by Annette
16. April 2007
I confess I am a Deal or No Deal addict. I love to watch the balance between luck & reason weigh in the contestants minds. But the part I find particularly interesting is the end of the game when Howie says, "Let's see what kind of deal you made. What would your next case choice have been?" Howie proceeds to open cases and contestants moan or cheer based on the predictions of what their actions might have been.
But is it really possible for these predictions to be correct? Would the contestant have truly picked those cases? Duncan J. Watts, in a NYT Magazine article, puts this pheonomena in high relief. He discusses the inability to predict cultural trends. Using research he fielded with music preferences, he points up the power of randomness and our ability to be swayed by what other people around us prefer or the 'cumulative advantage' effect. Watts points out that it would be impossible for the editors who passed on the Harry Potter series to have predicted it's incredible success. Who could have anticipated the network effects of people buying simply because it was increasingly popular? And in the same way, the Deal or No Deal contestant really doesn't know what the next cases would be because he or she hasn't yet made them.
So what does this have to do with the average business person? First, it gets us off the hook for our 'failed' ideas. We can cut ourselves a break. Sure we need to analyze what went wrong, but it normalizes the events of failure and points up our need to keep trying to create new ones. And second while we should keep trying to anticipate the future, how to share the idea and create the market for it may be as important as the quality of the idea itself. We have to recognize the power of unpredictability as well as the volatile power of networks. And it means that the Deal or No Deal contestants should cut themselves a break and sleep well with their winnings because who knows what cases they might really have chosen?
