Issue 3: A new bingo card for business meetings, are you jazz or classical in your mindset and a novel use for VR that is probably even less fun than it sounds...
Welcome to Issue 3 of Sparks & Kindling, a periodic digest of the things that have been fuelling our thinking at Where There’s Smoke over the last few weeks. This issue has a bit of a theme focusing on the mind and the medical. We hope you find it stimulating and hopefully useful too - let us know your thoughts.
20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions
When you read this you may start to believe it’s a wonder any of us make any decent decisions at all. But as you’ll quickly realise, that’s its own cognitive bias coming into play! More usefully this is great groundwork before you take new ideas to your board/funders/investors - consider which biases the various individuals tend towards and plan how you’ll be able to challenge or assuage them. And in the meantime, well it could be the new bingo card for business meetings.
99u.com
Don't just finish your product, evolve it
A couple of key biases in the last article sadly lead many great innovations sitting on the shelf of never launched, as the powers that be ask for more information or confirmation of perfection of the idea on the starting blocks. This article argues you need more of a jazz mindset and that to harness innovation you need to abandon all efforts to imagine a perfect end product, rather what you really need is a good one that evolves. There are a few other good takeaways using the jazz versus classical analogy in this thoughtful and long-form article.
Illustration by Sally Thurer
We're more honest with our phones than with our doctors
At the moment we’re in the early days of mobile health apps, focussing on their capability to make informed medical conversations happen at a time to suit the user. Interestingly, this article focuses on how our phones and mobile devices can enable us to have a much better, more intimate and more accurate understanding of our bodies, leading to better and earlier diagnoses. Partnering with the right apps can also be a great source of valuable and surprising insights that you might not otherwise uncover as the Grindr example in the article brings to life.
And finally...
Excedrin Migraine Experience
Have a migraine via virtual reality
There’s a lot of talk about virtual reality and the new VR rollercoaster ride sounds like fun, but for the most part, it all feels a little bit once and done. Now this doesn’t sound fun at all, but it does sound useful and a way to walk in someone else’s shoes so you can design and solve for them better. From next month, if you have a Google Cardboard, you can experience a migraine in VR yourself – now that’s something to look forward to, isn't it...