What if entrepreneurs and freelancers could access a development tool that helped them hone their ability to spot opportunities?
Has anyone else read the amazing novel Pattern Recognition by William Gibson? I finished it a month or two ago and could really relate to the idea of being able to instinctively recognise trends before they really take off. It is something others have told me I am quite good at and so I tweeted about it using the #ididntknowiwasgoodat hashtag, launched in my previous blog post about self knowledge and identifying your skill sets.
It is the same sort of skill referred to by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink. The idea that if you immerse yourself in a subject, and become what is commonly termed an expert, (although I prefer the idea that there are no experts, because everyone is always still learning) you are able to access instinctive knowledge almost pre-cognitively. Blinking rather than thinking. Knowing something to be the case without necessarily being able to explain how or why.
Then, just the other day I tweeted a link to an article in The New York Times that was talking about educational establishments that are introducing new methods of Calisthenic Learning. New systems based on Pattern Recognition where students study graphs and build associations between the shape of the graphs and their associated mathematical formulae. This enabled them to develop an instinctive knowledge of which formula to use in particular mathematical problems without having to reason it out as such.
This really got me thinking, what if it were possible to develop a similar training program for business. What if entrepreneurs and freelancers could access a development tool that helped them hone their ability to spot opportunities? What if we could create something accessible in Skills Hive to help our members become even more proficient and successful in their chosen field?
It also dawned on me that the more we feel we can rely on our instincts, the less fear we have of failure. And, as outlined in this week’s newsletter, fear is the most common barrier to success.
The idea is now logged in the Skills Hive innovation lab until such time as we have the right mix of people with the requisite attributes to collaboratively breathe life into it. Could you help make it happen?
