Operators optimize through A/B testing and tweaks. Innovators integrate opposing ideas to find breakthroughs. Roy Sutherland says the opposite of a good idea can be valuable too, and Hegelian synthesis shows how thesis and antithesis create something new that transforms a business.
Operators optimize, but innovators integrate. There's a wonderful idea from Roy Sutherland that the opposite of a good idea can often be a good idea. And taking multiple ideas in tension with each other to discover what the breakthrough is, that is the synthesis of both, is of course it's the essence of Hegelian synthesis, thesis and synthesis business, but it's also really key to building a great business. Now I have known plenty of operators, particularly technical ones, who look at this as an optimization problem. They talk a lot about A/B testing, right? How to get this better, how to get this a little better, a little better, and you do it by inches. And I'm not gonna say there's not value in that, but there's a lot more in trying to figure out what the breakthrough is. What is the idea that's underneath all of this? That you can remove the cruft of that makes these two ideas look like they're in tension, to discover the greatness beneath. That's integration.
