Track & Field & Invention

Imagine if Track & Field only had the 200 meter sprint. The 100 meter race didn’t even exist. No one specifically trained for it. The shortest measurable race was a bend in the track and a long straight away. If you won the 200, you were considered the fastest sprinter at the meet.You had a brilliant idea. It may have been motivated by your fast starts (you were always first coming around the turn, but never had a strong finish), your creativity, your interest in evolving the sport, whatever. It doesn’t matter. You just knew you had a good idea. “What if we invented a new race? If we stopped at 100 meters, it would measure speed in a different way. ” No one took you seriously.So, you decided you'd enter the 200 and simply stop half way. You lost, of course. And you would lose every time. Because you were complying by the measurements of winning for the race you personally didn’t even want to run.You can’t invent a new race while running the old one. No one will take you seriously. And you’ll tire of losing—on their terms.But inventing something new is not necessarily an invention of something entirely different. Often, it’s simply changing what you measure. In this scenario, it’s all running, but only one variable changed: the distance.Brilliance is often only one variable different—the measurement of one alternative datum, one factor, one quantity, one unit.What will you measure differently to completely re-imagine your thing?