5 CORE MINDSETS
Having studied all kinds of hackers – from the illicit exploits of cybercriminals to the kindhearted researchers who hack in order to eradicate disease – there are some common shared philosophies. Unlike the specific techniques we’ll cover throughout the book, which are used to solve particular problems, the hacker mindsets are the foundation to Innovation Hacking. This set of beliefs will serve as the underpinning for your own hacking exploits, and allow you to build a hacking culture in your own organization.
Hooded criminals, lab rats, innovators, entrepreneurs, and business executives alike have embraced these five core philosophies in order to hack through their most difficult challenges:
1 Every Barrier Can Be Penetrated
2 Compasses Over Maps
3 Nothing Is Static
4 Quantity Is a Force Multiplier
5 Competence Is the Only Credential That Matters
These five fundamental beliefs are the underpinnings of the hacking ethos, and your framework for creating change. Now, let’s explore each of them in depth as we lay the foundation for your own hacking adventures.
EVERY BARRIER CAN BE PENETRATED
Maurice Maeterlinck famously said, “If the bee disappeared from Earth, man would only have four years left to live.” Not necessarily a fan of stings, he was referring to the important role bees and other insects play in fertilization and cross-pollination. Unfortunately, our planet has seen an alarming decline in populations of bees, butterflies, and other important insects, which, in turn, is threatening global food supplies, as the human population expands like never before. A large problem indeed, and one that needs to be hacked.
Hackers first approach any problem by identifying the barrier that must be infiltrated, along with a desired outcome:
The Barrier: Declining population of bees
Desired Outcome: Reverse the trend to save humanity
You’ll notice the barrier need not be a software security system and the desired outcome need not be committing a crime for the hacking mindset to be deployed. The key mindset at play is that Every Barrier Can Be Penetrated. Hackers universally embrace the belief that fortresses are meant to be breached, mountains are meant to be climbed. The fact that something has never been done or that the challenge seems daunting entices the hacker rather than deters her. In fact, the more difficult a barrier appears, the more enthused the hacker becomes to rupture it.
The Hackers: Harvard Microbiotics Lab
The Solution: RoboBees
Refusing to accept that only bees could be bees, researchers toiled to discover a different approach. While most people would try to solve a bee shortage by feeding, protecting, or breeding more actual bees, the Harvard hackers used an unconventional approach to solve the problem at hand. With the trend of unmanned aircraft (drones) growing in mainstream usage, they decided to build robot bees. So much for that old adage, “never send a robot to do a bee’s job.”
The RoboBee is not your grandfather’s insect. They can lift off, hover to conserve energy, fly through dust, and swim. They fly faster than a real bee, yet weigh less. In addition to conducting pollination missions, this tiny invention can ultimately expand to serve other purposes. “The RoboBees can eventually be used for search and rescue, for example in areas where larger robots won't fit,” says Harvard Microbiotics Laboratory researcher Elizabeth Helbling. “They would also return with the information faster, as you wouldn't have to wait for one robot to come back, but instead have a whole swarm of them covering a forest or similar.” And Helbling and the researchers at Harvard aren’t the only ones tackling big problems, problems that desperately need a hack.
Pablos Holman, a lifelong hacker, is an expert on hacking problems, large and small. He’s also a vocal proponent of spreading hacking methodologies, and the hacking mindsets I’m sharing with you:
Hackers are in the business of breaking things. I don’t think it’s particularly weird or audacious. Hacking is just a learning style or methodology. Rather than relying on the instructions, we’ll just try everything. We’ll take something apart, break it into a lot of little pieces, and figure out what we can build from it.
One of Holman’s biggest hacks? Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes aren’t only a nuisance during your holiday picnic, they carry deadly diseases such as Zika and malaria, which alone kills over 600,000 people per year. Bed nets, antimalarial drugs, and insecticides have helped, but according to the World Health Organization, the problem still ranks as the 17 th most frequent cause of death, ahead of lung cancer, traffic accidents, and diabetes. Who better to attack one of our planet’s most pressing issues than someone who has been labeled “The Madonna of Hackers”?
For the last 17 years, Holman has been a member of The Shmoo Group, self-labeled as “a notorious group of hackers and security professionals.” He loves doing live demos where he instantly accesses audience members’ “secure” credit card info and computers, revealing passwords and other data, or plugs into a hotel TV system to display the movie of his choosing, in any room on the property. With messy hair, tinted glasses, jet black clothes, and tattered gym shoes, Pablos looks like he came right from central casting for a hacker role. Not only does he look the part, he’s the embodiment of the hacking mindset put to positive use. He’s the ultimate Innovation Hacker.
Pablos deploys hacking mindsets to invent and create. He’s teamed up with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Intellectual Ventures to tackle some of the biggest problems facing humanity, like mosquitoes transmitting malaria.
Holman and his fellow hackers at Intellectual Ventures conducted a series of simulations to explore how malaria continues to spread throughout Africa. Each simulation exposed new opportunities to breach their barrier, to stop the spread and ultimately eradicate this fatal disease. As they continued to concentrate on the problem, unorthodox ideas started to emerge.
A core tenet of this first hacking philosophy – that Every Barrier Can Be Penetrated – is a profound attraction to curiosity and exploration. Hackers don’t look at things as they are; instead, they constantly question every premise. Taking nothing for granted, they ask an endless stream of questions about each problem they face, every element of prevailing wisdom. With the intensity of an inquisitive child, they refuse to accept life as it is, favoring instead what it could be.
Accordingly, Pablos Holman and his team explored crazy options for stopping insect-borne disease. They looked at chemicals, screens, drugs. Yet none of these yielded their desired breakthrough results, and frankly none of them were “hacker cool.” Hackers seek to explore new boundaries, to fuel change. So they landed on an idea only the hacker mindset could discover: they decided to shoot down the mosquitoes with lasers.
The team devised a system to track the wing patterns of mosquitoes and then fire a deadly laser beam to take them out mid-flight. It is much like the Star Wars defense system, but for mosquitoes instead of intergalactic nuclear missiles. The lasers can be mounted on fence posts around farms or in densely populated villages to create a photonic fence that eliminates the pests before they have the chance to spread disease. This advanced system can distinguish between mosquitoes and other insects, allowing helpful bees and butterflies to pass unharmed. It can even distinguish between male and female mosquitoes based on their wing beats, killing only the females, which are the ones that sting humans. To bring their invention to life, Pablos and his team didn’t use combat-grade carbon fiber or billion-dollar computing power. Instead, they used common parts from ubiquitous consumer electronics, such as Blu-ray players and laptops.
Holman is now directing his energy toward hacking the way we eat. In a Wired interview, he