Occam's Razor

You may not know it, but one single principle dominates the way that our society invents things. This principle is know philosophically as Occam’s Razor but you may be more familiar the abstraction that the simplest answer is always right or the even more distorted less is more concept. If you are an engineer, you may also be familiar with the keep is simple stupid (K.I.S.S) approach to decision making. However you slice it, this approach now presides as the dominant way we decide what ideas should move forward and which should be killed.

In short, this approach is crippling the way we solve problems and generate disruptive change. It creates an unconscious bias towards incremental improvements leaving us unable to address problems requiring disruptive innovations like clean water, energy and sustainable food.

At its heart, the problem with Occam’s Razor is not Occam’s Razor. All other things equal, the simplest answer generally is the best. But when a new disruptively innovative idea arises, it is impossible to keep “all other things” equal. Disruptive ideas inherently mean new markets, new applications, new customers, new margins, and new ways we use technology. It becomes hard for us to accurately distinguish simple things from complex things and we can no longer rely on Occam to guide us.

This would not be a problem if in these times we use other methods to determine if an idea is good or bad (the best way is to try it). The problem is that our brains are inherently lazy and when we hear an idea we default to an Occamanian approach: “Is this more complicated than what I already know and understand”.  When the idea is disruptive the answer is almost always yes. When the idea is incremental and builds on concepts everyone in the room understands, the answer at least has the possibility of being no. Or to put it another way, technology, markets, applications and customers that we are already familiar with always seem simpler than ones we are hearing about for the first time.

This insidiously simple and obvious statement has major implications in a technical society where Occam’s razor is understood and accepted as a valid method of screening technology. Any lack of understanding surrounding a new idea becomes publicly acceptable evidence that the idea is bad. It takes the statement “I don’t understand how this works” and turns it into “Because I don’t understand how this works, Occam’s Razor tells us it is not an idea worth pursuing”. Under the razor, an idea can be killed without any specific technical issues being highlighted. Nobody need point to a specific aspect of the idea and say “I know how this part works and this is a major issue”. Instead, Occam, a publicly accepted third party can be brought in to kill the idea without technical cause. Lack of understanding becomes grounds the only thing needed to kill an idea.

This has created the savage technical society disruptive ideas are now faced with. In this society ideas that cannot be simply explained in a 2 minute elevator pitch don’t get funded, companies with vast R&D resources under their control are incapable of producing even the most rudimentary disruptive changes, and innovation must be masked by over-simplified half-truths in order to gain any traction.   

I think the fix for this issue is at the same time straightforward and difficult. We need to condition ourselves to turn the statement “I don’t understand how this works” into  “I don’t understand how this works, this could change everything, tell me more”. This may sound easy, but many other aspects of our technical society are working directly in support of Occam. This is not a change that will be made over-night and it is very likely that it can never be fully remedied. However, the first step is simple: the next time you are in a meeting and somebody says the words Occam’s Razor be sure to wake up from your meeting stupor and listen, the idea being discussed could be the next big thing.