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Comment by kurtle | Hacker News Reader

Disney is a classic example of a company that made huge leaps and transformed itself from a single revenue stream to a very diverse one.

Can you think of what the board of Disney said to Walt when he decided to open a brick and mortar theme park when their only product to date had been a few animated films? Or how what they said when he unveiled the original vision of EPCOT as a real city with a theme park bolted on.

I don't have a strong opinion in Google doing their moonshots but it's happened before.

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> * you think of what the board of Disney said to Walt when he decided to open a brick and mortar theme park when their only product to date had been a few animated films?*

I read an article on Walt once that covered this.. he went to all his friends and family and told them his plan. Every single person told him he was nuts and it would never work.

That was how he knew he was on to something - the fact it had never been attempted before only made him more certain it was going to work.

> he went to all his friends and family and told them his plan. Every single person told him he was nuts and it would never work.

> the fact it had never been attempted before only made him more certain it was going to work.

Those are interesting reasons for being certain it will work. The combination of all the people you cherish the most telling you it's a bad idea and the fact that no one had tried it before. I mean, sure, I understand the romance of it and these reasons giving someone the drive to try it and succeed. But making you certain it's going to work? That I don't understand.

If people are universal in their opinions that something isn't going to work, you then have to assess their credibility.

If you decide that the problem is they lack some specific insight that you possess (and you're really sure about that fact), then in combination with their universal negative position, I believe you can be confident that you're on to something. There's a tendency for strikingly new things to be laughed at, or otherwise denounced as absurd; once you notice that effect at play by people, and you can reasonably confirm your own thesis that you know something they don't, it's a great indicator.

I'm sure there are plenty of people that went to all their friends and family with an idea, were told it wouldn't work and when they tried it it didn't.

A few? Walt got to Hollywood in 1923 and Disneyland opened in 1955. Perhaps more than a few. I would think the board would be fine with it, like Google's board seems to be fine with what Page is doing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney

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