The world will not wait for you to figure it all out. Nor will your colleagues. Nor will your customers. So, whatever patterns you’re looking for, you’re going to have to figure them out in the world, as you’re doing. • Others can become discouraged or disillusioned by ideas that don’t quite work. It will be up to you to show them that the experiment itself will have value, regardless of the outcome. Before you present your idea, discipline yourself to describe in detail what could be learned even from the worst-case scenario outcome. • Don’t ever gain the reputation for being the chief “defender of the idea.” The defender of the idea is the person from whom one always gets the same answer, the person whose creative back is up against the wall, the person who has closed his or her mind to new information. You do not want to be this person. You want to be seen as the person who, despite your strongly held views and insights, is always open to new data, new evidence, new patterns of understanding. • Having said this, remember “open,”
