Bias is experienced by everyone and causes us to seek out evidence to support our existing beliefs, as opposed to evidence that contradicts them. Its why people read newspapers matching their politics, how conspiracy theories grow and, in extreme cases, creates groups such as incels and QAnon.
Confirmation Bias is the arch-enemy of innovation. By definition, innovation requires us to push boundaries, challenge our beliefs and go outside our comfort zone. The only problem is, that’s really hard to do.
Some years back, my wife and I became the proud owner of a brand-new miniature human.
However, we discovered a design flaw. She would fall asleep perfectly in your arms but, if you tried to put her down, sleep mode would be immediately cancelled, and the alarm would go off.
After many nights of what amounted to continuous bicep curls, enough was enough. I decided to use my innovation experience to come up with a solution. I realised that it was the feeling of being supported across the whole body that helped her sleep, and putting her down disrupted this. If I could keep her fully supported whilst putting her down, the problem would be solved.
The solution I came up with was the Sleep Sling. It was a fabric sling with solid rods down each side. You would put the Sleep Sling in your arms, plonk the baby on top and rock her to sleep. Once suitably unconscious, you would grab the rods on either side and slowly lift the baby in the sling. Then, you could lower her onto the mattress and tuck the handles down the sides, with no disruption to the whole-body support.
I built a prototype and tested it one night. It worked perfectly. The malfunctioning baby was fixed and life could return to normal.
Except…
If it worked for me, why wouldn’t it work for other parents? Had I just created the next mega baby product? Maybe I could have a range of innovative products! All of a sudden, I wasn’t an inventor, but an entrepreneur.
I made up some prototypes and sent them out to some friends, confident that they would all send back glowing endorsements.
They didn’t. It didn’t work for any of them.
This generated my first bit of cognitive bias – Cognitive Dissonance. Our brains are rubbish at holding opposing viewpoints at the same time. I thought my invention was brilliant; other people didn’t. My brain had to make a decision, because it couldn’t cope with the idea that both could be true. As a result, I told myself these views weren’t representative. Maybe they all had weird babies. I pressed forward, still confident in my own genius.
But what if someone had beaten me to this brilliant idea? I needed to do a State-of-the-Art review. We do these every day for clients, so it should have been a piece of cake. Just check the internet and patent repositories to see if anyone has created the same or similar solution. How much of an obstacle was that to overcome?
Massive, it turns out. I had an incredible invention that was going to make me millions (or at least a few thousands), and now I was asking myself to deliberately try and torpedo my future business. It was the same fear I had experienced as a teenager with a crush – what if they said no? I had to push myself really hard to overcome this confirmation bias and go looking for competitors.
The fact that I’m writing this instead of blowing my nose with £50 notes tells you that I did, indeed, find someone who had already done it (or something very similar). This, coupled with the user feedback, convinced me that I probably shouldn’t pack in my day job.
At Neon, we meet a huge range of entrepreneurs across many different sectors. Many of them have overcome their confirmation bias and conducted thorough state-of-the-art and intellectual property reviews. But many haven’t. Sometimes, we are the first people to highlight competitors to them and they can sometimes be quite defensive, because they are so utterly convinced that they have a unique solution. In one instance, we had an entrepreneur present a supposedly novel combustion engine component. Not only was he convinced it was a game changer, but he also had a university professor telling him the same, and had sunk tens of thousands of pounds into developing it. A quick IP search during our first meeting told a different story. All that time and money could have been saved if he had just been able to overcome his confirmation bias and go looking for the evidence to contradict his views, rather than reinforce them.
If you want to be completely sure your innovation is investment-ready, come and talk to us. We can thoroughly review the competitive landscape and let you know for certain how innovative your solution really is.
Pete Frederick is Chief Innovation Officer at Neon. An innovation specialist with 25 years’ experience, Pete helps clients across the whole innovation journey, from concept development to equity investment. Pete is also a published author in Persuasive Writing, helping clients communicate their innovations more effectively.
Contact Pete and the rest of the Neon team at peter.frederick@neoninnovation.co.uk