Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models

by Gabriel Weinberg

Business strategist Geoffrey Moore named this jump crossing the chasm in a book by the same name. The chasm here refers to the fact that many ideas, companies, and technologies fail to make it from one side to the other.

But if you think a competitive threat does have a decent chance of crossing the chasm, you should pay close attention. That’s because if they do cross the chasm, it will mark a tipping point of significant and much more rapid adoption.

You are constantly assessing new threats, bolstering the strength of your moats, and pivoting as needed over time.

Find a secret and build your career or organization around it, searching via customer development for product/market fit (or another “fit” relevant to the situation). Strive to be like a heat-seeking missile in your search for product/market fit, deftly navigating the idea maze. Look for signs of hitting a resonant frequency for validation. If you can’t find any bright spots in what you’re doing after some time, critically evaluate your position and consider a pivot. Build a moat around yourself and your organization to create sustainable competitive advantage. Don’t get complacent; remember only the paranoid survive, and keep on the lookout for disruptive innovations, particularly those with a high probability of crossing the chasm.

“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”

When people don’t really understand what they’re doing, they are cargo cultists, unlikely to get the results that they seek. For example, cargo-cult entrepreneurs might constantly go to startup networking events, but never actually build a viable company. Cargo-cult science appears to be a scientific endeavor, but it does not rigorously follow the scientific method (see Chapter 4). Cargo-cult investors might try to copy what they see others investing in, but they do not understand the reasons behind the investments, and so their investments don’t perform as well in the long run.

Second, try writing. Even if you never publish anything, the act of writing clarifies your thinking and makes you aware of holes in your arguments.

Over time, your efforts will expand what Warren Buffett calls your circle of competence. The inside of the circle covers areas where you have knowledge or experience—where you are competent—and in those areas, you can think effectively.

Anywhere in life, your success rate will drop if you operate out of your circle of competence. You can suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect (see Chapter 8), where you make mistakes because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Once you have the ideas, of course, they’re no good if you don’t practice. If you don’t practice, you lose it. So I went through life constantly practicing this multidisciplinary approach.