The Path of Most Resistance
The best innovations arise by following the path of most resistance, not least resistance. As Amnon Levav at SIT writes, “In nature, water cascading down a mountain follows the path of least resistance – the easiest route to arrive at its final destination. In thinking, too, our minds tend to take the path of least resistance – those avenues that are familiar to us. So doing, it is difficult to arrive at ideas that are new to us or to our competitors.”
Two principles of consumer behavior* account for this. The Principle of Cognitive Efficiency says that individuals are unlikely to expend any more cognitive effort than necessary to attain the objective they are pursuing. Thus, they use the procedure or judgmental criterion that is easiest to apply. The Principle of Knowledge Accessibility says that individuals typically use only a small subset of the relevant knowledge they have acquired as a basis for comprehending information, generally the knowledge that comes to mind most quickly and easily.
In other words, people stick to what they know and what’s easiest to process. The good news is that people can be trained to recognize this phenomena and shift over to the path of most resistance – where the most exciting ideas are waiting to be imagined.
How do you recognize it? Look for laughter. When something is funny, it means two previously unrelated themes suddenly collided to create an absurdity. For innovation practitioners, laughter during workshops is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it signals a moment when participants have encountered a truly odd and unfamiliar configuration. That means innovation is “right around the corner.” But laughter derails innovation if not handled properly. Here is a case in point.