Fight a Hippo or a Leopard?… The most important skills in the Tech Age

Fight a Hippo or a Leopard?… The most important skills in the Tech Age

Hello Jamaica!

Let’s imagine one day a Billionaire approaches you and says “I will give you J$100M if you spend 1 hour in a cage with a hippo or a leopard”. Do you accept this bored billionaire’s offer or do you move along very cautiously? As odd a scenario this is, it highlights the most important skill needed to traverse the Tech Age and Life; the skill of Good Decision-making. Whether it’s choosing a cryptocurrency to invest in, a cybersecurity solution to protect your digital identity, or choosing the safest self-driving car to give to your children, knowing how to assess a situation and choose the optimal choice is a life-long superpower. 

The scenario above is the first question I ask students of our Decision Sciences course. The idea is to present you with a dramatic life or death situation to test how you approach decision-making, given an unfamiliar topic. As technological innovation accelerates every year you will eventually be presented with a scenario you have little to no knowledge of and an overwhelming number of options to choose from. 

In the next 5 minutes I will present a 5-step process that will help you navigate the ever-evolving tech world, potentially saving you time and money. First off, we are not condoning in any way fighting animals to learn life lessons. 

Step 1, Stop and Frame. It’s important you take your time to fully understand what is going on, the options in front of you and the decisions you have to make. In our example you will be awarded J$100M if you spend  1 hour in a cage with a hippo or a leopard, or you can walk away unharmed with no money. Of the three options, two can result in serious harm. We need to determine which one is best for us. A billionaire will choose differently than a professional hippo fighter. I suggest you google “Hippo”.

Step 2, Choose your Decision Criteria, this step involves determining how you will compare each choice. In this case we will use expected returns, it’s the benefit to us after we adjust for the risks. The benefit is the cash reward, the risk is not leaving the cage alive. To simplify the problem we will use the probability of leaving the cage alive as the adjustment to our reward. The expected return is the probability of leaving the cage alive times the reward. If we don’t make it out we don’t get paid. If we have a 5% chance of leaving the cage, our expected return will be 5M (5% of 100M), if we have a 100% chance of leaving the cage our expected return will be entire 100M (100% of 100M).

Step 3, Research and Rank, this step is all about data gathering to calculate the expected return. We used multiple sources and averaged the survival rates, there is alot of research on animal attacks. Using the research data we estimated the probabilities of surviving in a cage with a hippo and leopard as 42% and 76%, respectively. Hippos are dangerous, don’t let the cartoons fool you, according to national geographics they kill up to 500 people a year. For the hippo option the expected return is 42M, for the leopard option it is 76M and the walking away option will make us no money.

Now Step 4, the Rational Check, we made many assumptions to simplify the problem, this step tests our assumptions to make sure our final decision is reliable. For example, you could leave the cage without some arms and not be able to spend the money or the hippo could fall asleep and not bother you. You have to weigh the importance of these uncertainties on how certain your decision is. The Final step is making a decision that fits your risk appetite, if you are unsure, go with the safest option, or find a new one. So reader what would you choose?

Stay Innovative Jamaica!

P.S I’m suiting up in armor.

, with the caveat of using sparingly. Based on this experiment I can see teams using the metaverse for one to two-hour meetings or ideation sessions. Would you spend part of your workday in the metaverse?

Stay Innovative Jamaica!