Stumbled on an idea? Well, good luck in fitting it through a logical process. Many people like to take the rational approach to make decisions and anything new makes us uncomfortable. So how do you break this down?
A neat website i stumbled on exploits all the logical fallacies that could be thought of. While you may enjoy the varieties, the one i could relate to was the “Texas Sharpshooter”. The fallacy states,” You cherry-picked a data cluster to suit your argument, or found a pattern to fit a presumption”. Now this could have anything to do with marketeers, research folks, business decision makers or even the police i dare say. Let’s figure the first one of the lot. You are in a discussion where the latest customer insight is being torn to pieces. Someone pops up saying that a variant of the new soap is doing well in some of the target markets and hence budgets need to be allocated to achieve more penetration. They drill down the data till it begins to please the quorum. Now there lies a sharpshooter. While the soap variant did do well is some of the markets, it was marketed across several others. The lack of data from other regions is also talking. A change in perspective would show that its not doing well in a majority of the regions. In that case, where does our sharpshooter go? Can he still paint a canvas sitting on a pile of budgets to put out?
Similar cases happen in several other areas. When it comes to creating new products, finalizing on target markets, to may spotting organised crime or figuring out patterns. Sharpshooters are going to be everywhere to give the pattern a voice. Will it be a rational approach or just another subjective take that is coloring decision making? I leave that to you for figuring it out.
Minutely Infinite 