Little Bets: Post #1--Overview

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries (Free Press, 2011) by Peter Sims and reviewed by Steve Gladis, Ph.D., September 2012.

Overview: “The best entrepreneurs don’t begin with brilliant ideas—they discover them.” This quote comes early on in the book and sums it up. Sims uses example after example of creative geniuses such as John Legend, Thomas Edison, and Jeff Bezos as examples of people who placed a number of small bets to test their ideas early on. They all used what can be called an emergent design. Indeed, discovery is not a linear process, nor is knowledge static—even though textbooks might have us believe those notions. To quote Sims, “As Richard Wiseman’s research shows, chance favors an open mind, receptivity to what cannot be predicted or imagined based on existing knowledge.” In short, when you stay open to the universe, more comes your way!