The Adjacent Impossible

With the rise of artificial intelligence, we have clearly become fascinated with (if not suspicious of) our own intelligence. And, in the world of generative AI, we now seem obsessed with the origin of new ideas, how to facilitate creativity, and the processes that trigger and lead to innovation.
This obsession with “new” and “next” is, in and of itself, not new. Biologists, physicists, and philosophers have studied what has been called “the science of novelty” for years. From the early development of tools, the dissemination of information, the distribution of goods and services, and our own mobility, we’ve come a long way.

Now, with economic and competitive pressures rising to unparalleled levels, the world of business seeks to take and gain advantage – an innovation efforts, investments, and outcomes are on the rise. If a company is not trying to put itself out of business, three sixth graders in a garage surely are. As Vittorio Loreto, a physicist at Sapienza University of Rome has suggested, (see a link to his excellent TED Talk below) even long established, legacy bound, and historically complacent companies, have evolved from their comfortable positions of exploitation of “what is” to become adventurers in the exploration of what’s next. If they have not evolved, they do so at their own certain peril.

Thomas Friedman, expounds upon our exponential reality and the ever-increasing Moore’s Law of blurred experience in the acceleration of, well almost everything, in his book, “Thank You For Being Late.” As Gordon Moore famously predicted and Thomas Friedman reinforced, change is the only constant and will only accelerate. Processor speed, energy consumption, climate change, and whatever else you might point to, clearly the rate of change that we are now experiencing is the slowest we will experience in our lifetimes.

But, when the magnifying glass or telescope (pick your perspective) is turned to view the pace of innovation, novelty, and what’s next or new, innovation becomes harder than it looks. By merely predicting or forecasting what’s new by extending the slope of a line, gaining insight by squinting carefully at the data, or by only incrementally adding features and functions to the existing thing, our observations never seem to get to the point or provide any conclusive answer to the challenge of the ages: how do I have a better idea?
Unlike the experts who are now focused on this question, I am not a Ph.D., I chair no academic departments, I will never be considered for a Nobel Prize and I am unlikely to be awarded a MacArthur Grant. But, I do have a clue or two and I would like to offer my answer(s) to the question of:

“where do truly new ideas come from?”

One of my two answers is silly and, without doubt, senseless and devoutly unprovable. It is simply that new ideas emerge from deep within the underlying mathematical probabilities inherent in our existence. That is, they are written into the code and deeply embedded into this simulation we call reality. I will leave the question of whether that code simply exists or was “written” and by whom or what, to theologians, philosophers, and others who focus on such things (apparently Elon Musk is spending millions to determine whether or not reality is a coded simulation). You may pray for a good idea if you like.

My other “better” answer is that new ideas emerge from the critical intersection of two simple things:
1. a deep understanding of human needs
2. a view of the “adjacent impossible” an almost fanciful and playful consideration of impossibility

With regard to human needs, in his book, “Thank You For Being Late – An Optimist’s Guide for Thriving in The Age of Accelerations,” Friedman makes a powerful case that humankind has not really evolved much considering that modern Homo Sapiens came onto the scene around 300,000 years ago. Our range of motivations and their underlying needs identified by Maslow in his famous hierarchy of needs, defines five need states: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. These seem to have remained relatively unchanged over the 50,000-65,000 years of our “behavioral modernity” involving complex technologies and cultures. We are, in many ways, still walking barefoot, dragging our knuckles on the ground, and hunting for our next meal or latte.

But, our ability to recognize our own behaviors and understand them in the context of life, culture, and the human condition today, is still in its infancy. As a critical part of my two-ingredient answer, this alone bears far more critical exploration. But, in the interest of time, I’ll simply point out that there are no innovations, modern or otherwise, that don’t, in some fundamental way, seize upon a new or evolved understanding of an existing, latent, unexpressed, or unmet human need. And, those needs are in many ways the foundation of and intrinsically embedded in considerations of impossibility.

In my opinion and experience, impossibility is at the heart of the matter, Stuart Kaufmann’s “Theory of Adjacent Possibility” (TAP) (see the link to his TED Talk on TAP below) provides a clear and cogent understanding of how new appears at the boundary of what’s possible. And while this theory makes perfect sense in describing innovation through a rear-view mirror or evaluative lens, explaining something after the fact is light years away from creating a future state. Evolution is relatively easy to understand looking back at history. Imagining what’s next by applying the lens of history has turned out to be a risky strategy. Ultimately, it’s just not all that particularly helpful if one wants to actually create something new, leverage an existing thing into something novel, or even manipulate the “now” to expose more than adjacent conditions of possibility. Adjacent is just too “near.” To imagine and create the future, we need to truly disregard the possible and embrace the impossible.

Impossibility is the breeding ground and nursery for what’s new and next. And, while it should not be a secret or unnecessarily complicated, there may be a rather convenient way to expose what I’m calling, the “Adjacent Impossible. It’s all in how your frame the accepted reality, identify the known possible, and reveal the impossible. Note that this is NOT problem solving. Disruptive, transformative, and sustainable innovation rarely if ever is focused on solving a known problem. What I’m suggesting is a way to expose opportunity.
The physicist, Vittorio Loreto gets very close to this when he coins the phrase, “correlated novelty,” in his TED talk in Milan in 2017 (see link below). I’m stretching that concept to “uncorrelated novelty.” In the end, if the goal is truly new and next, revealing the impossible is simply a matter of asking new, better, and often alarming and shocking questions. We are now entering the “impossibility zone.”

What follows are a number of examples of impossibility generated innovation. To be able to embrace the impossibility zone, these three companies all have five elements in common:

1. They were not incremental or evolutions of the existing idea
2. They were not focused on solving a problem (and did not offer a solution to a problem that never existed to begin with)
3. They looked at behaviors to gain insights into real human needs
4. They seized on opportunities by exposing the impossible
5. They were not imagined, developed, and delivered by the prevailing player

Ride Sharing
Uber famously disrupted and transformed the transportation industry as we once knew it. Based on the behaviors and conditions they studied and the insights they gathered, they framed the transportation business based on two simple parameters – asset ownership and human resources. A transportation company could own vehicles or not own vehicles. And a transportation business could either have employees or not have employees (contractors). Pairing these two parameters in a 2 x 2 framework exposes three existing businesses. If you own a vehicle and have employees, you’re in the private car business. If you own vehicles and only use contractors, you’re a taxi company. If you don’t own any vehicles but have employees, perhaps you’re in the limo business. But, that fourth quadrant was the most interesting as it exposed the classic “adjacent impossible” question: “what is a transportation company that owns no vehicles and has no employees?”

Underlying these business states are opportunities that the framework intentionally exposes. In the downturn in the economy at the time (and still today), lots of unemployed people own cars. Riders found hailing and/or ordering a taxi time consuming. They were also distrustful of the routes drivers took, did not like the lack of fare predictability, and found paying for a ride time consuming, awkward, and unsafe. By combining GPS enabled smart phones with an elegant ordering and predictable payment platform, and leveraging a lot of jobless people who owned cars, Uber was born. Given the trust challenge of having complete strangers pick up passengers in personally owned vehicles, the hidden genius behind Uber is that not only did riders rate the drivers, but the drivers rated the passengers. Drivers rating the passengers? Yet another adjacent impossibility that establishes a bilateral trust dynamic and creates a foundation of choice, trust and confidence.

Passive Savings
Bank of America was interested in imagining a new way to engage new customers. Rather than see the consumer landscape through the lens of a financial demographic and assessing consumers in a range from the poor to the super-rich, they chose to study more a more behavioral demographic. By studying how people viewed their money they saw that some people had a very short-term view of their money and others had a longer-term view. They also looked at how engaged and interactive people were with their money. Some never or hardly ever checked their accounts and others were actively engaged and pinging their account balances daily or more.

For the low engagement and long-term view people, any number of insurance products already existed and it might be difficult to meaningfully differentiate in this crowded and competitive space. For the highly engaged and short-term view types, a wide range of investment products already existed, and coming up with new ones would be challenging at best. For the long-term view and high engagement people, they could have revolutionized or financial planning services. But, they were after a new and entirely different kind of customer that didn’t routinely use banks or save moeny. The short-term view and low engagement behavioral segment was not their customer. And they were historically not savers.
By identifying this impossibility zone or, in this case addressing an impossible segment, Bank of America was able to imagine a savings plan for people who were neither very engaged with their money nor had any sense of time-based financial planning. Passive savings in the form of the “Keep the Change” program was born. Anytime these people used a designated credit card or debit card, their transactions were rounded up to the nearest dollar and that difference was deposited into their new savings account. In the first year of this program, people who distrusted banks and never saved money, deposited over $1B into their Bank of America savings accounts. Bank of America gained new, loyal customers, who saw the bank as their friend and financial partner.

AirBnB
How would one imagine and give birth to what has become the largest hospitality company in the world, yet neither own nor operate any properties? The big hotel chains have continuously evolved with a range of property types and brands (flags) addressing a wide range of hospitality consumer. Each has their own characteristics addressing a wide diversity of travelers and guests. Whether a vacationer or a business traveler, from a basic room and basic services to ultimate luxury and amenities, hotels universally attempt to project a certain image largely mirroring the local style, tone, and culture of their locations.

When Airbnb looked at the range of products in the marketplace and the unmet needs of a wide range of travelers, they exposed the need for a different level of authenticity, a need for hyper-locality, and sense of independence that only staying as a guest in someone else’s house could provide. Additionally, they exposed an abundance of “underutilized inventory” in the form of unoccupied vacation homes and unrented investment properties in the exact locations where people wanted to be – typically not in areas allowing commercial properties like hotels. Add the ability to find, secure, and arrange payment on a place to stay that represents a significant discount over the chain alternatives, and Airbnb was born. Airbnb’s value now exceeds that of the three nearest hotel competitors combined and is now the largest hospitality company in the world

Framing the Impossible
They key to exposing the impossible rests first in identifying and understanding some of the underlying human behaviors associated with any given industry, product, service, or experience area. Once there’s a reasonable understanding in the range of these behaviors – the full spectrum or polarities in the understood conditions or implied need states involved – a range of 2 x 2 frameworks can be expressed. These frameworks can somewhat arbitrarily pair any two spectrums or polarities in an almost random, endless series of frameworks. Each framework will consist of 4 quadrants and each of those quadrants will define some form of experience, the expression of a condition, a business type or business model, etc. Be prepared that most of these will define some existing state, the prevailing paradigm, or the status quo exposing an existing model for a transportation, financial service, or hospitality company as was the case for Uber, Bank of America, and Airbnb.

But some of these frameworks will expose a quadrant that may initially make no sense, seems “a bit off,” and awkward. These irrational, preposterous, and unreasonable quadrants are rich areas for inspiration, You have now entered the “impossibility zone.”

The more impossible these quadrants appear to be, the more promising they likely are. If nothing impossible shows up, expand the polarities, or change the axes until something interesting gets exposed or a provocative question is raised. Don’t stop until you expose the ridiculous or illogical. That’s where the potential innovation is likely “hiding.”

The Fourth Quadrant
There’s magic in exposing impossibility and making the impossible possible. From the “horseless carriage,” “oil-less lamp,” “wireless telephone,” and “driverless car,” to carrying around 10,000 songs in your pocket, landing a rover on Mars by bouncing it to its destination, operating on a patient 100 miles away via a robot surgeon, seeing and talking to a friend 8000 miles away, or having an AI agent write your love letter, one can only imagine the future we can create.
So, if your goal is to imagine the revolutionary, disruptive, and transformative, consider the impossible and start by exposing really hard, seemingly “impossible” questions:

How might everyone vote in a fair, meaningful and trusted way?
Could energy be distributed more efficiently and fairly?
How could behaviors be changed to deal with climate change?
How might AI make government more effective?
What if all trash went away by never existing to begin with?
Is advertising the only viable media and social media business model?
Could Wi-Fi be free and ubiquitous?
What’s your impossible?

References:
“Thank You For Being Late – An Optimist’s Guide for Thriving in The Age of Accelerations,” by Thomas Friedman, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016

TED TALK – Adjacent Possible – 2023, by theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman
https://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_kauffman_the_adjacent_possible_and_how_it_explains_human_innovation?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

TED TALK – Start at the Edge – 2017, by physicist, Vittorio Loreto
https://www.ted.com/talks/vittorio_loreto_need_a_new_idea_start_at_the_edge_of_what_is_known?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Thomas Stat is an innovationist, business resultant, and seeker of the impossible. As an insatiably curious and defiantly generative polymath, he combines his love of engineering, astrophysics, psychology, design, art, and business to help expose and deliver what’s next. He can be reached at tstat@11consultinggroup.com or found foraging for the impossible somewhere on this planet and beyond.