Research Hit: Why Great Ideas Can Die

Andy Hab
4 min readJan 19, 2024

New research shows novel ideas generate highly differing opinions which is seen as negative

I’m full of great ideas!

Me too!

But most people ignore them!

This is precisely what this research aimed to do: tease out how people respond to novel ideas. Obviously novel doesn’t necessarily mean great, but great ideas are normally novel. What is more interesting is that this is based on some real world experiences from the military but also with a view to business.

Sounds fascinating what is the background story?

This study just out, was published by Wayne Johnson, currently at the University of Utah (but this study was funded by Cornell University while he was there), and something he experienced in the military. He was in a unit whose role it was to neutralize roadside bombs in Afghanistan in 2010. The US military at the time used a tactic developed in Iraq that basically involved remaining in your armoured vehicle and using advanced tools including radar and metal detection tools to identify high risk objects and destroy them.

That seems like a good idea — but the situation and threat in Afghanistan was very different: the local insurgents were making bombs out of…

--

--

Andy Hab

Sharing fascinating, fun, and important knowledge on the brain and human behaviour - most days. And masters track athlete - still going strong!