Humans, simple beings, complex actions. Learned helplessness (LH) is an inferred psychological state used to account for the behavioural phenomenon in which animals exposed to uncontrollable aversive events, i.e. exposure to an aversive unconditioned stimulus that is not predictable, escapable or avoidable, exhibit deficits in their instrumental responding in terms of escaping from subsequent aversive events. Blah blah blah. Basically learning to live with a problem. Learned helplessness has close-knit ties with innovation. See the thing is, even if humans are the same on paper, our experiences are not. There are some lives out there that can see through these problems. Innovation is driven when ordinary things feel ridiculous to you, or to them. There are so many things around us that were not there at some point. Somebody made them and now our life is utterly dependent on it. A good example would be the device you are reading this on. Creating demand.

There is this course recently introduced at my campus. New Venture Creation or something. Can not lie I already forgot its name. It basically asks you to innovate. A friend group of mine took it up and were making something for it. We will not be going over it as it is their thing, but something I learnt from them is the fact that they missed out on two of the most important things while marketing/strategising their product; exclusivity and familiarity. The two key things needed to trap a human being’s attention. It reminds me of Paul A. Strassmann’s book, ‘The Business Value of Computers’ and how it talked about studying the companies attention to management and operational productivity. Another interesting thing about us beings is how the cost of experimentation has reduced and we as a collective gathered so much data about each other that we do not need to make decisions based on judgement.

I also remember this tech magnate talking about how when he once offered free shipping on his products for a brief period of time, and people formed a cognitive dissonance for it. Knowing that they could get free shipping, they started feeling entitled to it. There is this one state in India that provides a lot of free stuff to its state citizens which seems like the most absurd thing to me. A source of great revenue by taxation has now been made free. This also means the people there will start feeling entitled to it and any future change in governance structure will be a hassle and a half. Well, let us not talk politics here and move back to psychology and the role it plays in being able to understand the market. We never go into too much detail here but we do like being aware of as much as we can!

I do wish to get to study Psychology at some point, even if informally. Stanford offers this amazing minor in Psychology. I wish BITS Pilani could offer the same.

An interesting story. Bette Nesmith Graham. Oh, did she finesse the system. So a secretary in the 1950s but subpar at her job, she is. Prone to making typing mistakes, single mother, needed a grip over herself real quick. Invented liquid paper or white-out. You know, amazing invention. Sold to Gillette for 47.5 mil USD. It was just white paint in a tube. Everybody had access to white paint, some people just learnt to live with their typewriter mistakes. Learned helplessness. She did not.