Question Your Assumptions

“Ever since then, I try to question things that seem, on the surface, to be obvious. Most things are, but occasionally when things don’t add up, there is usually an innocent looking, perfectly reasonable assumption that is wrong. And when you explore and poke around in corners where no one is looking, you’ll find the answers.”

My friend Vijay Ullal gave the 2021 Commencement Speech for Drexel University’s Close School of Entrepreneurship. I was particularly struck by his story about a breakthrough during his days at a semiconductor startup called Maxim:

“(There was) a particularly thorny problem that had bested everyone that had worked on it including consulting professors from top schools. There was one particular parameter that supposedly had been measured several years earlier. I decided to remeasure it. To my shock it was ten times smaller than what we had been assuming. I rushed back to update my computer simulation. Eureka! The model fitted that experimental data exactly.”

Long-held assumptions are a classic example of the kind of conventional wisdom that ought to be questioned. It seems presumptuous to question the work that’s come before, but sometimes a fresh perspective sees that things just don’t add up. All too often, we are all too familiar with our assumptions. They’re the water we swim in. One of the best ways to expose our assumptions to the light of day is to surround ourselves with novices, and create an environment where they’re free to ask smart questions.

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