Laura and I and our friends Lea & George had a quiet New Years Eve taking in the new Sherlock Holmes movie. I don’t know whether I was tired and could not get into the movie or I’ve been spoiled forever by Avatar’s stunning 3 D standard. The good news is Johnny Depp is coming in March with Alice In Wonderland in 3 D.
The one thing that I did come away with from the movie was this Sherlock Holmes quote played by Robert Downey Jr.; “is it the theory that proves the experiment or the experiment that proves the theory?”
This quote or question resonated with the following activities that I had over the holidays;
- I read a remarkable series of articles in January 2010’s Wired Magazine; FAIL – Screw Ups, Disasters, Misfires, Flops ~ Why Loosing Big can be Winning Strategy
- I invested time in writing a One Page Business Plan
The FAIL – Screw Ups, Disasters, Misfires, Flops article offered that scientists have theories of what is supposed to happen in the experiment yet the results of the experiment often contradict the theory of what was supposed to have happened.
For a moment, if you go down the route of Quantum Physics and change the word theory for belief and buy into the notion that “thoughts are real forces” then you would have to subscribe to the notion that the observer of the experiment and their core beliefs create the result of the experiment. It would stand to reason to be conscious of what you believe before entering into an experiment or business plan.
“A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.” – Albert Einstein
Isn’t a business plan an experiment?
Then theories are just a bunch of good or ideas until proven by first flushing them out in writing in a good business plan.
Is your business plan written and are you in action this first working day of 2010?
I’ll leave you with the follow quotes;
“A theory can be proved by experiment but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.” – Albert Einstein
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everybody’s a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We’re all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.” – David Cronenberg
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong” – Richard Feynman
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” – Albert Einstein
This last quote from Einstein goes into answering the question of why so many business people don’t have a business plan … they are afraid of being wrong.
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau
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