[MUSIC] As you are coming up with your product, or your service, or your idea, it is important, especially in the early days, that you maintain an open mind, rather than rushing too quickly into a prescribed solution. I will give you a great example. Everybody knows how to draw a vase. So why don't you go through this process, take a few minutes, and just draw a vase. Now I've done this hundreds of times with hundreds of people. And in every single circumstance, people tend to draw a very prototypical picture of what a vase looks like. Now, think if you ask that question in a slightly different way. What if I asked you, design or draw a way that we can enjoy fresh cut flowers in our home. Now I've also done this many, many times with many students. And in almost no circumstance have I ever seen two people come up with the exact same answer. This is why it's fundamentally critical that you learn how to take a step back and frame the problem that you're trying to solve in way that gives you brand new insights. The world renowned design form ideal has an expression for this. And they say fall in love with the problem, not the solution. >> I'm never more alive than when I'm in a DAW and setting up a song ever. I mean, and it's so engaging and creative and alive, that that's what I like. I don't really like the end product where I take it to the market. That's not my goal in this work anymore. It's to be doing it. And every time that I do it to go wow, I don't know where this is going and I like it. >> Today, we make something. And we say, okay, say we want to build a chair. We say, okay, so if I said this is a task, we’re going to go build a chair today. Well, I’ve never built a chair. So let me get all the tools and let me get all the things together. You’re thinking, because you don’t want to fail. You’re so afraid to fail. But I think that if you were encouraged along the way. And even now, if we can teach people this kind of idea of making, just get in the process. Put together a chair. That didn't work, why? I failed, okay, fine. So what do we have to fix? You'll arrive in an incredible solution, and you'll have learned all these things along the way that are so priceless. >> Determine the notion of discovery cooking or whatever you like to call it these days. Some people even call it molecular gastronomy. What it really is about, right, it's very basic. It's about starting every day with no preconceived notions about what can be done and what can't be done. It's about saying what if I could make a poached egg but I didn't want it to taste like egg. I didn't want there to be any egg involved whatsoever. But I wanted it to have the texture of a poached egg. I want it to eat like a poached egg. I want it to break the yolk on the inside like a poached egg. I wanted to eat it on toast. But at the end of the day when you eat it, the white tastes like alfredo sauce. And then the yolk tasted like mushrooms. What if I could do that? Starting every day with no preconceived notions, and not saying, well, an egg will set in a certain way because of a certain thing. But challenging that notion. And if someone were to tell you that no, no, no, that can't be done, using that as inspiration. When you are starting something, rather than starting with a very narrow view, rather than prescribing a solution, take a step back and ask yourself, what is the problem that I'm trying to solve? Who am I trying to serve? Because in learning how to pay attention to those answers, and in really carefully listening, you will often come up with insights about your customer base, about the marketplace in which you are operating. >> So the advice I most give aspiring entrepreneurs when they want to know what to do is to start and to do something. Get out of your way and just go. Engaging with customers and getting out and seeing the world is critical. And it's really essential to get out and talk to people. And young students are notoriously bad at that early on. But I also want to be careful not to squash their own internal light, if you will. Sometimes they do have the answer inside. And if they go spend too much time listening to the customers, they're going to get distracted. The other piece of advice is not to listen literally to customers, but to be very empathetic with what's going on in the world where their customers are interacting. >> So you can see that sometimes stepping back and asking yourself, what is the problem that I'm trying to solve? It can lead, not only to very interesting and brand new ideas of addressing that problem, but often it can lead to critical insights that make the difference between success or failure.
