Little Bets: How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries

Healthy insecurity is the same phrase Gehry uses to describe how he feels when he begins each new project. “I’m always scared that I’m not going to know what to do,” Gehry says. “It’s a terrifying moment.

would hear people say was that they would do something new—take an unconventional career path or start a company—but that they needed a great idea first.

Reorient: Be flexible in pursuit of larger goals and aspirations,

little bets are concrete actions taken to discover, test, and develop ideas that are achievable and affordable.

Experiment: Learn by doing. Fail quickly to learn fast. Develop experiments and prototypes to gather insights, identify problems, and build up to creative ideas,

“But by the time they are six and a half years old they stop asking questions because they quickly learn that teachers value the right answers more than provocative questions.”

“For instance, they were taught how to be more open to opportunities around them, how to break routines, and how to deal with bad luck by imagining things being worse.” Wiseman included exercises to increase chance opportunities, such as building and maintaining a network of luck, being open to new experiences, and developing a more relaxed attitud

little bets, allowed him to explore new styles and forms with audiences. His surviving manuscripts are riddled with pockmarks, corrections, changes, and cross-outs, some so deep that he would even puncture the manuscript paper with his quill. Over time, Beethoven arrived at a highly distinct style, helping to usher in a new period of classical musi

do things to discover what they should do.