BazermanMoore

46 Chapter 3: Bounded Awareness
As you can see, the solution is simple. However, bright people can look at this
problem for hours and not solve it. Why? Because bounds created by our minds eliminate
the solution. Creativity problems frequently make people feel tricked. A common
‘‘trick’’ of such problems is to misdirect our attention by causing us to psychologically
see bounds on the problem. These bounds prevent discovery of the solution. After the
teacher breaks the psychological bound, the solution seems obvious. The most critical
barriers to creative decisions are our assumptions, or the information we allow into the
defined problem space. To fit problems into our previously established decision-making
processes, we make false assumptions about them. Creativity problems may not seem
to be representative of common real-world decisions, but the tendency to place false
perceived bounds is a very common aspect of decision making.
The phenomenon of bounded awareness is captured by the familiar exclamation,
‘‘How could I have missed that?’’ Many of us have this response after seeing important
information that we previously overlooked. Offering an intriguing approach to idea innovation,
Nalebuff and Ayres (2003) encourage us to ask, ‘‘Why not?’’ For example,
they argue that the ‘‘anticipation’’ problem posed by the slow flow of ketchup out the
top of its bottle was solved by a new design that allows the bottle to be stored upside
down, a design later extended to a broad array of products. Nalebuff and Ayres encourage
product developers to imagine the products they would want to create if resources
were not a constraint. Once you know what you want in an unbounded world, these
researchers suggest, you can explore whether it is viable in our real, constrained world.
This chapter examines the prevalence of bounded awareness in a variety of realms:
(1) inattentional blindness to obvious information, (2) the failure to notice obvious changes
in one’s environment, (3) the tendency to focus on only a part of the problem at hand, as
well as the bounded awareness in (4) groups, (5) strategic decisions, and (6) auctions.
INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS
Over twenty-five years ago, Neisser (1979) asked people to watch a video of two visually
superimposed groups of players passing basketballs. One group wore white shirts and
the other group wore dark shirts. Participants were instructed to count the number of
passes made between members of one of the two groups. The superimposed video
made the task moderately difficult, and participants had to give it their full attention.
The interesting result is that only 21 percent of Neisser’s participants reported seeing a
woman who clearly and unexpectedly walked through the basketball court carrying an
open umbrella. Our repeated experience, using this video in the classroom, is that far
fewer than 21 percent of our students notice the woman.