It’s been observed that “Ha! Ha! and Aha! have much in common. There is, indeed, a curious relation between getting a joke and the act of discovery. That secret something — that prompts us to laugh and causes us to be amazed by what we discover — also offers a valuable clue to anyone seeking lucrative business and investment opportunities.
We won’t keep the reader in suspense any longer: The perception of incongruity is key to laugher, serendipitous discoveries, and business and investment success. Consider first the comical. Were we to examine the comical, in its many varieties, we would observe that we laugh when we perceive an incongruity. We’ll offer some examples in a moment. Suffice it to say that there exists a certain type of laughter-inducing incongruity that is akin to the moment of discovery. What we have in mind is irony. It involves an incongruity, gap or discrepancy between what one had believed to be true and what, in point of fact, is actually true.
In other words, irony is about having been mistaken. Comic plays, for example, abound in errors of all sorts. For example, Fielding’s comic hero, Tom Jones, discovers that the woman with whom he had just made love is none other than his mother! And isn’t it the same for discovery? For example, we had believed that the earth was flat, but Columbus then confirms that it is round. Or an historian contends that we have reached the end of history and that we are now entering an era of universal progress, but then world events prove that it ain’t necessarily so.” Similarly, then, there exists a gap, discrepancy, or incongruity between what one had believed to be the case and what actually is the case.
There is a certain type of incongruity that can lead us to fortune and fame, if we are are fortunate enough to discover it in time and to capitalize on it. Could the study of comedy strengthen the mind’s capacity to detect incongruities, including those that lead to lucrative business and investment opportunities? There may, indeed, be a kind of cognitive cross-training possible here.
Here, then, is our game plan: We shall briefly explore the incongruities that make us laugh. Then, we’ll explore incongruities which, when perceived, prompts us to exclaim, if only to ourselves, “Eureka! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! I’m gong to get rich, ya know!”
Comical Incongruities
Schopenhauer
Is it true, then, that at the heart of every comical situation there lies an incongruity? Often the sheer juxtaposition of certain characters — such as slim Laurel and chubby Hardy — or characters who are very different in personality and disposition — Lucy and Ricky, for example — is incongruous.
Even the simplest joke contains an incongruity, one that may be a lot deeper than would appear on the surface. For example, Henny Youngman would say, “I miss my wife’s cooking… as frequently as possible.” Youngman’s joke involves bathos, a quick descent from romantic heartache to painful heartburn, i.e., the incongruity involves the ideal aspects of marriage juxtaposed with the real. Woody Allen’s essay, “If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists,” involved the incongruity created by conflating two disparate realms of discourse, French impressionism and the world of tooth decay, bitewing x-rays, flossing and root canals. In life, as in art, incongruities lie everywhere, and those who laugh more have an eye for detecting them.
Irony, as we have suggested, involves a certain type of incongruity, one involving a discrepancy between what a person believes to be the true and what is actually true. It might involve anything from the comedy of mistaken identity to the more subtle forms of irony, involving a lack of self-knowledge, i.e., the incongruity between our idealized notion of who we are and who we really are. Lord Rochester offers an excellent example, “Before I got married, I had six theories about bringing up children. Now I have six children and no theories.” Irony certainly offers a rather constrained vision of the possibility of theoretical knowledge.
Incongruities and Business Opportunities
Peter Drucker
One of the most brilliant of Peter Drucker’s books is “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” (Perennial Library, 1986). There is a section in it where he explores the various sources of opportunities for innovation. He contends that incongruity is a primary source of such opportunities, but he explores other sources as well, including “the unexpected,” “demographics,” changes in perception, and “new knowledge.” We might argue, though, that all of these sources of innovative opportunity involve discerning an incongruity. The type of incongruity at issue, in all cases, involves a discrepancy, or gap, between what is generally believed to be true and what is actually the case. This gap in our cognition is really the meaning of irony.
For example, one sort of incongruity involves what we had believed to be true and what turns out, most unexpectedly and to our surprise, to actually be the case. In his chapter entitled, “The Unexpected,” Drucker discusses the time that he was hired as a management consultant, by MACY’s Department Store, in New York City. It was 1946, and the CEO and staff of MACY’s was concerned that appliance sales had really taken off. What they had on their hands was an unexpected success, the type of serendipitous surprise, which, if exploited, leads to good fortune.
Ah, but here what surprised Mr. Drucker. The CEO of MACY’s contended that something had to be done to hold appliance sales in check, if not to decrease these sales. Needless to say, Drucker was perplexed, indeed downright dumbfounded, as to why the CEO believed that the senior management at MACY’s would wish to quash this lucrative opportunity. The CEO explained to Drucker that appliance sales were, by their estimates, supposed to be a relatively small percentage of fashion clothing sales. But consumers were purchasing appliances beyond everyone’s expectations. Consequently, to be in line with expectation, appliance sales had to be severely suppressed!
What happened, as Drucker explains it, is that another department store, Bloomingdales, seeing the opportunity that MACY’s had been neglecting, began selling appliances. Consequently, Bloomingdales grew in leaps and bounds on account of it.
Here is where Schopenhauer is relevant. In his discussion of comedy, Schopenhauer contends that the comical arises from the incongruity between our concepts and categories, on the one hand, and the world as it actually is — in its entire brute, logic-resistant absurdity — on the other. Needless to say, in the long run, the world as it actually is wins out over our theoretical conception of how the world should be. So it is, then, that Macy’s CEO and their Board of Directors had a conception of business success that didn’t jibe with reality, or at least the world, as it existed in 1946.
Thus, in business, as in life, while we are reviewing our forecasts, charts, metrics and predictions, the truth may sneak up and ambush us. It’s then that we stand naked before an incongruity. Drucker deliberately chose an extreme example, but it’s more common than not that when the little bird whispers the truth in our ear, we think to ourselves “Preposterous!” Seeking to quash the truth from our thoughts makes us an object for the laughter of the gods ad makes us miss up on a valuable business opportunity.
Although Drucker didn’t discuss stock market investment and speculation, in “Innovation and Entrepreneurship,” it is quite relevant here. Contrarian investing seeks to discern a discrepancy, gap, or incongruity between how people perceive and value a company versus its true value. Generally speaking, most investors place too much importance on short-term factors, such as the results reported in a company’s last quarterly report. But it is inevitable that a company, no matter how excellent, will have difficult periods, which will serve to discourage many investors.
As a stockbroker, in the late 1970s, I had often observed this phenomenon. I remember, for example, Mattel having gone through some hard times, due to very disappointing sales on one of their new toys. There then followed dire predictions, in various investment journals, about Mattel, which were unfounded. It was a strong company and was very likely to make a comeback, which it did. Alas, I tried to interest investors in purchasing shares of Mattel, and other turnaround situations as well, but was rarely successful in convincing people to invest contrary to popular sentiment. In any case, when we truly understand a company, we may discern that that there exists a gap between what people think a company is worth and its true value.
Sometimes, what creates an incongruity is not just a foolish emphasis on short-term factors, but rather a misplaced trust. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times may be excellent papers, but all the same it’s foolish to place an uncritical trust in any single news source. It was back in the late 1970s, when I learned that lesson. I was working as a commodity broker. It was in the days when OPEC enjoyed a strong monopoly on the oil market. Crude oil futures had been selling well, with the price climbing higher and higher. Everyone expected the price to just continue to climb.
Then one day, I had tried to interest an affluent Oklahoma businessman in purchasing oil futures. The Oklahoman said, to my surprise, “I might be willing to short oil, for you see out here in in Texas and Oklahoma, we’re swimming in oil.” How could this be, I wondered, for there was nothing in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal about their being an abundance of oil. It turned out that the Oklahoman was right, although a bit ahead of his time, and in less than six months the price of oil futures started tumbling downward.
Here, again, the same incongruities that give rise to cosmic irony create opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship and investment success. Of course, the more one understands a certain field of endeavor, the more one is likely to be able to perceive an incongruity within that field. On the other hand, those working in that field often have the myopia that derives from having acquiring the false assumptions that are common in their industry. Consequently, an outsider can see that the emperor has no clothes.
Incongruities and the Market Niche
The type of incongruities that we’ve been exploring here, involve a gap between the world as we perceive it and the world as it actually is. A market niche — one that has not yet been filled — consists of another kind of gap that exists, but either people don’t notice it, or they notice it but aren’t able to fill it.
For example, not everyone enjoys Internet-accessible coffee shops. Some rightly claim that being in an environment in which everyone is engrossed in their laptop, or speaking or texting on their cellphones is the antithesis of community, and therefore fosters feelings of alienation. Consequently, there have emerged a number of coffee shops, around the country, that have banned laptops, and sometimes cellphones too. The owners of these cafes report that their customers appreciate the opportunities for conversation and community, and they report that since prohibiting these devices their sales have increased. These coffee shops are a niche because there still exists a much larger segment of the population that wishes to bring their laptop to a café that has free Wi-Fi.
There are niches everywhere, to be filled, and yet we often fail to discern them. One is reminded of a scene in “The Treasure of Sierra Madre,” in which the old gold minor (played by Walter Huston) starts jumping up and down, laughing hysterically at his two young partners (played by Humphrey Boggart and Tim Holt),
“Let me tell you something, my two fine bedfellows, you’re so dumb, there’s nothin’ to compare ya with, you’re dumber than the dumbest jackass. Look at each other, will ya? Did you ever see anything like yourself for bein’ dumb specimens. You’re so dumb, you don’t even see the riches you’re treadin’ on with your own feet. Yeah, don’t expect to find nuggets of molten gold. It’s rich but not that rich. And here ain’t the place to dig. It comes from someplace further up. Up there, up there’s where we’ve got to go. UP THERE!” (“The Treasure of Sierra Madre.” 1948)
Most often, without realizing it, we are treading on golden opportunities, based on there being a gap between what is believed to be the case and what actually is the case. Sometimes specialized knowledge — of a business, industry, technological development, or social trend — is necessary to discern the gaps. But just as often it is there, like the naked emperor, for all to see, but few do, and when they do see it is too late to exploit. Those who make their living writing jokes, comedies or other forms of light-hearted amusement are always on the lookout for laughter-inducing incongruities. If we ourselves are willing to be on the lookout for these gaps and can find a practical way to exploit them, then we can laugh a lot more often, and perhaps we’d laugh all the way to the bank.
Footnote: Arthur Koestler, in his thought provoking, “The Act of Creation” (Macmillan: 1964), connects comedy not to discovery, but to creativity. Koestler is intrigued by how the “bisociation,” or blending of elements from disparate domains leads to creative insights. For example, pasty cooking and military strategy are disparate, indeed, but by comparing these incongruous realms od discourse we might gain insights into both. Unfortunately, Koester did not relate the creative act to entrepreneurship.
Mark Dillof
Dr. Mark Dillof is president of Sherlock & Zen, LLC, Business Consulting. In addition to extensive business experience — including having worked as a management consultant, stockbroker and executive coach — he taught philosophy and psychology for many years, wrote several books, has had a private practice as a consulting philosopher, and has entertained as a professional magician, among other things.