Found Money or Found Ideas: Which Gets More Takers?

You’re walking down a busy city street and notice a $100 bill lying on the pavement. Do you stop to pick it up? Surveys show over 80% of regular people would grab that cash off the ground. And why not – it requires little effort and there’s $100 in your hand. The reflex is strong.

New Ideas

Now picture this: you’re a business executive and come across an idea that could save your company thousands or even millions. Perhaps an insight about improving operations, cutting costs, or developing a new product. Does that give you the same urge to grab it? Statistics suggest maybe not so much.

While we quickly snatch physical money, evidence indicates far fewer businesspeople incorporate extremely valuable new perspectives and ideas. Once companies reach a certain scale, conveniences and habits often create blindness to outside innovations. We estimate less than 40% of corporate decision makers stop to pick up and leverage ideas that could produce huge financial impact. The inertia not to change remains high even in a world of fierce competition.

Perplexing

This is perplexing given the vast sums on the line from potential business improvements versus, say, finding $100 on the street. Why such different behaviors? When we come across physical money, the value is obvious and instant rewards light up our innate financial motivations. But for executives to see, understand and capture value from a new idea requires much more mental effort. Our brains didn’t evolve specifically for complex business insight – but they did become wired to recognize tangible resources.

Machiavelli Nailed It

Additionally, individuals stumbling upon cash don’t usually have to answer to anyone else if pocketing it. Business leaders proposing substantial changes face scrutiny from boards, investors, employees and others – opening them up to potential criticism if things fail, reducing willingness to take risks.

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”

~ Machiavelli, The Prince.

Summary

Perhaps there are lessons here about better conveying the tangible windfalls ideas could bring, and creating psychologically safer environments for innovating in large organisations. The incentives feel stacked more towards grabbing that $100 bill versus thinking creatively on impactful growth opportunities, even when the latter has exponentially more value. Training our business minds to pick up great insights at least as readily as finding physical currency on the street could have immense strategic and financial benefit.