Value of the Useless
When I hear about “Usefulness of Useless Knowledge” by Abraham Flexner or John Lennon’s quote: ‘Reality leaves a lot to imagination’, I start to wonder on what I think is useless. Is it real or just a figment of my thinking.
What is useless is in the minds of people? Perhaps it is not relevant to them, or they cannot understand the possible significance of the thing or service or research or book or airline. Something like religion and spirituality may mean a lot to someone (useful) and useless to others.
I know people studying dying languages, others art 2000 years ago, others reviewing facets of a dead civilisation, or the morals of people a few hundred years ago. Some I find useful, others I do not understand. We often study what we might think is useless, like algebra, or a required reading literary book for engineering students.
Most people think that pursuit of the useless (in their view), of the meaningless is like trivial pursuit. It may get you brownie points for ‘knowledge’ but may otherwise be of little value.
The trick is to conduct seemingly useless activities and ideas in to useful ones or in useful ways. We also should understand that what we find useless could be useful to others, and many useful ideas emanate from seemingly useless research or work. We learn as kids to make telephones using two cans attached by a taut string. Useless or useful? Can it lead to somewhat useful ideas?
Like Newton and the falling apple. Certainly useless, as apples do fall. But he converted this into something useful and meaningful by thinking about it, and discussing gravity. Gravity that always existed but was never noticed or enunciated by others.
Or the driverless car, for at least a century (and the driverless horse cart before that) was a useless, science fiction thought. Someone took it seriously, and put together many useless and useful ideas and inventions and thoughts, and converted it into a useful and doable, practical driverless car. Today we do not think of this idea as useless, just as driverless flight vehicles and drones which were considered science fiction 50 years ago.
There are two (perhaps more) aspects to uselessness, apart from human categorisation of useful and useless. (I am not going to dwell on spirituality and its use, or if money is really useless to some and so on, but to see how useless can become useful. This is what I call value waiting to happen.)
One is becoming aware of what is around us. Let us look more seriously at things we take for granted and have little use for us. So, if we learn that dolphins can go faster in water than their predicted energy level should have us believe possible, we can find what is called slippery water, or some chemicals they give off, making the water more slippery and reducing the drag or friction on their bodies. Can we make use of this? Many years ago, slippery water chemicals were put into water to run through fire hoses to increase the throughput.
The second aspect is to see if we can make something useful from this thinking. I gave an example above. This is based on awareness and curiosity. Such examples abound and if we do not write them off as useless can lead to useful thinking. Why are flowers coloured? Or how does nutrition go from the roots to a leaf a hundred feet above. Where is the pump? Or is there a different type of pumping device. How can we use this knowledge to make it even more useful? Disentangling the riddles of the universe can lead to many useful ideas of value.
We see many seemingly useless and theoretical thinking that all coalesce together as an invention. The driverless car is an amalgam of many unrelated ideas, inventions, thinking and action.
Many times, we consider mistakes or research that do not bear fruit as useless. We learn from mistakes and so they are useful if we are open to learning.
Relevance makes things useful. But being irrelevant does not make things useless. A party voted out of power may become irrelevant when compared to the Government but is still very useful. We can say the same about other reasons for making things useful or useless, such as authenticity, reliable or unreliable, trustworthy etc.
People we consider as giants in their spheres are standing or stood on the shoulders of many so-called useless people, with what we consider useless ideas, or theoretical thinking. Like the combination of theoretical (useless to many) work by Hertz and Maxwell helped Marconi invent the ‘useful’ radio!
Spiritual, religious, free thinking, freewheeling, free intellectuality are all essential and should not be branded as useless. Abstract paintings and poems we cannot understand are not necessarily useless. Our thinking is useless unless we can comprehend that useless can lead to opportunities and opportunistic thinking to create value. Flexner while discussing Princeton’s Institute of Advanced studies, mentions giants who worked there, not the more useless dwarfs! A common mistake in considering what is useless… meaningless, not without purpose and so on. Let us enable uselessness, that is a way of thinking distinct from usefulness. Thus, saying this website has a lot of useful information is akin to saying it has a lot of useless information. Or useless usefulness or useful uselessness!
Hazlitt in ‘On the Ignorance of the Learned’ states that knowledge in essence must be useful, and comes from experience. Hazlitt persuasively makes the claim that formal education breeds ignorance and animosity. He thinks that book learning cannot replace experience. So again, a useful or useless argument. His example is the learned scholar of China, who can’t find his way to the closest grocery shop
Reality is made up of many useless thoughts and ideas. Especially with fake news, and fake fake news. Are these useless when compared to the truth. Truth is not always reality as historians will tell you.
So many of my friends comment about an airline, or a car, or a hotel, or whatever and say these are useless. If useless how come they keep flying or being in business. Others may find them useful or valuable…do not pass useless judgment on possibly useful items, persons or services. You do not have enough knowledge or data to do so, except your personal experience. Do not use your experience to disgrace someone.
Let me give you an example from Steve Jobs life outlined in the famous Stanford commencement speech that I witnessed live as my son, Karan was graduating. First, he talked about dropping out, and taking seemingly useless courses such as calligraphy. This, he said helped make the fonts in laptops outstanding. Was he calling a formal education useless? And his message, Be hungry, be foolish almost invites you to do the useless! Therefore, do not dismiss everything and every one as useless. They have value waiting to happen that we are not seeing, but value is there waiting for us to convert our thinking from useless to useful. Let us not write these useless things as a waste of time or effort. Let us look or help others look and derive value from their ‘useless’ learning. Let us look for the value of our useless learning that we have not used for years, but has helped us be more thoughtful, more analytical, more active, more useful and Valuable!
COMMENTS
| Cyrus Bagwadia | 09:32 (43 minutes ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g@customervaluefoundation.com | |||
Its thought provoking. As a proverb goes- everything has two sides. Positive and negative.
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| Rajesh Malhotra | 09:27 (54 minutes ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g | |||
Gautam, nothing and nobody can be discarded as of no value: the seeds of greatness lie there, just waiting to be sown!
Warm regards,
Deepa and Rajesh
| Konagaya Akihiko <konagaya@molecular-robot.com> | 06:34 (3 hours ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g, konagaya | |||
Dear Gautam-san
Thank you for your e-mail about new concept for value.
“Value of Useless” is very important concept, I think.
In Japan, there is a well know proverb “The Usefulness of the Useless” originated by a Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu.
Chapter 11
That which is empty is used to create functionality
One may get a profit by pursuing efficiency by eliminating “useless things” for their current business, but might lose everything in future because of the lack of technology and products necessary for new coming ages.
In some sense, R&D is “useless” for the current business but essential for the future business. The cost for R&D is insurance of future business.
Another example is a culture. If people purse knowledge and skill necessary just for job hunting without studying history, geometry, languages, literature, arts, philosophy and basic science, they may lose their own cultures in future.
Best Regards,
-Akihiko
| Dave Ulrich | Sat, 13 Jan, 21:05 (13 hours ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g@customervaluefoundation.com | |||
Great essay, thanks. Knowledge is everywhere.
| Joseph Yacura | Sat, 13 Jan, 21:01 (13 hours ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g | |||
Gautam,
Good article! Thank you.
Joe
| Varuna | 10:10 (29 minutes ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g | |||
As a Buddhist who has been taught about the interconnectedness of all beings and things , the word useless does not arise except sometimes in thoughts , that also we observe and let go .
Useful and useless are as relative as good or bad.
Good article .
Regards
Varuna
Fwd: Value of the Useless Interesting article. In India what is useless to someone could be of immense importance’s point made is regarding Chandigarh city construction waste is the basis of input in the creation of the famous Rock Garden by Nek Chand Saini .waste
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| Devinder Banwet | Sat, 13 Jan, 20:30 (14 hours ago) | ||
| to me | |||
Prof. ( Dr.) Devinder Kumar Banwet , FIE.
Vice Chancellor ( Founding )
| Mkp | Sat, 13 Jan, 20:27 (14 hours ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g, chairman.cdc | |||
Very thoughtful !
Mridul Pathak
| Work | Sat, 13 Jan, 20:16 (14 hours ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g | |||
Gautam
Happy new year
Great article. It echo’s the Eddison knowing how not to invent the light bulb after 1999 attempts. The term “useless”, is a great source of reflection.
A scandal that is currently big news in the UK, is that of 900 post office owners being bankrupted by the UK government in their use of a faulty computer system.
(en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal) I think it will prove a huge source of value management lessons in the future.
It’s lasted 25 years and has just accelerated into the public realm through it being broadcast as a TV drama. ( “Mr bates v the post office) It’s now accepted as the greatest travesty of justice in British legal history.
Uniquely our parliament is having to pass a law to exonerate the post office. Managers. Many of whom were Indian.
Well worth a look.
Kind regards
Gary Mogan
You are welcome Gautam.
In the post office case, the “post masters” were entirely innocent, yet there is a presumption in law that computers never go wrong.
So when 900 post offices start showing losses, the civil servants made them liable, as per their contract. This bankrupted them, leading to lost businesses, homes, relationships, mental health issues, jail and in 4 cases suicide!
This began in 1998, and is still not fully resolved, despite the government passing a legislation in parliament to say they are all innocent and should be repaid. With the court cases and numbers involved it’s cost over £billion. The government is calling on Fujitsu to pay for the compensation.
The computer manufacturer Fujitsu, never publicly accepted a problem with their program, and forced all of their staff to sign non-disclosure contracts.
When in fact they built in a remote access to the accounting system as they knew it was wrong and tried to fix without telling their clients. The result being it’s been covered up by them and civil servants for 25 years.
Thus, this can be a good opportunity to discuss the “value of certainty”.
At some point in any value chain, the individual tasks required to make value happen have to be tested.
Where they are, and “useless” is identified, then that means certainty is eliminated and a new value agenda is created to determine the causes.
Only this is far harder to progress as the “Ass” of assumption is making fools of the entire value chain.
In this example the Japanese computer manufacturer have been making faulty computers for 25 years and not known it. So they have never had a business case to fix any of its problems.
Releasing the questions of what else have they missed! Shall I post this on your blog?
Kind regards.
Gary
| dilip coelho <dscoelho@yahoo.com> | Sat, 13 Jan, 19:41 (15 hours ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g | |||
Dear Gautam
May I congratulate you on your series relating to Customer Value and the many people you have enrolled in supporting a very important part of corporate functionality.
In fact the value of the useless is something that your listeners will love, in my humble opinion. Do persevere with it and keep me in the loop.
Warmest regards
Dilip
| avadhanam ramesh <a.ramesh@vjim.edu.in> | Sat, 13 Jan, 19:40 (15 hours ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g@customervaluefoundation.com | |||
Excellent article. Thanks for the share.
| Ravi Chaudhry | 11:30 (15 minutes ago) | ||
| to mahajan.g | |||
Dear Gautam
Many thanks for sharing your beautiful piece.
Loved it.
My warm greetings for a very happy and personally enriching New Year!
May the year ahead be full of all that is dear to you and matters to you – good health, family happiness, and peace within and all around!
Greetings and Gratitude
Ravi
Gautam Mahajan, President, Customer Value Foundation
Founder Editor, Journal of Creating Value jcv.sagepub.com
New Delhi 110065 +91 98100 60368
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Author of Value Creation, Total Customer Value Management, Customer Value Investment, How Creating Customer Value Makes you a Great Executive, The Value Imperative, Value Dominant Logic, Customer Value Starvation can Kill
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