“That is exactly what I was going to say!” We have often heard this throughout our own lives and we probably have said it several times as well. So is it pure coincidence or is there something bigger at play. Ove the course of the last 9 months many of us have turned to Netflix to do the classic binge watching. Whether it be watching all the seasons of the Office or Parks and Recs, at some point over these last few months we found ourselves locked in to a show and barely coming up for fresh air. Several weeks later we log back in and we have our class Netflix suggestions based on our prior watchings. Who came up with these? How did they have any idea that I was in the mood for some Indiana Jones?
About ten years ago, Netflix created a million dollar contest and they so creatively tagged it the “Netflix Prize.” Hey Netflix, can I make a suggestion? The contest was the first of its kind to open up big data and use some machine learning. Several Computer Science vocabulary that are not necessary for the remaining part of the email. Thousands of college students, professors, average data crunchers, and more were intrigued and got to working on an algorithm that will get a user like me from the Office to Indiana Jones. The race started and many hours of sleepless nights with empty cans of Red Bull’s ensued. So what happened? The crazy thing about this is almost three years later one team came up with the winning algorithm. Even crazier, that another team submitted the same algorithm but 20 minutes later. Let that sink in. Three years of data mining and coding and yet two teams submitted winning proposals just 20 minutes apart!
Instances like this are a lot more common than one can imagine. Look at the vaccines for COVID-19. Several companies, within days or hours of each other, announced they had a vaccine over 90% effective. Months and months of research and several companies within hours produce vaccines? Yet another story, the discovery of Calculus faced a similar controversy in the 17th century. Two gentlemen from different parts of Europe came up with Calculus and each accused the other of cheating and stealing their work. I find stories like this incredible and it often makes me wonder what else is going on. It surely cannot be pure coincidence. There are over 7.5 billion people in the world so it is hard to believe that each person has a completely different idea than another. But what is fascinating is how similar our minds work and process solutions. Although we are all different we still have so many similarities and there is nothing wrong when we collaborate to come up with common solutions. So instead of competing against your fellow co-worker, after all you may come up with the same solution at the same time, why not collaborate with them and see what other creative solutions can be implemented.
Take care,
Sully