Gitty's Bench Notes - March 27, 2014 - Ignorance and Innovation

There is a popular perception out there that starting your own business and being your own boss means a life of ease – only working when you want to, money worries a thing of the past, etc. Anyone who’s ever tried it knows the story is rather different. When you first are getting started, the one resource you think you have in unlimited supply is your own time. The more you grow and the more success you achieve however, you’ll find that you have less and less… and that the to-do list grows from a pile to a heap to a towering mountain that sometimes feels like it may topple over and crush you. Learning to prioritize, focus and delegate is difficult. While you may never quite come to believe that someone else can do it as good as you can, coming to accept that other people can do a good job at tasks that only you had done previously is key. For someone like me, with no official business training, “make it up as you go” is more often the rule than the exception.

But I didn’t intend this post to be about running a business or anything like that – there are plenty of blogs and forums and books out there on that subject (I intend to read some, someday). What I really wanted to talk about is the GOOD side of not knowing what you are doing. Most folks feel that not knowing what you are doing is a bad thing, and many times it is. Over-confident ignorance is one of the most dangerous forces in the world. But sometimes, not knowing what you are doing can be good. I have seen it on a number of occasions in my own work and the work of my crew here at C. B. Gitty. A basic knowledge of fundamental principles to help direct your progress is important, to avoid wasting too much time, but having a clean slate can be very liberating.

I’ll try to explain what I mean below.

Sometimes, approaching a problem without knowing much about the subject can give you a fresh, unbiased approach that can lead to new innovation. A willingness to experiment and try things, without being afraid of failure, and a willingness to learn from each failure, can be a powerful force. The path to innovation and invention isn’t a simple fork in the road with success one way and failure the other. It is more like a turnpike with a series of toll booths, each one labeled FAILURE, and only by passing through them can you get to the big one at the end labeled SUCCESS.

When it comes to the cigar box guitar and homemade/handmade music movement, this is especially true. None (or at least very, very few) of us are professional luthiers. Many of us don’t have much “official” musical training. Yet we decide to start building musical instruments. Aside from a few very basic principles, there are pretty much no rules and everything is open to experimentation. From this basic starting point, some pretty amazing stuff has been created, and continues to be every day.

This idea of amateur, untrained innovation and creation is one of the cores of the cigar box guitar movement, and the broader maker movement (if you aren’t sure what the maker movement is, check out make.com). For me personally, when I am elbows deep in a project, trying stuff, failing, making small leaps forward, correcting mistakes and jumping from new idea to new idea, I am at my best. It is my favorite thing out of all of the great aspects of running a business like this. Trying to set aside time to get out into the shop and make moments like that happen is one of the main challenges I face these days… but if that’s the biggest challenge I have to face I think I’m doing OK.

Ben “C. B. Gitty” Baker