What Jurassic Park teaches you about trusting your instincts

Sometimes you need to ‘go with your gut’. But how do you know if your gut knows best?

In the 90’s Steven Spielberg was looking for a technological solution to the problem of how to make dinosaurs look realistic. The most obvious solution from previous experience was stop motion/animatronics like those used in Jaws.

However, an employee at George Lucas’ special effects company ILM suggested that computers were now in a position to do photo-realistic graphics. Spielberg’s response? “Prove it”.

So in a private screening a test piece of footage was shown to demonstrate the CG footage computers were capable of. Everyone in that room knew instantly they were seeing the future.

People who saw this were at the edge of their industry. Their gut told them this was amazing because they knew from experience it was ahead of the game. From their experience they understood what this new technology would bring, what new things it could accomplish.

In the Book “Originals” the author describes scenarios when you should trust your gut and when you shouldn’t. If you are new to an industry then you should not trust your gut as you do not know the market well enough. If you have been in a market too long you will be entrenched in old ways of thinking. The sweet spot is when you have been in a market long enough to understand it but not so long you cannot deviate from the status quo.