Guy Reams (00:00.942)
This is day 263, the adjacent possible.
The title of this message comes from the work of Stuart Kaufman. I have his book Investigations in my library. In this work, he explores the idea that life does not leap into radically new forms, but instead unfolds by recombining what's currently available into next step possibilities. In essence, the adjacent possible becomes the next stage in development.
He presents this as an explanation for the rapid biological transformations that occur in organic molecules, proposing that each new molecular formation creates a whole new set of possibilities. Years later, the writer Stephen Johnson would take this idea and apply it to entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity. His book, Where Good Ideas Come From, adapts the adjacent possible concept to explain how great ideas actually form.
Effectively, this concept leads to the belief that innovation does not emerge in giant leaps, but by exploring the next possible step from where you are. The brilliant idea isn't born from a single session or some marvelous back of the napkin epiphany at a roadside diner. It's the next adjacent possibility along your journey. In my personal philosophy, I've taken this to mean that in order to have a successful idea,
you have to get on the path first. That has led me to a personal mantra that I repeat frequently. Success is what you accidentally bump into along the path. The core premise here is that it's less important what you start with and far more important that you start, learn, and then adapt. To illustrate this, let's look at the origin of one of the greatest companies of the modern era, Microsoft.
Guy Reams (01:57.999)
I had the privilege of teaching introduction to computer science at a college for 20 years. What fascinated me during that time was that many of greatest inventions in computing were happening as I was teaching the course. From 1997 to 2017, the early days of computer science exploded into something far beyond what we could have predicted. The adjacent possible was evident everywhere. Each new door that opened led to 50 more.
One of the lectures I gave explored the origins of the largest tech firms of the era. I called it The Revenge of the Nerds, named after the popular documentary. Most people don't know or remember the first company that Bill Gates and Paul Allen created before Microsoft. These two young students from the Lakeside High School Computer Club just wanted to find a way to make money with computers. Computers were cool, and they were hope.
Gates, two years younger than Allen, came across a business problem in 1972 related to the Washington State Department of Highways. You've probably seen those black rubber hoses laid across the street to count traffic, right? Back then, those hoses triggered recordings on paper tape that represented data as 16-bit values. Local contractors were hired to read, analyze, and summarize that data, a slow and very tedious process.
Gates and Allen saw an opportunity. They formed a company called Trafodata to automate the tabulation process using computers. You can almost see the early seeds of the name Microsoft in there. Micro plus soft, micro computing applied to software problems. They eventually secured a contract, but not before hiring a team of kids to enter the data manually because they initially didn't have the tech to read the tapes.
Their first live demo for the state failed, foreshadowing Gates's later live demo failure on stage with Windows. Still, they earned about $20,000 for that first project. Eventually, they realized they needed to build a computer to do the tape reading and analysis automatically. They found a design in the back of a magazine for the recently released Intel 88 and hired someone to build it.
Guy Reams (04:19.0)
They then had to write an interpreter to control the 8-bit machine, spending most of their time writing the software to make this all work. And that's where Microsoft ultimately came from. It wasn't some grand, world-changing idea to write software for the Intel architecture. It was simply the next adjacent possibility. They needed software to solve a problem, and once the traffic analysis business stalled, they saw that writing software was the next most likely opportunity.
This story shows that innovation emerges not by giant leaps, but by exploring the next possible step. So the best thing that you can do? Just get started. Get on the path. New doors will open as you go. Many years ago, while still teaching, I read an article in Ink Magazine titled, How Great Entrepreneurs Think. This introduced me to Saraswati, a professor at the University of Virginia.
who developed a concept called effectuation theory. The core of our theory is this. Entrepreneurs don't start with a grand vision. They start with what they have, who they are and who they know. Then through action and iteration, they co-create opportunities. In the Traffo data story, Gates and Allen didn't wait for the perfect idea. They used the skills and resources they had and took action.
Effectuation theory remains the best model I've found to explain the modern entrepreneurial mindset, especially with software. You start with anything, or actually you start with something, anything, and then learn your way to success. So do you want to come up with a world-changing idea? Well, start. Get on the path. As you move, new possibilities will unfold.
Your success lies somewhere ahead as the next adjacent possibility. The only thing stopping you from finding that door is just not opening more doors.