Optimism – Andrew Armour's Benchstone Blog

On Optimism, Innovation – And Hope.

We are biased towards a positive view of the future and predictions of outcomes need to be tested. But, interestingly, on the balance of things, the benefits of optimism bias out weigh the possible negative ones.

How do you balance an entrepreneurial optimism versus unrestrained recklessness? And how do you stop your innovation and marketing activities being more reliant on ‘ hope’ – than reality? An excellent recent lecture at The Royal Society of Arts and Commerce (The RSA) – by neuroscientist and author Tali Sharot – whose latest work is ‘The Optimism Bias – Why We Are Wired To Look On The Bright side‘ – highlighted the intriguing tendency for more than 80% of us to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.