. . . we miss the little things because we’re too focused on criticizing the big things.
A restaurant critic slams a new local bistro but fails to notice the washrooms. Too bad, because the sinks would’ve fit perfectly in his tiny downtown condo.
A professional football scout skips the Ivy League schools because they’re “too brainy.” Too bad, because a junior at Princeton would’ve filled his need for a place-kicker perfectly.
An entrepreneur’s invention is dismissed wholesale by a team of venture capitalists. Not what they’re looking for. Too bad they didn’t look closer: The invention might have been a dud, but the entrepreneur’s innovative financing strategy would’ve solved a problem the venture capitalists had been struggling with for years.
What Thomas Edison said: To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
Remember that when you look at the Zurich Polybahn video below. It’s a comically short funicular of only 176m. Barely worth considering from a transportation perspective, except when you look at it’s station design.
More often than not, there’s always something useful in the useless. We just tend not to notice… Too bad for us.