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Comment by autokad | Hacker News Reader

A company was holding a competition for 'a great new idea to solve heart disease' with a huge million $ prize. our research group of 30+ people consisting mostly of faculty wanted to win it, so we broke our group into 6 or so sub-groups to come up with ideas and submit it to the greater group.

my group wanted to submit as an idea 'tax on soda'. I was adamantly against the idea. Ignoring the fact that I don't think it would work, its not a 'NEW' idea, and the company that was holding the comp was doing this for PR, and this doesn't seem like an idea they'd choose as a winner. However, when the groups got back together, all of the other groups submitted the same idea, tax soda.

I was floored. there was over 300 years (3 centuries) of higher education among the groups, and they were completely incapable of original thought.

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To comment on a tangential issue...

> there was over 300 years (3 centuries) of higher education among the groups

I don't think simply adding up the total number of years of education is meaningful. Most of that education is redundant. If it were humanly possible I'd be more impressed by 300 years of education for a single person as it wouldn't have the same amount of redundancy.

You'll see this cumulative strategy appear in other areas as well, e.g., "our lawyers have 200 years of experience!"

As much as I would like to hate on lawyers, 200 years of trial or contract experience is meaningful. They have seen countless variations on whatever theme they practice, they know the jurisdiction, they know the judges, the opposing counsel, etc...

Fair points. That wasn't a comment on lawyers, just an (exaggerated) example I've seen before.

Sounds like wisdom of the crowds. A tax on soda is a fairly pragmatic choice that's implementable with minimum fuss and could show a fairly decent improvement across the population of maybe 2-3%

How about someone saying: "They all are going to suggest a tax on soda. Let's try to come up with something else!"?

You should ask why such an old idea were not experimented on large scale, not that is not novel.

When solving problem, start with the obvious, then go with more sophisticated...

Your example is just an example that people do not see the defect in the system, not people cannot come up with novel idea.

These innovation/idea competitions are almost always self-fulfilling prophecies. No one wants to submit an idea that's even slightly out of there because only viable and ideas grounded in reality will win but the only ideas submitted are viable and grounded in reality so there's no way to actually break the mold and most people are scared to.

what was the other alternative that you wanted to explore?

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