Most people think that a lecturer who teaches economics at the University is sophisticated and smart. A small business owner who earns 10-20 times is thought of as stupid and primitive. So far, the more it seems to me that the opposite is true. Teacher is often more limited and misguided, repeating someone else’s, often doubtful passages of truth.

Experience is more valuable than seven rules of wisdom.

Arabic saying

He’s a primitive craftsman; his work almost always lacks creativity. By contrast, a small shop owner is forced to solve new problems every day in a new, creative way, and those who haven’t solved one of those have long lost their asset.

I am also particularly touched by so-called experts from newspapers such as “Businessman Daily”. They are so smart that they should already be living on interest. But for some reason they still have to write their highly intellectual articles to earn the living. As you know, if you are able to give accurate predictions in at least 51% of cases, you need to run to the stock exchange at a breakneck speed or to the casino and immediately become a millionaire. Who wouldn’t pay a person who proves the accuracy of their predictions? Apparently, the expert’ predictions are justified in less than 50% of cases.

Perhaps the experts need to use the advice of the weather station’ guard who came to his manager and suggested that, since the accuracy of weather forecasts is 40%, they need to give predictions opposite to those of calculated ones, after which the accuracy of weather forecasts immediately would’ve jumped to 60%. But what do you do with highly scientific models and explanations of the causes of what is happening in the economy?

Let’s return to the knowledge and skills. The ability to do this or that consists of a large number of unseen subtleties and nuances. And because EVERYTHING depends on each of those nuances and how they interact with each other, it’s impossible to create a logical schema and convey everything with words. It’s a lot more effective to try and feel, to catch the state, dynamics etc. This is best done by observing the work of the Master and trying not to repeat it part by part, but all at once and as a whole.

A training system that is based on partitioning of the elements and then their synthesis dooms us to the level of the craftsman and deprives of the opportunity to become a Master.

You can become a Master without breaking a skill into parts, principles, techniques or methods and instead grasping the essence of the whole.

But how do you do it? I was going to state the laws and principles of finding strong moves in business (creativity in business) and yet came to the conclusion that it’s meaningless to break up into pieces such a phenomenon. Unlike machines, which can be disassembled into parts and then reassembled, it will not work with anything that’s alive. You may know what’s inside a dead body, but it won’t “work” anymore.

There is only one principle – the resource of an entrepreneur is the world around him.

Yes, it seems that this is a dead end. Any description or presentation of the ideas is a division of a phenomenon into its parts that are more and less important. But it is not so. There is no element more important or less important in the work of the Master. Well, if we’re talking about learning a trade which I’m not interested in at all since that’s what the universities and colleges are for

Craft suggests lack of creativity, a routine task. By contrast, a Master is performing a seemingly standard procedure always afresh, in an innovative way because each situation is unique. To the Master, the situation is full of novelty; to the craftsman it’s a habit. Master’s eye notices differences while craftsman’ – coincidences. Master’s world is ever changing; the world of a craftsman is repetitive.

How do you, in any situation, find strong moves, which give two, ten, hundredfold result? In order for this to become possible, one, above all, should start trying to look for such solutions. Secondly, there are principles, approaches, rules, techniques and methods that facilitate the finding of strong moves.

Finding strong moves is a creative challenge, but most authors report something vague like a formula they dreamed about, an apple that fell on Newton’ head, Archimedes shouting “Eureka!” and jumping naked from the bath, etc.

It all bears the same relation to the mechanisms of finding strong solutions which, for example, the color of a car has to the engine power. Correlations may sometimes be found, perhaps a car of one brand, with a certain engine, is painted in certain color, but it is not going to help and increase said engine’ power.

So what principles does the engine of creativity work on? Here we need to make a reference to two well-known approaches for finding strong moves – TRIZ, which has a slender theory of solving technical problems at the level of invention, and system analysis – an American thing without which they would not have sent astronauts to the moon and then brought them back.

So, let’s get started.

Resources of the entrepreneur are the entire world around him. That is, if you are targeting only at those resources (e.g. money) that you personally have, and you have $100 in your pocket, then, in order to earn ten thousand dollars, you, by an optimistic assessment will need five to ten years of investing that $100 and reinvesting the profits.

If you look over everything that is in your city, country, finally, in the world and then find 10-50 million dollars or much more in money or equity that is used inefficiently. And then you need to make an offer to the owner about how to use them smarter and negotiate the share of the profits you get.

He won’t agree, you might object – and rightly so, I say. Firstly, nobody immediately agrees on such proposals, and secondly, if you cannot convince the owner, then you do not deserve large sums of money.

How to convince people, especially owners, I will explain later, but herein lies the same problem as with the rest. Knowledge does not mean understanding, and even more so skills. Knowing the purpose of pedals, gear knob or the steering wheel significantly differs, or even more so has no connection with the ability to drive a car.

There are people who cannot explain how they are doing something, but can put on a masterful job. By contrast, a typical university teacher can go on and on about macroeconomics, marketing, management and cash flow but cannot create a small company with the profit of some 20 thousand dollars a month.

Those who can do it almost always do not know how they do it. Artists, writers, composers, entrepreneurs or communication masters are a great example.

Those who know but cannot do it – for example, teachers, academics, consultants, experts and journalists. And really, why should a teacher teach at a low wage and a consultant provide an advice if they can do that what they teach. They could be successful owners of businesses with an income of hundreds of times more that their current wage.

Let me repeat: it is a very harmful misconception that allegedly by means of lectures at the university, any of the courses to which a person goes to, you can get a skill to learn to do something. Students are taught to tell how to do something, that is, the teacher teaches what he knows, i.e. how to tell someone about some sort of process, and this is what the student learns.

These two areas – the knowledge and skill – are almost unrelated. They involve very different, rather the opposite, methods. What’s good for learning is bad for skills and vice versa.

But, somehow, learning almost always means acquiring new knowledge. Which, again, have almost no relation to skill. Almost nothing, but perhaps it does, you might say. Yes, it does – it stands in the way! A man who remembers how and what to do is not as effective as a man who has the skill but cannot explain.

Let’s try to find another way of illustrating what a wandering mind is.

Wandering mind is like child’s rail-road toy where there are many ring ways and several trains of worn out thoughts run, without clashing, over and over the same routes. Similarly, the same ideas that for years are cruising in our minds and our attention randomly jumps from one thought to another – and we believe that this is thinking.

We simply iterate through the usual set of thoughts alike a greasy pack of cards.

Another example – the mind is a worn out record label that has several dozen needles on it and an amplifier with speakers randomly connects to one or another stuck needle.

This label of repeating thoughts has to be thrown in the trash. It is a result of an incompetent author and is hopelessly and utterly flawed.

The quality of thinking for different individuals may differ just as a radio in the kitchen and a symphonic orchestra in a great concert hall. Weak thought that has been thought to the end, disappears (dies) and does not come back. If it does – it’s a defect in thinking. But since our mind is constantly busy, defective thoughts leave no chance for a good idea and draw all of the attention. We use half baked, random components and faulty thinking, operating with those thoughts as a compass and then rely on the usual “maybe”.

Once again, an example about professional players. What a horrible mixture of fragmentary considerations is the thinking of a novice – and how beautifully, professionally and effectively Master plays the game. How often beautifully and effectively are we thinking about our life’ situation and  aren’t acting under the influence of emotions, complexes, resentment or envy?

One more example. Assiduous employee worked ten years at the machine, and diligently, for 8 hours a day performed the same operation. All of the sudden his place was taken by a “lazy” fellow, who made a rationalizing proposal and this operation fell out of the process. How do we explain to the diligent employee that his mind’ laziness made meaningless all ten years of his work? At the factory he was getting a salary, but the fact that, in life, for such work we won’t be paid. In life we’re paid for the result leaving the assembly line, rather than an individual effort.

From employee’ point of view his work has made sense in the form of wages. But from the owner’s point of view it was an unproductive waste. So how do we think of our’ life – as an employee or boss? It can be both, but the income of an owner can be a hundred, a thousand times higher that of employee’ and never vice versa.

He who seeks millions rarely finds them, but those who don’t – find them not.

A worker will never earn more than the minimum paid for such work on labor market. A man who seeks how to get results while saving labor may get paid very well. A man, who can find a new, unique solution, is a potential millionaire.

It’s true that we must explain the difference between real and apparent solution. One often hears the complaint that, here I am, supposedly, came up with a strong solution, and subordinates stuffed it all because they did not have competence, desire or perseverance etc. But as such, if this solution does not take into account the situation, for which it was invented, and if the solution does not take into account the lack of competence of employees, it means that the solution is erroneous. A strong solution has such a quality as self-realization.

Karl Marx has a great example of strong solution. He didn’t lift a finger and yet changed the history of Russia, Eastern Europe and of the whole world.

A future millionaire does not work. He thinks and invents!  Strong solutions always exist in any, even the most neglected situations.

In order for people to work for you, you first need to stop working yourself.

But if a person does not believe that the solution exists, he does not start to look for it and therefore never finds it! And because of that he acts in a familiar way, that is, enjoying the hard work aplenty. However, if he begins to look for a solution and then quickly gets tired of such severely unusual work and, and, having no experience in searching for strong solutions, does not find it anyway.

It’s worth mentioning that under a strong solution I mean a solution which produces ten to a hundred fold when compared with the result of habitual activity – that is, an increase in the number of times of turnover, profit or reduction in cost or time.

Once again, such a solution always exists since such possibility is always there on the market, and thousands, millions of entrepreneurs have proved it.

A valuable idea has slipped in a little earlier that we should stop by. This idea is about the meaning of work. I think, for a workaholic the value is in the sheer volume of work done – the more, the merrier. And for an effective person the value is the result. The less labour expended to produce the result, the better. Saving labor of his own and others – that is the goal of an effective person. A large amount of labour – that’s an objective of the inefficient.

In business, it can be stated as following: do each step at the level of an invention. It costs less and the effect is far greater. An invention can be captured through a patent, there’s even a whole science about this approach – TRIZ – (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. In business, amidst the “flow”, the invention is usually not captured and the reasons for a success of particular company are very difficult to find, rather impossible – in the same way as in the final technical product it is almost impossible to find inventions that were implemented there. Entrepreneurial and inventive thinking share some similarities, and, since in both cases we need to look for strong solutions, these are just different areas of economy and technology.