Encouraging people to experiment without fear of failure, and encouraging collaboration across different disciplines opens the door to unexpected solutions and groundbreaking success, says Paul Sloane
In the summer of 1853, a particularly demanding customer (rumoured to be the railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt) visited the Moon’s Lake House restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York. He repeatedly sent his order of french-fried potatoes back to the kitchen, complaining that they were too thick and not crispy enough. This so annoyed the chef, George Crum, that in a moment of pique, he decided to teach the fussy customer a lesson. He sliced the potatoes paper-thin, fried them to a brittle crisp in hot oil, and, for good measure, doused them with an extra helping of salt. To Crum’s astonishment, the customer, instead of being insulted, was delighted with the “Saratoga Chips,” as they came to be known. The accidental creation was an instant success and chips (or crisps in the UK) were born.
This is a classic unexpected solution. Repeated trials and failures, annoyance, frustration and radical action led to a surprising success. Unexpected successes can occur in any field at any time.
“Curiosity is like a muscle – the more you use it, the stronger it gets”
Larry Page was born in 1973. He studied Business and Computer Science at Michigan State University. He then applied to do a further degree at Stanford. It was during his orientation programme in 1995 that he met a graduate student, Sergey Brin. The two hit it off together and became friends. They were both smart, rebellious and geeky.
They were fascinated by the World Wide Web, which was exploding in use in the mid-1990s. Page’s dissertation topic was how to assess the relative importance of different web pages. He borrowed an idea from his parent’s world – academic research. One way to judge the importance of a research paper is to count how many other research papers reference it as a source. Page wanted to do something with web pages, but although it was easy to see how many links went out from a page, it was not easy to see how many other sites linked to it. Then he conceived an audacious question: “What if we could download the whole of the World Wide Web and analyse all its links?”
At that time in early 1996 there were over 100,000 web sites, with over 10 million documents and around a billion links. And it was growing exponentially. Page was undaunted. He asked for permission to download the entire web content to the University Server. Remarkably, his supervisor agreed. Page built a Web crawler, a program which went through site by site and stored links and addresses. The project quickly grew to huge proportions. It absorbed over half of Stanford’s entire web bandwidth and caused the university server to crash but the authorities were lenient and allowed him to continue.
They were building a Web analysis tool. Page later said: “Amazingly, I had not thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn’t even on the radar.” They built smarter ways to assess the value of a page based on the number and quality of incoming links. It then dawned on them that they had discovered the basis for a search engine of higher value than anything else around. They developed their approach so that they not only counted the number of incoming links but assigned a higher value to a link coming from a site with many incoming links. This was a novel and recursive method which gave greater accuracy in assessing the relative importance of sites.
Page and Brin called their search engine Google. In April 1998 they published a paper explaining their approach without giving away the exact details. In order to commercialise the project, they approached the CEOs of the leading search companies of the day – Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Lycos and Excite. They presented their case and asked for $1m to licence their patents and tools. In each case they were turned down. Page said later: “It was not a significant expense to them. But it was a lack of insight at the leadership level. A lot of them told us, ‘Search is not that important’.”
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. It went on to wipe out all the big players who had turned down the two students.
There are three important lessons here. First the power of curiosity and an audacious question, “What if we could download the whole of the World Wide Web and analyse all its links?” A question that few people would have even contemplated. Second the power of allowing bright people to run experiments with little control or supervision. Thirdly that in looking for one thing, the ranking of pages, they discovered something unexpected – a powerful search tool.
“We should deliberately step into the unknown – just out of pure curiosity”
A mindset that questions and explores
Curiosity is like a muscle – the more you use it, the stronger it gets. Cultivating curiosity is not about magically acquiring knowledge, but about deliberately adopting a mindset that questions, explores, and embraces the unknown. It’s about rekindling the childlike wonder that allows us to see the world with fresh eyes, transforming passive observation into active inquiry.
First, we must actively challenge our assumptions. Our assumptions can act as mental barriers, preventing us from seeing new possibilities. We must constantly question our beliefs, even those that seem self-evident. What are we taking for granted? What are we overlooking? What are the hidden assumptions that are shaping our perception of the problem? One effective approach is to dedicate specific time for “Curiosity Hours.” These are designated periods where employees are encouraged to ask curious questions and explore novel ideas. This provides the mental space necessary for divergent thinking. Furthermore, promoting cross-functional collaboration programmes can be highly beneficial. By encouraging teams from different departments to work together on seemingly unrelated problems, organisations can foster organic cross-pollination of ideas, leading to unexpected insights.
Second, we must embrace experimentation. Innovation is rarely a linear process; it is often a messy, iterative journey of trial and error. We must be willing to experiment, to take risks, and to accept that failure is an inevitable part of the learning process. Booking.com runs over 25,000 tests every year. This approach has transformed a small startup into a giant of the travel industry. Extensive experimentation has been crucial for their marketing and innovation strategies. By embracing experimentation, we create a safe space for curiosity to flourish.
Third, we must foster a culture of intellectual humility. This means acknowledging the limits of our own knowledge and being open to learning from others, regardless of their background or expertise. It means recognising that we don’t have all the answers and that there is always more to discover. It also means that we must be willing to admit when we are wrong and to change our minds in the face of new evidence.
Fourthly, we must look in places we normally don’t visit. We must speak to people we normally don’t encounter. We should read articles and books in field we normally ignore. We should deliberately step into the unknown – just out of pure curiosity.
Cultivating the conditions for creative solutions
Although chance plays a big part, the conditions for successful serendipity can be cultivated. In business we need to create an atmosphere of psychological safety where people are free to voice controversial ideas without fear of criticism. We need to encourage people to experiment without fear of blame for failure. We should encourage collaboration between people working in widely different disciplines. We should use tools including AI to develop and test radical ideas.
These approaches will lead to beneficial and sometimes brilliant innovations. At a corporate level you will create an organisation that is fun to work for and can attract and retain talented people. And you will get some unexpected solutions.
About the author
Paul Sloane is the author of The Art of Unexpected Solutions: Using Lateral Thinking to Find Breakthroughs, published by Kogan Page, priced £14.99.
