What Am I Not Seeing?

Who knew there was value in your seldom-used guest room? Or in the empty seats in your daily commute?

Someone did, because we now don't think twice about booking a room (or house, or treehouse, or yurt, or igloo) to stay in when we travel, or of soliciting a driver to take us somewhere by tapping an app. Ubiquitous Internet access was a prerequisite; smartphones really helped.

But the big breakthrough was an insight, someone's shift in assumptions that everyone else accepted as givens. In these examples, it was: people will always want to stay in hotels, or be driven by cabbies. The inverse assumption is that people aren't trustworthy hosts or chauffeurs (and, of course, that guests might be miscreants, too).

The quest for hidden value is very fun, often profitable, and sometimes quite difficult.

The difficulties arise because sometimes unlocking the hidden value requires goring your sacred cows, letting go of beliefs that aren't true.