Entrepreneurs are optimists by nature and masters at turning problems into solutions. Many of the best harness counter-intuitive thinking that plays on human emotion rather than rationality - as best articulated by the Prince of behavioural interpretation Rory Sutherland (who may or may not appreciate being verbed). So how can we harness his antidoter ways of thinking to solve the teen smartphone problem? (or get him in a room with Jonathan Haidt for a brainstorm - I’ll make the tea and take notes).

My career has been shaped by seeking to fuel the innovations of optimists. It’s why I’ve invested the last three years at Sweatcoin, an exciting business which took the huge problem of our increasingly sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles and turned it into an opportunity. They believed (and have since proven with over 150M global users) that incentives and rewards can represent a paradigm shift in how we think about movement: the difference between choosing to stand on a moving-up escalator or walk up it; of taking the stairs rather than the lift or proactively getting off a bus a stop early. Each additional step = points which can be spent on a range of goods and services. It provides daily nudges that have the power to impact life-long behavioural change.

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Ultimately, the Sweatcoin vision is to create a ‘movement economy’, one to rival the attention economy - but unlike the latter, offering a win-win for all, connecting brands and users in a marketplace of reward and benefit, with the potential to save the taxpayer billions on preventable diseases. (Type2 Diabetes costs the NHS £14Bn a year, >10% of its total budget and more than the police, fire and judicial system put together(!!). With news this week that diagnoses are up 39% for Under-40s in just 6 years, move more, people. Move more).

Being a small part of Sweatcoin’s success leads me to wonder how such incentive-led solutions might be harnessed for other problems I care about. Working closely with such do-ers also explains my frustration with the opportunity cost of so much navel-gazing social discourse and the negativity of tear-down strategies. Too many super-smart people get stuck in awareness-raising-mode (often misdirected by biased data) or rage, seeking to dismantle rather than build to take bites out of problems.

Rory Sutherland is the master of positive alchemy and counter-intuitive thinking. He wrote the book on it. He is one of the most erudite, amusing and potentially irritating podcast guests, with his hosts struggling to get a word in edgeways as he goes off on tangents of whimsical anecdotes to highlight insights into behavioural science E.g. here, here, here (lesson to podcasters: just let him rip).

He is particularly strong on how simple reframing can solve problems. E.g. repositioning the annoying bus that arrives to unload plane passengers as a VIP chauffeur direct to immigration to avoid the queues; how a fraction of the money earmarked for HS2 rail could have created greater opportunity if it went towards upgrading existing trains with greater comfort and reliable wifi for relaxation and deep work opportunities; or how the Uber live-map functionality is ‘a psychological moonshot’- not reducing waiting time but making it 90% less frustrating.

As an Ad-man, he frequently references the many brands that have successfully played with perceptions, turning weaknesses into strengths - think Guinness’s ‘good things come to those who wait’, Stella’s ‘reassuringly expensive’ or Marmite’s ‘love it or hate it’.

Some favourite quotes:

“Engineers, medical people, scientific people, have an obsession with solving the problems of reality, when actually … once you reach a basic level of wealth in society, most problems are actually problems of perception.”

“The skill you need to win an argument is not the same as the skill you need to solve problems, yet our education system conflates the two (and we only reward the former in politicians)”.

“A flower is a weed with an advertising budget.”

“The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.”

“It is much easier to be fired for being illogical than it is for being unimaginative. The fatal issue is that logic always gets you to exactly the same place as your competitors.”

“what matters is not whether an idea is true or effective, but whether it fits with the preconceptions of a dominant cabal”

‘A rich man is any man that earns more than his wife’s sister’s husband’ (*possibly not his but sounds like it should be)

On listening to Rory, I find my brain fires in different directions. Of course, one strategy is simply to challenge preconceptions and problem-diagnosis with nuance (the antidoter blog strategy), but how can we also channel energies and his type of thinking into incentivising, positive solutions?

Take kids and smartphones. Now the evidence is in for its many negative impacts, my fear is that we are at risk of creating a punishing vacuum for the young with few alternatives in our safety-first culture. Where are the incentives? There are fewer youth clubs or places to hang out; fewer parents willing to give their children the independence in real life (IRL) that they enjoyed (despite evidence it’s much safer than the online world); poor public transport, plus - most fundamentally - a huge chasm to cross before we can reach a tipping point of those without the internet in their pockets being numerous enough to occupy each other.

We urgently need entrepreneurs to rush into this challenge. How do we reframe screen abstinence as IRL opportunities and make it cool? What incentives could we provide as an alternative to scare-mongering, nagging and abstinence? Can we connect IRL brands (who will be losing business to the 7 daily hours now spent on devices) with teenagers in a loop of reward akin to Sweatcoin’s model? How can we encourage investment in new offline business models when incentives are now so skewed towards the 100x returns that only tech-scalability can offer?

One aspiring business I’ve discovered (through this blog and its associated Linkedin posts) and hugely appreciate is ‘The Den’ who are building a nationwide network of social clubs, designed by teenagers for teenagers. Take <3 minutes to enjoy their powerful video setting out the problem and their vision, alongside the brilliant social campaign they’ve kick-started #IRLRevolution. Invest if you’re so inclined…

This week, a request: please share any others that you stumble across that you believe might have a role to play in tackling this problem, however obliquely. Holiday clubs, Forest schools, conversation-starter cards, geocaching ++ etc. We may still be in the problem-identification stage, but we need to move rapidly to solutions: knowledge-sharing, dot-connecting and market and network-building.

Antidoters Assemble!

* subtitle quote not actually Rory… credit: Charlie Munger

More: Do subscribe to Jon’s After Babel Substack to keep abreast of his work.

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Rory-Sutherlanding the Kids & Smartphones Problem