We looked at three problem solving prompts: What happens at the limits? Is this a money problem? Is this a branding problem? Today two money problems.
Zynga had just done their earnings call, said Shawn Puri, and Draw Something “had taken away significant steam from Zynga’s games.” With a user shortfall Mark Pincus decides to buy Draw Something. Retelling the story, Puri says that the lawyers told Pincus the deal would take a month. Why? That’s the limit. So Pincus “hired two law firms, one for the morning shift one for the afternoon shift, so he could have a twenty four hour cycle working on the deal and got it done in half the time.”
Puri is recounting his conversation with Draw Something CEO Dan Porter and while the details may be wrong the big idea could be right: hiring twice the labor, even lawyers, demonstrates a money problem.
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Crops are not a money problem. Ukraine’s top six crops cover about the same planting area as in Iowa and Illinois. Russian’s wheat production is about four-million Kansas’s said economist Scott Irwin. Crops take space. They also take time. The Southern Hemisphere can plant more winter wheat now – but there’s not that many great places to plant it. The Northern Hemisphere can plant more spring wheat now – but it’s a less productive crop relative to the winter version.
Irwin lays out some options for crop production solutions and it’s not a money problem.
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One of the Zeckhauser maxims is to take ideas to the extreme. Thinking about money-as-a-solution does this. How would I solve this with a billion dollar budget? Or How would I solve this with no money? These questions and this thinking expands the solution space.
April 2022 update Odd Lots podcast that batteries as a carbon replacement are NOT a money problem but a time and government
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