Having a presentation is one of the best ways to learn. During the couple of years I have had many opportunities to have my presentation about weak signals in different forums and companies. The questions and comments from the audience are very valuable for me and they push me to think issues from various perspectives. One of the best comment I got was yesterday from one company I visited. When I showed my 5 bullet point ” weak signal test” (check the test for example from these slides) to the audience one person wanted to add an extra  bullet point to the test: if it is illeagal it is a weak signal…He further argued, that he used to be in business that was at one time somehow illeagal, but now it is the common way to operate. Good point!!

Another comment from that lecture was something like: “do you really mean that we should start to collect some stupid things (i.e. weak signals)..?” That good comment pushed me to really rethink about the concept stupid. What is stupid? I think that it is something that does not fit to our mental model. Stupid for you can be very relevant and important for somebody else. And when these people happen to be your major customer segment, you better rethink your concept of stupidity. And on the other hand, when you happen to familiriaze yourself with something stupid, it actually might make sense to you more.

I thought that mobile phones are stupid when I saw the first ones in the early 1990’s. Now I do not think that anymore.  I also considered computers to be stupid innovation in 1980’s, but today I use them all the time.

So be careful when you call something stupid. It might be big issue in the future!